Enabling and Hindering Factors: Data Teams in a U.S. Context

• In Event: 47.070 - Collaborative Data Use: Why, How, and When Does It (Not) Work?

Abstract

Educational data use is a mainstay of K-12 school improvement efforts, both as a key element of continuous improvement initiatives (e.g., Park, Daly, & Guerra, 2013) and as a component of accountability policy efforts (McDonnell, 2013). When schools support collaboration and capacity-building around data use, and use data to address root causes of student underperformance, the literature reflects positive outcomes (Lai, McNaughton, Timperley, & Hsaio, 2009; Louis et al., 2010). In the data team intervention (Schildkamp & Poortman, 2015), facilitators work with school-based data teams to build capacity of team members from problem definition through evaluation—in effect, modeling a data use process while providing just-in-time support specific to data collection and analysis. Though implementation in European countries has been promising (e.g., Schildkamp, Poortman, & Handelzalts, 2016), public schools in the United States context are challenged by structural factors (e.g., the lack of consistent blocks of professional learning time throughout the school year as identified by Wei et al., 2009), and accountability factors (e.g., rigidity of alignment with high-stakes standardized test outcomes, as described by Daly, 2009 and Nichols & Harris, 2016).
Purpose and Methods
The purpose of this study was to examine the use of data teams in a US context, guided by three broad questions:
1. Which factors enable and hinder the work of data teams?
2. What are the perceived effects of working in a data team?
3. To what degree are data teams able to successfully address locally-identified educational problems via the data team intervention?

This paper reports on findings from Year 1 of the study, which took place in a public elementary school in north central Texas. Eight educators collaborated as a data team throughout the 2017-18 school year. The team was facilitated by the first author, who engaged as an observer-participant (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Ten data team meetings were audiotaped and subsequently transcribed, and agendas, notes, and data analysis were collected throughout the process. Each data team member completed a pre- and post-assessment to demonstrate any growth in data use capacity across the process, and each completed a 20-30 minute interview at midyear and at the end of the project. Descriptive statistics and qualitative coding for themes (e.g., Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014) informed the findings.

Findings and significance
Findings indicate that the enthusiasm and active participation of the principal and overall quality of dialogue within the data team meetings functioned as enabling factors. A lack of time (duration and frequency) and increasing focus on accountability measures served as hindering factors. Also, several teachers noted that more direction from the facilitator would have helped better clarify the goals and stages of the process. Though increases in data use capacity as measured by the pre- and post-assessments varied, all teachers described ways in which the content discussed in the data team meetings ended up affecting what and how they taught. A critical understanding of the enabling and hindering factors can help us to support and improve the use of data in education.

Authors

• Jo Beth Jimerson, Texas Christian University

• Vanessa B. Garry, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Kim Schildkamp, Universiteit Twente

• Cindy Louise Poortman, University of Twente