Data-Driven Decision-Making in Schools: Lessons from Trinidad

Lessons from Trinidad

J. Yamin-Ali

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137412393
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Yamin-Ali shows how schools can undertake responsible decision-making through gathering and evaluating data, using as examples six fully developed case studies that shed light on common questions of school culture and student life, including student stress, subject selection, and the role of single-sex classes.

1

The Research Culture in Five Secondary Schools—A Case Study

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the research culture among teachers and administrators in the five Presbyterian secondary schools in Trinidad. The participants were 130 teachers and 8 school administrators (principals and vice principals). Interviews and questionnaires generated data which were analyzed through simple descriptive statistics, and coding and categories. Findings revealed that many teachers in all schools would have liked to have been on a research team, and most felt that more research projects should be done in their schools. All five schools have the knowledge, skills, and willingness to conduct research that would enable them to make decisions for improved teaching and learning but for varying reasons did not do so.

Yamin-Ali, Jennifer. Data-Driven Decision-Making in Schools: Lessons from Trinidad. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137412393.0005.

Introduction and background

In the UK context, researchers from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) were involved in a two-year research and development program with eight primary schools and seven secondary schools. This program began in 2003 and their focus was to investigate the research-engaged school in those contexts. Apart from the main report (Sharp, Eames, Sanders, & Tomlinson, 2005) the program team was able to develop a series of practical guides aimed at different audiences:

research-informed professional practice (for teachers);

leading a research-engaged school (for local authority advisers);

supporting research-engaged schools (for researchers).

The NFER team identified the features that would ensure successful practice. These would mean that school administrators must:

be prepared to commit resources to research—especially staff time;

identify an appropriate topic and focus for research;

form a research team and enable them to work collaboratively;

provide support, including mentoring and research expertise;

create a supportive learning culture throughout your school;

make a commitment to embed research engagement in your school (NCSL, 2006: 6).

The reality of many schools internationally would reveal that research-informed professional practice is not the norm. As such, the findings of this research, though specifically contextualized to a cluster of schools in Trinidad, may likely be quite applicable to a large cross section of schools internationally.

The purpose of this study was to examine the research culture in five schools by determining their openness and readiness to use data to make decisions in their school settings.

The study is the culmination of a project conducted in five secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago, a developing country in the Caribbean. De Lisle, Seecharan, and Ayodike. (2010) refer to the education system in Trinidad as “selective, stratified and segregated” and use the term “differentiated” to summarize these characteristics (p. 9). Alongside government secondary schools, there are denominational schools of which five are Presbyterian. The differentiation exists in that high achieving students tend to choose schools such as these as their school of first choice because they are considered to be prestigious due to their examination results primarily. The sample of schools selected was purposive based on those commonalities.

Data-driven decision-making has not been established as a common practice among schools in Trinidad and Tobago generally, nor are systems in place to facilitate its implementation in a formal way. As a matter of fact, initial teacher preparation for secondary school teachers is in-service and up to the time of this research, may occur at anytime along the continuum of a teacher’s career. It is not yet compulsory except for promotion to mid-management and senior management positions.

As a teacher-educator engaged in the preparation of secondary school teachers, listening to their voices and observing their practice, this researcher has witnessed the tremendous insights that teachers’ engagement with action research has brought to their learning and ultimately to their students’ learning. The action research that they conduct during their initial teacher preparation is confined to their classrooms generally unless they are in the Educational Administration grouping. Research at the Master’s and Ph.D. levels tends to be individualistic, driven by one individual. Therefore, the opportunity to engage these schools in a broader based collection and analysis of data was compelling.

Whereas tacit knowledge, intuition, and hunches based on experience may have their place, professionalism demands that schools be engaged in research if they are to use data to make decisions. In the context of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), the extent to which teachers and administrators are capable of or willing to commit to this engagement is not known. This study is especially pertinent since it investigates the research “culture” of these five schools during and after the research effort. The research “culture” is characterized by the teachers’ and administrators’ actual research practice in their schools, their interest in school research, their research skills, their research potential, and their views on the usefulness of school data.

At this time, the T&T government’s policy on data use for decision-making in schools is not evident. In its 2008–2009 progress report on its 2020 vision, the government of Trinidad and Tobago reported that the Ministry of Education “is actively pursuing the professional development of teachers and educators as it seeks to ensure that schools are staffed by professionally trained, certified personnel who will be utilising universally accepted teaching practices” (GORTT, 2009:73). However, the professional practice of teachers and administrators, and schools’ active involvement in shaping policy have not been directly addressed by the bureaucratic policy-makers. Schools are therefore left on their own to initiate data-driven decision-making and where possible to use the human resources available to guide them in the process, as was the case with this project.

Teachers engaging in research is the third seed of professional knowledge creation. In short, educational knowledge creation is likely to be at its most explicit and effective when schools are engaged in school-based teacher training and school-based research. (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 9; author’s emphasis)

Data-driven and evidence-driven decision-making have gained momentum in the past decade though such practice was undoubtedly a theoretical construct long before then. The impetus to engage in school-based research initially resided in governmental policy calls for accountability and for justifications for claims worldwide.

