Navigating the Impact of Data Analysis on Student Achievement

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Educational Equity and Excellence in Aotearoa–New Zealand

Abstract

In this paper, we describe the importance and impact of data use in schools and in the overall XXX project. Drawing on Bernhardt’s (2004) categorisation of four data types, data were collected by schools and project researchers on: student achievement; a range of student demographic characteristics; the programmes and processes that schools have enacted over time; and on the perceptions of students and teachers/school leaders on a range of issues. In addition, direct observations of academic counselling, literacy teaching observations, measures of subject literacy pedagogical content knowledge and leaders’ knowledge about goals and barriers to achieving these goals provided a rich picture of the intervention, and were fed back to schools for triangulation with these and other data schools collected.

The context of the high quality and low equity state education sector in Aotearoa required a multi-faceted approach to data and data analysis to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention programme. A foundation of the XXX approach was collaborative inquiry based on the collection, analysis and use of a wide range of data over time to support one-on-one academic counselling and conferences with parents, students and teachers. Each school was encouraged to develop an Evidential Data Base (EDB), which provided a mechanism for tracking and monitoring student progress (at the individual and group level) to inform teaching and learning programmes. The impact of the intervention was measured in several ways. Firstly, we identified increased student success, compared with their own historic achievement patterns and with National Benchmarks on the national qualification, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), and on University Entrance (UE) which is the stepping stone to tertiary study. Secondly, through increased student participation and retention in degree-level (and other tertiary) study. Thirdly, through accelerating student progress through the first two years of high school, prior to the three years of the national qualification. Fourthly, through the perceptions of students, teachers and school leaders who described how this project had impacted on their learning and teaching and through the attendance and engagement of whanau/families within parent/student/teacher conferences. In addition, impacts on teachers’ subject literacy pedagogical content knowledge and leaders’ knowledge of goals and barriers to student success informed our evaluation of the impact of the intervention. We critically evaluate the impacts of this project on success rates on each of the qualifications post intervention relative to National Benchmarks for students from the 39 schools, their increasing rates of participation and retention in tertiary education, the need for and the impact on accelerating progress through the curriculum in Years 9 and 10. In addition, we will examine for whom this project has had the greatest/least impact, and discuss possible reasons for this. In doing this we also draw on the work of Bryk, Gomez, Grunow and LeMahieu (2015) who argue that researchers evaluating new programmes need to ask not just ‘What works?’ but also, ‘for whom and under what set of conditions?’

Author

• Stephen Earl Irving, The University of Auckland