Fostering Collaborative Faculty Data Use Practices in Teacher Education: Lessons From Three Programs

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 18
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Quality and Learning: Pathways, Pipelines, and Program Improvement

Abstract

Despite the upsurge in policies promoting evidence-based accountability, researchers know surprisingly little about how teacher education programs are developing commitment to and capacity for collecting, reporting, and acting on program outcome data. This paper draws on activity theory to investigate organizational and social supports that fostered collaborative faculty engagement in data use in three teacher education programs. Findings highlight the importance of addressing data use goals from a systemic perspective, attending simultaneously to structural, motivational, and relational aspects of workplace practice. These programs broadened and sustained faculty engagement in data use by shifting program policies and expectations while simultaneously developing interpersonal practices that fostered individual and collective agency as well as the alignment of individual and collective goals.

Author

• Susannah Davis, Oregon State University