Teacher leaders play various essential roles within a school, but they aren’t always the first responsibilities that come to mind when people think of teachers. The work of teacher leaders often occurs “behind the scenes.” Teacher leaders can be instructional coaches who help their peers to continue learning and developing their classroom practices. They can also be mentors, assistants or union leaders. Sometimes they act as advocates for student needs or help organize student groups. Even curriculum development and grading practices often fall at least partly under the purview of teacher leaders. In short, they act as connective tissue for schools, helping all members of a school community stay on the same page. In teacher leadership programs, educators can learn and develop the skills needed to improve student outcomes and apply beneficial teaching trends and best practices.
As digital technology becomes increasingly common in education, teacher leaders must remain up-to-date on how to use it to benefit their schools. Data and data analysis are especially important tools. Teachers and other school leaders have a torrent of information at their fingertips that they can use to better understand their students. However, extracting meaningful takeaways from such huge amounts of data requires literacy and leadership.
Cultivating Faculty Interest
The first step to using data effectively in any school is fostering faculty buy-in. Even with the best observations derived from data, resistance from the people who can put those insights into practice will ultimately limit any effectiveness. As leaders of their schools, teacher leaders are well equipped for this task. They can help fellow educators make data seem less complicated and help them understand its value. For example, according to the education blog Schoolytics, “By guiding your faculty through the process of collection, assessment and analysis, you can demonstrate the significance and benefits of using data tools in the classroom.”
Demonstrate How to Use Data
An essential part of the “buy-in” process is to show teachers how to utilize data programs correctly, allowing all teachers to participate. After data is collected, they know how to read their data and potentially gather their own insights. This process creates a more collaborative atmosphere for analysis and allows teachers to dive into and explore the fundamentals of data for themselves.
Collecting Student Data
The collection of student data is, obviously, the origin point of data analysis. As this academic article from Educational Research outlines, teacher leaders have several types of data to consider, including formal assessments, informal assessments, big data and research data. Formal data can come from quantitative results, such as tests, and qualitative results, such as classroom observation. Informal data is more personal, the takeaways teachers and administrators collect in everyday interactions with students and their parents. Research data describes the process of using the results of scientific studies to help guide decision-making. Big data refers to massive swaths of data collected over long periods that can be used to monitor progress or predict future results.
Analyze Data for Insights to Inform Action
Data analysis can be a difficult science. Many school communities will have unique learning needs, and joining many different pieces of data together to serve those needs is a large recipe. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Schools are wise to set goals and analyze their data to find a path to achieve them, but it is also possible to allow data to inform those goals. The Educational Research article claims that data also struggles to measure the development of “self-regulated learning skills,” such as “learning in a broader sense and students’ ability to engage in problem-solving and reasoning.” It’s vital teachers effectively analyze while also keeping an open mind about data.
In Lamar University’s online Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Teacher Leadership program, graduates learn how to read and utilize data to adapt and improve curriculum and instruction, as well as identify effective instructional strategies for students in all tiers of support. Courses like Using Assessment Data to Guide Instructional Decisions teach students to utilize formative and summative data to inform curriculum development and instruction. Graduates will also develop their understanding of integrating data analysis into a school’s overall practices.
Learn more about Lamar University’s online M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership program.
