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What is your story?
What is your story?
Before getting in the DATADRIVE cycle's loop, you should take some time to reflect on your organisation's story.
What is your organisation's vision and mission?
What is your organisation's goals?
What have been the milestones leading up to this point in your school improvement?
What is your organisation's context and what challenges have you encountered so far?
There are some key elements that will have been decided for you by the district, state, or the country you live in. Now is your chance to think about other key drivers of your day-to-day work and how you can use them to spark change.
Together with your team think about and discuss the questions provided in the worksheet.
Where are you right now?
Where are you right now?
The idea that improvement begins with I is not something new. However, it does not hurt to be reminded from time to time that for change to happen it needs to start within ourselves. It takes a lot to ask your team to take a hard look in the mirror and self-reflect on how things are going. We believe that by facilitating an open and safe space for this to happen, teams will start to feel a greater sense of ownership and understanding of how they see their roles in the school improvement process and how they plan to do it. This can also help when building an environment that is more open to feedback. Teachers are much more open to the idea of students giving them feedback if they are first ask to give feedback to school leaders (Gehlbach et al, 2017).
It is also important to take a look at what is working and what is not. In the hustle and bustle of everyday school life, it can be difficult to evaluate which processes or systems are in place simply because 'we have not had time to think about a better way', or 'that is how it has always been'. Getting stuck in habits that are not working to support student learning can keep you from helping them to achieve more.
What elements should you evaluate?
What elements should you evaluate?
As you take the time to reflect on your organisation's story and your current situation, think about some of the possible challenges that you may have to face when setting up a process of continuous improvement.
Time. Be realistic about the time you can allocate to the school improvement process and how to avoid making it an additional burden for yourself and others. How can you combine different processes or things you already do to make your school improvement process more evidence-driven?
Data availability. With regards to the goals you are working with: 1) what data is already available at your school? 2) what data is accessible to you and teachers?
Data collection methods. What data collection methods have you already tried in the past? Which ones do you regularly use? Which ones bring the most valuable results? Which ones do you use the least?
Objectivity. Think about your personal investment and emotions that might affect how you see data as a tool to improve your everyday work. Be ready to encounter data that goes against your views. Explore data with your colleagues to get a range of perspectives. Collaborative inquiry is the best way to find the path to school improvement.
1. evaluate yourself
1. evaluate yourself
Think about your personal readiness for change and how you approach situations where you have to take an objective look at your work for school improvement. During this process, you will need to be aware of your preferred working style and be open to the working styles of your colleagues, who may want things to be done differently.
The leadership role in the DATADRIVE decision making process is vital for successfully getting the team on board and working towards successful school improvement. It is also important to understand that leading the DATADRIVE process is not just about setting up a good plan, but about continuously being a support system and cheerleader for your team. It means taking into account that not everyone will be on board at first, that not everyone will feel confident working with different types and sources of data, and that not everyone will see how data come together to inform decisions. As a leader you need to be the role model by sharing examples and believing in the power that data will give you and your team to improve your practice. This begins with a clear vision of where you currently are and where you want to take your team.
Individually reflect on the questions provided in the worksheet.
2. Evaluate your teamwork
2. Evaluate your teamwork
School improvement is not a solitary process. As you start exploring ways to become a more data-driven team, it is vital that you and your team are dedicated to finding solutions to problems and are prepared for the trial-and-error tasks ahead. Each school system, each team of teachers, each class of students is a unique unit with their own unique experiences and needs. Therefore, throughout the process, you must keep these team-specific characteristics in mind when making decisions and choosing your strategies. You will know what will work for your team because you know your team the best.
Teachers tend to have a healthy dose of scepticism when facing new ideas. Ensuring a teacher buy-in into the data-driven process might be one of the most difficult things to do. There may be a variety of reasons why teachers might be hesitant at first. You can review the possible reasons in the additional material here.
Together with your team reflect on the questions provided in the worksheet and write down your answers.
You can also run a Datadrive Dispositions survey to find out your team's and teachers' attitudes and feelings towards the use of data. The questions have been designed so that you can create a survey for all your team members and colleagues to answer them individually. The results of the survey will give you a broader view about the attitudes and feelings towards data in your team. Moreover, the results should help you to guide the teacher professional development trainings on the data use in general.
3. Evaluate the data
3. Evaluate the data
When doing the audit of the existing data, we suggest to try to do this activity together with your team in order to get the widest range of input. It may be that one team works well with one data source, while another does not use that particular data source all. These discrepancies can then be discussed, thus, giving you a clearer picture of what information is available and where and how it is being used.
To evaluate the existing data, please look at the examples of data sources and answer the questions provided in the worksheet.
Together with your team reflect on the questions provided in the worksheet and write down your answers.
Additionally, you can find more information on how your team can get ready to work within the DATADRIVE cycle in the additional sub-sections:
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