Tomorrow, I am speaking at the Ethnographic and Qualitative Research Conference in Las Vegas. I am excited about the opportunity as I get to share my research with peers in the field of education as well as researchers in other fields. The results of this research is intended to inform educational leaders and policymakers regarding what is needed to help educational leaders like principals, assistant principals, superintendents, district coordinator, teacher leaders, and teachers to provide insight to how they can become more data literate. Ultimately, data literacy is needed in order to utilize various data practices (i.e., collecting, compiling/cleaning, and transforming data using statistics) to make data-driven decisions for instructional improvement. I am excited to share a quick summary of the research as well as the slideshow I am presenting at the conference tomorrow morning.
For this study, we looked at the perceptions of these educational leaders regarding their perceptions to utilize data practices in their educational setting as well as to establish and participate in data cultures at their school site/district. The methodology was a qualitative methodology, which employed grounded theory. Qualitative data was collected via a survey open-ended response in order to collect as much data as possible from our sampling population. Conclusions derived from this study include how educational leaders need to mandate and model data-driven cultures in their schools. Additionally, perceptions regarding data practices from participants mostly involved how data-driven decision-making was employed instructional and school/district improvement. Participants felt like this was not happening because there was a lack of training to facilitate the use of data. Finally, participants noted that time was a major constraint because many felt within a school day not enough time was set aside for data disaggregation. On top of the lack of time, participants perceived
Much of this research has helped me craft the book I am working on regarding data practices, which is intended to help build the data literacy skills of teachers and administrators. I am hoping I will be able to lecture on this research more in the coming months. Lastly, I have my fingers crossed about submitting the journal article I have written on this research to the Journal of Ethnographic and Qualitative Research. Hopefully, the feedback I receive tomorrow will help refine the draft before submitting it.
Take a look here at the presentation on the research. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Navigating the Present and Future of Education 