Focus on learning
Building and leading a school culture that values data-informed dialogue to improve student learning Megan Brazil says we need evidence to ensure our messages are being received In a ‘silo schools’ approach, teachers have generally been left to work independently on collecting, understanding and using their own classroom data in order to make decisions about instruction, planning and assessment. Many schools have not yet made the successful transition from individual to collaborative: to enable teams of teachers to collectively analyse learning data in order to improve learning outcomes for all students. What we know to be true in many schools is that teachers still spend a disproportionate amount of time planning instruction, but don’t place the same emphasis or effort on finding out if the instruction really worked. Perhaps, then, less importance has been placed on finding time for teams of teachers, coaches and administrators to take a look at the ‘back end’ — the learning that has taken place as a result of the planning and teaching. We advocate that the input should not be valued more than the output. Data produced through student assessments is commonly used at a systemic level and for reporting back to parents. ‘Data’ in many schools has been used as an accountability-laden end product – to judge students, to evaluate programmes
and to rate performance. A rich opportunity exists for teams of teachers to use student learning data not as an end product, but as a tool for developing deep understandings of instructional practices, to shape collaborative approaches to improving student learning, when data is used as a tool for improvement rather than a final unit of measurement. While this is nothing new to us, the challenge is putting successful structures in place to allow it to happen regularly, and effectively. In our quest as educators to honor the ‘whole child’, many schools have dishonored the place of empirical evidence in the decision-making process. In our desire to value the ‘art’ of teaching, we have devalued the ‘science’ of teaching. We propose that, rather than an either/or approach, we should take a ‘yes, and’ approach to allow us to use learning data to make effective decisions about instructional, programme and school improvement. We believe that data does not detract from looking at the ‘whole’ child, but in fact is an essential part of that picture. There is, however, a caveat: that an overuse of data at every turn may in fact decrease teachers’ natural intuition
What we know to be true in many schools is that teachers still spend a disproportionate amount of time planning instruction, but don’t place the same emphasis or effort on finding out if the instruction really worked.
Winter
Summer |
| 2017
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