Prior to Hargreaves’s comment above, Butt, Raymond, McCue, and Yamagishi (1992, p. 51) felt that “the teachers’ perspective [had] been missing from efforts at research, development, reform, curriculum implementation.” In response to this claim, education has seen an increase in research by schools in an attempt to compete for resources, and more importantly, to improve teaching and learning in their own context (Altrichter, Posch & Somekh, 1993; Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Goodson & Hargreaves, 1996; Roberts, 2002; Handscomb & MacBeath, 2003; March, Pane & Hamilton, 2006; Mandinach, Honey, Light & Brunner, 2008). Additionally, the concept of research use by schools is multi-dimensional. Much of the research in this area has been centered on achievement test results in order to make decisions to improve student success. However, Ohi (2008) raises the issue of the nature of the links that are present in the research–policy–praxis nexus. Is research-guided external policy handed down to teachers to guide their decision-making or are they encouraged to engage in their own research to drive their decision-making? To add to the research issue, are teachers analyzing their data appropriately and if so, are these data being applied in the best interest of all stakeholders? There continues to be a concern in the field that more careful attention has to be paid to the use of research findings. According to Bevan (2004:13) “research findings will continue to be filtered, fragmented and deployed to aid and abet practitioner fiddling.” He feels that what motivates teachers is a desire to “extract and apply what is immediately useful to their daily experience and the challenges of the classroom” (pp. 12–13).

In their conceptual framework of data driven decision-making, Marsh et al. (2006) posit that multiple types of data may be used by schools: “input data, such as school expenditures or the demographics of the student population; process data, such as data on financial operations or the quality of instruction; outcome data, such as dropout rates or student test scores; and satisfaction data, such as opinions from teachers, students, parents, or the community” (pp. 4–5). Darling-Hammond and Ascher (1991) have also suggested a comprehensive system of indicators that may guide school administrators and teachers. With the wide range of indicators possible to point to data collection, Lashway (2001 :1) suggests that we ask some questions: “Why is this information important? How much effort is required to track the data? How will we use this information when we get it?” In their discussion of data-driven decision-making, Marsh et al. (2006.) include the practical observation that data must be organized and analyzed on the basis of an understanding of the context in which it was collected. As opposed to clinical handling of data, they suggest the application of one’s judgment be applied to the synthesis of data. They suggest two types of decision-making based on the data: decisions that entail using data to inform, identify, or clarify and those that entail using data to act. Apart from demographic data, school process data, and student learning data, Bernhardt (2003, 2004, 2005) also suggested perception data which describe what people think about the learning environment, and in her research she looked at the interaction between the different types of data.

As mentioned before, the notion of research-engaged schools is not a new one. In 1972, Elizabeth Wilson referred to Robert Shaefer’s dream school (Robert Shaefer, The School as a Center of Inquiry, New York: Harper and Row, 1967) as one where “teachers can read, reflect, and design research” (p. 27). Such a school is seen to be both a producer and a dispenser of knowledge about teaching and learning. Stakeholder empowerment can be a major outcome of research within schools and by schools. Such empowerment can lead to micro policy making for the collaborative enhancement of student success. In a broader sense, it has the potential to inform and impact macro policy.

Teacher-as-researcher is a role that places the teacher in yet another role—that of teacher-as-leader. Such roles demand further operational necessities such as collaborative frameworks to ensure dialogue, sharing, and functional human resources and logistical systems such as workload planning and time-tabling. Such operational necessities point to the need for principal empowerment as highlighted by Gordon (2004). Principals as transformational leaders would need the leadership skills, personal characteristics, and relevant values in order to realize the type of thinking and action required of an effective research-engaged school.

School leaders stand to benefit from understanding and implementing the “competent system” as outlined by Zmuda, Kuklis, and Kline (2004). Such a system sees meaningful growth that focuses on change from the inside out as opposed to change that is imposed from the outside. It requires collegiality, information-driven reality, collective autonomy and collective accountability. Staff development is linked to an action plan which is tied to the core beliefs of a shared vision, and staff see themselves as a professional learning community (Zumba, 2004). A study by Shen et al. (2010) examined how 16 principals from Michigan, USA, used data to make decisions, and found that data do inform principals’ decisions to a limited extent. Student achievement data were used to the largest extent, and mostly for accountability purposes, but different typologies of data were hardly combined for rich analysis. However, they concluded from their findings that principals will need continued assista...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  The Research Culture in Five Secondary SchoolsA Case Study
• 2  The Challenge of Maintaining School Culture in a Traditional School Setting A Case Study
• 3  A Study of Student Stress at the Senior Level at an All Girls Secondary School A Case Study
• 4  Male Adolescents Conceptions of Success, and Their Perceptions of Their School ExperiencesA Case Study
• 5  Subject Selection at the Secondary School LevelA Case Study
• 6  Should We Re-Masculinize the Boys School? A Case Study
• Index