How Professional Development Can Address the Data Ethics Gap

• In Event: Data Ethics in Education: The Importance, Issues, and Use Cases

Abstract

Professional development plays a key role in addressing the learning needs of educators across their careers. There are large-scale professional development models for data use such as Data Wise (Boudett et al, 2013), Using Data Solutions (Love et al, 2008), and Data Teams (Schildkamp et al., 2016). There are small-scale in-services given to many districts. A common theme across the large models is equitable and responsible data use, but ethical data use has not been an explicit focus (Author, 2021). Extrapolating from that finding, it is safe to say that it is unlikely that district-sponsored in-services address the topic at all. We also know that state standards and codes of ethics do not adequately address data ethics, and therefore there is likely to be even less motivation to address a topic that is not among those required (Author, 2020). Yet, despite the lack of emphasis, there is most certainly a need. The pandemic created huge gaps in knowledge around data privacy and data ethics that became apparent in practice. Educators were unprepared to handle such challenges. Professional development, both data-oriented and generic, would be a promised medium to build educator capacity, a necessary skill set going forward.

This paper examines what is known about how data-oriented professional development models address data ethics. In particular, it links the Using Data model and its high-capacity data use strategies to data ethics. It also links the components of data literacy for teachers (Author, 2016) to how the skills, knowledge, and dispositions are treated in professional development. Understanding how these skills are tied to data ethics can then inform professional development providers of how to integrate data ethics more explicitly into training. The paper also addresses how data ethics can be introduced into more generic professional development as an integrated topic of importance.

The paper concludes with a concrete set of recommended steps for how professional development can address data ethics. Such training can play a major role in enhancing the capacity of educators to use data responsibly throughout their careers. The recommendations include: working with states professional organizations to explicitly include data ethics in state standards and codes of ethics to guide professional development; create professional guidelines such as those found in IES practice guides; modify messaging to bring awareness to the importance of data ethics and equity in educational data use; develop materials that can be used in professional development as well as educator preparation programs; work with technology vendors to ensure more secure data use and knowledge about the data use, not use accessibility to the technology; bring awareness to the pressures from accountability that promote gaming the system and unethical data use; promote cultural shifts and emphases for responsible data use; expand the notion of what are relevant data beyond student performance indices; create trusting cultures for data use; and build foundational data literacy.

Authors

• Diana Nunnaley, Using Data Solutions LLC

• Ellen B. Mandinach, WestEd