Data Use in School

In this week’s reflection, I will touch on data usage in teaching and learning and my thoughts on how such practice may be implemented.

I describe myself as a new teacher “keen on understanding use of data to facilitate instructional changes in the classroom.” I regularly collect data from tests after intervention and then used the results for planning and evaluating instruction. Last year, when I worked together with a group of teachers to develop a learning plan for our students and the goal for example is to improve “students’ clarity of thinking of concepts.” We did the intervention (mind-mapping) and track it through a period of time. At the end, it was wonderful to look at where we were at, what we actually wanted to be and what we actually achieved. That really reinforced to everyone that this is important. The results even helped raised questions which we now know required our attention. The teachers when presented accepted the collection and use of student data. They see it as positive (some even asking if this practices can be done for the graduating levels), because they see the results and then they celebrate success.

I hope that because we had seen the benefits of using data to track progress, we will be more aware of how important the information can be for guiding our instructions. In addition, having all of that data to look at, there will be a lot more emphasis on accountability and coming up with the data to show what we are doing.

There are a lot of things which we teachers are or will be doing in a year. Take some example, there are CA1, SA1, CA2 and SA2, twice for formative assessment, twice for summative assessment. I think even though we were doing this four times a year, there is no continuation. I did it once, I leave it alone; I did it the second time, I leave it alone. I did it the third time, I again leave it alone. I think after we have done it once, let us look at the students’ responses, let’s make meaning to what the data is telling us, work through them, see how we can improve based on that. Take for example, not the whole SA1 but part of SA1-style questions or the content which most of the students have difficulties in. We start to look at what we did, how we can improve upon it, and work that into day-to-day teaching. It would be tempting to say that we are teaching to the test, but I disagree. What we are looking at some of the markers that the test indicates and then working at improving.

I believe that the majority of initiatives which we teachers take have positive effects on learning. Improving notes, team teaching, SRP, computer-assisted learning can all have a positive effect on learning. But if we do not have the time to do them all, which will have the greatest effect? Can we guess which ones? Likewise in strategies to improve things for our students, so the question is not “Will this strategy work?” but “Which?” The use of data will then help to tell us how the average student (based on our school students’ profile, and the problems these students have) learns best.