Teach Like You Imagined It by Kevin Lister

Author:Kevin Lister [Kevin Lister]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785834240
Publisher: Crown House Publishing
Published: 2019-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

Data as a force for good

John Hattie and colleagues implore teachers to “Know thy impact”.2 How often have you heard, or thought, something along these lines: “It would be fine if I could just get the data out of the way, so I can get on and teach.” In my experience, data is often seen as the bad guy in schools, something that gets in the way. Data collections are something done to teachers rather than with them. Often data is tied up in performance management, which instantly raises the stakes on a personal level.

Data is certainly heavily linked to formal inspections – such as by Ofsted or similar – and without good supporting data it is effectively impossible to secure a positive rating. Believe me, as the “data guy” at my school for several years – and during several inspections – I know full well how tense those discussions can be. Ofsted’s 2019 school inspection handbook details a move to reduce the centrality of data in inspections, explicitly stating that they will expect schools to have a clear rationale behind their collection and use of internally generated progress data.3 However, as a readily available source of comparison it is likely that externally validated sources of data will always play a fairly major role.

It is relatively easy for me, as an engineer and maths teacher, to be comfortable with data in all forms; it has been a central part of my training and work for years. I also appreciate that the collection and use of data pushes many others substantially outside of their comfort zone; however, just because it is uncomfortable does not mean that it is not useful.

Unfortunately, the use of data in schools is too often divisive, too often part of a punitive process, too often used in unskilled ways and too rarely treated as a tool with which to understand and improve the experiences of the students. I firmly believe that data can and should be a force for good in our schools and classrooms. With a sound understanding of data, we can better understand our teaching and from there deliver better outcomes for our students.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.