Teacher leaders play an important role in school improvement at the administrative level and in the classroom. They help teachers improve by demonstrating how to use new instructional techniques, technologies and collaborative methods. They also assist school administrators with improving curricula, policies and professional development. In short, they bridge the gap between teaching staff and administration, facilitating a collaborative school community.
What does this have to do with using data? Data can be extremely useful in decision-making for all aspects of school improvement, including curricular design and instructional coaching. However, due to heavy workloads and other factors, teachers often hesitate to incorporate data collection and implement the insights and improvements data makes possible.
So, an integral part of the teacher leader’s role is to help teachers learn why data is important and how to use it. Equally important is interpreting classroom data for administrative decision-making. Teacher leaders and administrators can gain insights specific to a school’s student body and community from quantitative and qualitative classroom assessments, student self-reflection and self-assessment.
Increasingly, graduate teaching programs like Lamar University’s online Master of Education in Teacher Leadership have been including coursework focused on the collection and analysis of school data to improve decision-making and instruction.
What Kinds of Data Are Useful?
Standardized test scores are perhaps the most obvious source of school information. However, many teachers and parents believe standardized tests are a poor measure of actual student achievement and do not represent the school’s contextual environment. Furthermore, teachers often complain of “teaching to the test” — spending priceless classroom time drilling students on test materials and test-taking techniques instead of focusing on comprehension.
Standardized test data is only a small fraction of the information available to schools. In order to make the best decisions on school policy and instruction, schools should consider every aspect of the student’s environment, including student body demographics, teacher demographics, parents, community resources, and the cultural and socioeconomic makeup of the community.
Quantitative analysis of school and community demographics provides useful insights; however, qualitative assessments are equally important. These can include teachers’ reflections upon their instructional techniques, classrooms and areas for improvement. Student self-evaluations and reflection are also important for participation and engagement — as well as showing educators what the students think of themselves and the school environment.
Gathering qualitative and quantitative information should extend beyond the school walls. How do parents or community members perceive the school? How much time each day do parents spend with students on school work? What sorts of extracurricular activities do students participate in? Many different kinds of data can be useful for school improvement.
How Can Educators Collect and Store Data?
Generally, the collection of quantitative data from both standardized tests and school-specific sources like assessments and grades is already common practice. Demographic information about students, teachers, parents and the community is also widely available to educators and administrators. This information is generally available in easily accessed databases both onsite and remotely via cloud-based storage.
Qualitative data on student and teacher perceptions as well as extracurricular activities, parent involvement, and community perceptions takes a bit more work to gather and store, but it is immensely valuable. Therefore, it is important to illustrate to teachers how qualitative data can improve their experiences.
How to Use Data?
Demographics on the student body, teaching staff and surrounding community can inform appropriate, culturally responsive classrooms and instructional design — as well as professional development. This information can help administrators and educators integrate culturally relevant content into curricula and activities. In addition, analyzing test scores, grades and quantitative achievement trends over time can help educators pinpoint which aspects of their educational plans are working well and which need improvement.
Qualitative data can help tailor these improvements to students’ specific needs. What do students feel works well for them? Where do they feel they need the most help? What kinds of instruction techniques do teachers want to learn, and how do they feel they can best learn and implement them?
An exciting benefit of so much data lies in correlations. Classic questions like “Which socioeconomic group of students needs the most help with reading?” or “What instructional method is most effective for teaching algebra?” are now easy to answer. Perhaps the data will reveal unexpected correlations, such as students who participate in community service show higher levels of achievement. Maybe culturally relevant reading materials in the classroom correlates with literacy improvement. Educators can draw many creative insights by recognizing trends in the data.
Educators at all levels can now collect and analyze data to improve student learning. Teacher leaders, specifically, can play an important role in encouraging and educating teachers and administrators alike to rely on data for school improvement.
Learn more about the Lamar University online Master of Education in Teacher Leadership program.
Sources:
SEDL: Using Data to Guide Instruction and Improve Student Learning
ASCD: Why Teachers Must Be Data Experts
