Data as Infrastructure: Data’s Holistic Role in Supporting Networked Institutional Change in Colleges of Education (Poster 1)

• In Event: Advancing Methods, Theories, and Conceptualizations of Infrastructuring in the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Purpose. This study illuminates ways that data acts as a form of infrastructure, creating wide-ranging forms of value within institutional change processes. Through longitudinal analysis of a networked improvement community of 15 colleges of education focused on integrating computational and digital literacies across teacher education programs, we demonstrate expansive roles of data, beyond purposes of measuring outcomes, to act as a key lever in infrastructuring activities (Penuel, 2019).

Background. Networked improvement models typically frame data as a means of assessing outcomes and implementation fidelity within iterative solution testing (Bryk et al., 2011; Lewis, 2015; Yeager et al., 2013). Yet broader scholarship on data use in education suggests multifaceted roles it can play in change processes (Coburn & Turner, 2012). Our study identifies more expansive roles data can play in value creation (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020) in an educational research-practice partnership utilizing networked improvement models.

Context. The [name of RPP] Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) leverages a networked-improvement model across 15 colleges of education in the [university system] to support initiatives that spread and scale computational and digital literacy pedagogies within the university’s teacher education programs.

Methods. We analyze 8 distinct types of data learning loops (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020) the [name of RPP] RPP utilized over 30 months to promote infrastructuring activities. A deductive coding scheme based on the work of Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2020) was used to analyze the value creation of each data learning loop.

Findings. The analysis showcases 8 different forms of data-use in context, how data were intentionally “looped” back to different initiative stakeholders, and the value created for stakeholders, including network leaders and designers engaged in system-wide infrastructuring, individual college teams infrastructuring their own initiatives, and funders resourcing these infrastructuring efforts.

To support network leaders and designers, for example, [name of RPP] developed a tool called “GPS” to categorize colleges’ “readiness” for strategic planning towards institutional change which was used to create differentiated supports, as well as to plan a systematic tracked RFP process for allocating strategic planning funds to college teams (strategic value).

As college teams began their institutional change work, data-based case examples were developed to illustrate the problem and opportunity spaces of the initiative to potential funders (enabling value).

To support college teams who showed readiness for strategic planning activities such as translating their vision for computing integrated teacher education into program specific learning goals, a series of data analyses was conducted on college teams who had already submitted learning goals. These analyses of the content, format, and process of developing learning goals were then looped back into professional learning community sessions to generate inspiration, encouragement, and reusable resources (potential value).

Significance. The research presented seeks to expand the broader knowledge base related to the infrastructural role of networked improvement data within research-practice partnerships in learning sciences, and support both researchers and practitioners involved in these models to consider the more holistic and expansive roles that data can play in institutional change that go beyond measurement of outcomes and solutions implementation.

Authors

• David Phelps, Telos Learning LLC

• Rafi Santo, Telos Learning LLC

• Sara Vogel, City University of New York

• Jean J. Ryoo, University of California - Los Angeles

• Aankit Patel, City University of New York

• Jessica Velez Tello, Brooklyn College - CUNY

• Colin Angevine, Telos Learning