1. Set goals

Step 1: Set goals

The desire to actively pursue school improvement with evidence-based decisions should be the main driver of your work, helping to develop more inquiry-driven habits through collaboration and conversation.

Simply collecting evidence is not enough. Having a clear vision and goals of why a certain set of data is being used will help to collect data that is precise and focused, ensuring that you will have asked the right questions to the right people at the right time. Keeping this clear vision in mind and getting everyone on board with it will also help you choose what kind of data sources will be necessary to form a complete understanding of the problem you wish to address.

As we've addressed in the previous step, anyone can work on becoming more evidence-driven and it takes the whole team to be on board to achieve the best success: teachers can do it for their class or it can be a school or system wide initiative. The benefit is that you will have a better understanding of your students and their learning needs, it will make you more reflective and focused, and ultimately it will help foster an evidence-driven culture in your organisation.

Priorities that matter

Research on educational effectiveness shows that by changing the context or processes of the education system, we can improve learning outcomes (Scheerens, 2016). It is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to change the context in which you are working, but you can strive to improve the processes proven to have the greatest impact on learning.

The teaching and learning toolkit from the Educational Endowment Foundation may be helpful in this respect. An accessible summary of the international evidence on teaching 5-16 year-olds can be found here.

We have highlighted these important processes in a Framework for Effective Education and recommend considering the following topics:

At a school level

Mastery Orientation
High Expectations
School Climate
Instructional Leadership
Staff Consensus and Cohesion

At a classroom level

Opportunity to Learn
Mastery Orientation Climate
Feedback
Classroom Management
Clear and Structured Teaching

1. Choose your priority

A priority is a theme or topic that you wish to explore at a deeper level to improve on an element of school quality that is important to you.

Try to choose a very focused priority. This will help you gain more valuable experience and be more prepared to implement the use of data on a larger scale in the future. A broad priority that includes a mixed range of topics can be less useful than a single, focused priority (especially if you are currently lacking information about it).

Try to choose a priority that may bring the most impact on students.

Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet. By answering the questions, it will help you to keep everyone involved on the same page and will create an opportunity for a collective input, instead of it being a top-down initiative.

To choose or align your priority, please review the School Quality Framework.

2. Review stakeholders

By keeping your priority in mind, think about the stakeholders involved in the relevant educational processes.

For example, parents most likely will not be able to comment about effective collaboration among teachers, but will be the best group to answer questions about parent-teacher conferences. Besides, more and more schools are choosing to keep an ongoing conversation with families about their child's development and progress, going beyond just midterm and final semester grade reports, to embracing various data-sharing opportunities.

The more engaged all stakeholders are in the process, the more you will get out of it, but remember that figuring out how to facilitate this process will take time.

Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet.

3. Review data sources

Think about the various data sources you could explore to get the most information on your priority.

Think about how they will work together to give you different perspectives and how these insights will give you a clear idea of what the core problem is, as well as ideas on how to solve it.

Look back at the data you have already audited. There is no need to review the available data twice.

Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet.

To find out more about the data-literacy, please look up the information and the materials in the section on 'Gathering data'.

4. Review roadblocks

Think about the potential roadblocks related to the chosen priority. It helps to be prepared for what lies ahead, including being proactive about the potential roadblocks you may face. Do not ignore signs or known risks that will create roadblocks ahead.

Reflect on the potential roadblocks you might foresee in your specific context and what might be the possible solutions to either minimize or to resolve the roadblocks if they arise. Think about how you can mitigate or avoid these roadblocks early and rigorously. For example, how will you get the support from each stakeholder group and getting your team on board? How will you allocate the time, the resources and the costs?

Do not get too caught up on the risks at this point, but simply be aware that most likely there will be some challenges along the way. Thinking about ways to support those involved will put you a step ahead of the game.

Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet.

5. Envision the results and actions

The hardest work begins after you have successfully collected various types of data. It can be hard to make decisions about what to do next with the results you have.

We suggest thinking ahead to these next steps as you plan your priority. If it is not clear to you, it might be necessary to take a step back and evaluate if this priority is really going to be useful to you.

Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet.

6. Set the goal

In one or two sentences, express what it is that you want to achieve. The goal should be something you can regularly come back to and reference when communicating your priority.

Try to keep the goal student-focused, so that you are always reminded that the work you are doing is for the growth of your students. For more information on student-focused goals, please read the sub-section on 'Problem of practice'.

Try to set a SMART goal. For more information on how to set SMART goals, please read the sub-section on 'SMART goals'.

Now that you have chosen your priority and set goals, you can proceed to the next section:

Step 2: Gather data

We will appreciate your feedback about this section:

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