Faculty Perceptions of Affordances to Data-Driven Decision Making: Exploring Intersections Among Policy, Context, and Practice

• In Event: Roundtable Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Ties to the Outside, Free Speech, and Tenure

Abstract

A cornerstone of education policy is the use of instruction-related data to improve teaching and programmatic offerings. Yet little research has been conducted on postsecondary educators’ instructional data practices. We provide descriptive analyses into the current state of affairs at three research universities. How data use interventions unfold depends largely upon envisioned uses for instruction-related data and alignment of intervention features with professional norms and local structures. Towards more common and systemic instructional data-use practices, policymakers and leaders need to be strategic in planning interventions that will foster continuous improvement and organizational learning, via attention to melding of opposing ethos, those being data-use practices as means for program/organizational legitimization and practices as means for educators’ and their organizations’ learning.

Authors

• Jana Bouwma-Gearhart, Oregon State University

• Matthew Tadashi Hora, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Hyoung Joon Park, University of Wisconsin - Madison