Data-Focused Team Conversations: The Complexity of Teachers' Sense-Making

• In Event: Deepening Our Understanding of Teacher Data Use: Antecedents, Forms, and Supports

Abstract

Teachers’ ability to use different types of data about students and their learning is an essential skill and expectation in today’s schools. Given the priority placed on data, understanding how teachers make sense of this information offers insights for professional development and data use supports. The literature on sensemaking as part of data use inquiry cycles, focuses on single dimensions or issues. This paper extends this literature by exploring the complexity of teachers’ collaborative sensemaking to identify key patterns in data-focused discussions. Based on 24 observations of four teacher teams several dimensions of sensemaking emerged. The findings revealed that discourse was fluid and rapidly shifted among data type and quality, student characteristics, past and future teaching, and depth of inquiry.

Authors

• Yingying Jiang, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Lisa M. Abrams, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Zoey Lu