Teachers Know Best: Making Data Work For Teachers and Students

The Teachers Know Best research project seeks to encourage innovation in K - 12 education by helping product developers and those who procure resources for teachers better understand teachers' views. The intent of Making Data Work is to drill down to help educators, school leaders, and product developers better understand the challenges teachers face when working with this critical segment of digital instructional tools. More than 4,600 teachers from a nationally representative sample were surveyed about their use of data to drive instruction and the use of these tools.This study focuses on the potential of a specific subset of digital instructional tools: those that help teachers collect and make use of student data to tailor and improve instruction for individual students. The use of data is a crucial component in personalized learning, which ensures that student learning experiences -- what they learn and how, when, and where they learn it -- are tailored to their individual needs, skills, and interests and enable them to take ownership of their learning. Personalized learning is critical to meeting all students where they are, so they are neither bored with assignments that are too easy nor overwhelmed by work that is too hard

A conceptual analytics model for an outcome-driven quality management framework as part of professional healthcare education

BACKGROUND: Preparing the future health care professional workforce in a changing world is a significant undertaking. Educators and other decision makers look to evidence-based knowledge to improve quality of education. Analytics, the use of data to generate insights and support decisions, have been applied successfully across numerous application domains. Health care professional education is one area where great potential is yet to be realized. Previous research of Academic and Learning analytics has mainly focused on technical issues. The focus of this study relates to its practical implementation in the setting of health care education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to create a conceptual model for a deeper understanding of the synthesizing process, and transforming data into information to support educators’ decision making. METHODS: A deductive case study approach was applied to develop the conceptual model. RESULTS: The analytics loop works both in theory and in practice. The conceptual model encompasses the underlying data, the quality indicators, and decision support for educators. CONCLUSIONS: The model illustrates how a theory can be applied to a traditional data-driven analytics approach, and alongside the context- or need-driven analytics approach

English language examination reform: International trends and a framework for Nepal

This chapter is based on desk research on examinations and their reforms globally. Although the chapter is about English language examination reforms, it draws on the literature related to general education where relevant. The chapter begins by exploring why governments reform school examinations. In particular, the chapter focuses on the external environment: political, educational and economic factors which influence the nature of school examinations in different ways (Shohamy, 2007). These factors are important because a combination of at least two of these factors or all are taken into account when a government decides to reform its school examination system. Having considered these factors, the chapter showcases case studies of examination reform in other countries from Africa (Kenya), Asia (Hong Kong SAR and Singapore) and Europe (Norway), drawing on the most current literature. How examination reforms were carried out in these countries, and their consequences and lessons learned are discussed. From these case studies, key issues for Nepal are identifi ed. In order to give the reader a perspective on the examination system in Nepal in relation to the other countries discussed, this chapter then briefly reports on the history of examination reform, particularly English language examinations in Nepal. After providing the context of the examination system in Nepal, the chapter makes a proposal for a framework of English language examination reform for Nepal based on research and current good practices. This section will specifically focus on what Nepalese education policy makers can do to reform examinations that have minimal negative consequences and how they can carry this out. Drawing on Shohamy (2007) and McNamara and Rover (2006), the proposed framework will discuss how it needs to consider the essential aspects of examination reform: stakeholder engagement, needs-basedness, links with the curriculum, intended and unintended consequences, and continuous research and development. Finally, a set of recommendations for Nepalese policy makers are made

Walking Through the Method Zoo: Does Higher Education Really Meet Software Industry Demands?

Software engineering educators are continually challenged by rapidly evolving concepts, technologies, and industry demands. Due to the omnipresence of software in a digitalized society, higher education institutions (HEIs) have to educate the students such that they learn how to learn, and that they are equipped with a profound basic knowledge and with latest knowledge about modern software and system development. Since industry demands change constantly, HEIs are challenged in meeting such current and future demands in a timely manner. This paper analyzes the current state of practice in software engineering education. Specifically, we want to compare contemporary education with industrial practice to understand if frameworks, methods and practices for software and system development taught at HEIs reflect industrial practice. For this, we conducted an online survey and collected information about 67 software engineering courses. Our findings show that development approaches taught at HEIs quite closely reflect industrial practice. We also found that the choice of what process to teach is sometimes driven by the wish to make a course successful. Especially when this happens for project courses, it could be beneficial to put more emphasis on building learning sequences with other courses

Learning from Turnaround Middle Schools: Strategies for Success

In New York City and around the nation, there is intense interest in the question of what it takes to turn around a low-performing school. This study focused on two sets of initially low-performing NYC middle schools. The first group (the "turnaround schools") exhibited significant growth in academic performance between 2006 and 2010, while the other group saw minimal growth or remained stagnant during the same period. To gain an understanding of how the turnaround schools improved, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with principals and focus groups with teachers in both sets of schools. This report presents a rich picture of the conditions and strategies that enabled the turnaround schools to boost student achievement. Specifically, it identifies three interrelated "essential conditions" that were largely principal driven: aligning needs with goals, creating a positive work environment, and addressing student discipline and safety. These essential conditions, in turn, set the stage for implementing specific strategies to improve teaching and learning: developing teachers internally, creating small learning communities, targeting student sub-populations, and using data to inform instruction. The report also describes several ongoing challenges faced by all the schools. Finally, it draws on the study's findings to make recommendations for improving the effectiveness of middle schools here in New York City and around the country. The study is part of an ongoing focus on the middle grades for the Research Alliance

Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

Data-Informed Leadership in Education

Explores ideas, frameworks, and beliefs concerning the use of data in educational decision making and in the work of leaders at state and local levels as it relates to the improvement of teaching and learning

Facilitating academic words learning: a data-driven approach using a collocation consultation system built from open access research papers

It is essential and beneficial for ESP students to master collocations of a set of core academic words. Corpus analysis tools (e.g. concordancers) have been widely used in facilitating collocation learning, and promising results have been demonstrated in the literature. This paper presents a learner friendly collocation consultation system built from 50,000 open access research papers made available by CORE (https://core.ac.uk/). The research papers are grouped into four disciplines: Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences. From these articles, useful syntactic-based word combinations (e.g., verb+noun, noun+noun, adjective+noun) are extracted, organized by syntactic patterns, sorted by frequency, and linked to their context sentences. Learners can search collocations and look up the usage of an academic word in any of these four disciplines by simply entering the word or selecting it from one of pre-compiled academic word lists. The paper will also show how the system was used in an initial study carried out with 15 international students studying computer science at University of Waikato, New Zealand

Public Education Network 2004 Annual Member Survey

Each year for the past nine years, PEN has undertaken a survey of its members to chart organizational and programmatic characteristics of LEFs. In addition to providing valuable information about individual LEFs, each year's survey results provide a snapshot of members' collective work and impact. These data are used by LEF directors to inform their conversations with funders, formulate communications strategies, and support organizational decision-making. The data also provide baseline and benchmark data for deeper research on the work and impact of LEFs. Based on recommendations from the membership, we have expanded the focus of the 2004 survey to include deeper information on LEF programs and initiatives, their context, and impact. In response to leadership and organizational development goals identified by the membership, we have paid special attention to board demographics and development activities, and professional staffing patterns and salary levels

Assessment for learning in the accountability era: Queensland, Australia

Developments in school education in Australia over the past decade have witnessed the rise of national efforts to reform curriculum, assessment and reporting. Constitutionally the power to decide on curriculum matters still resides with the States. Higher stakes in assessment, brought about by national testing and international comparative analyses of student achievement data, have challenged State efforts to maintain the emphasis on assessment to promote learning while fulfilling accountability demands. In this article lessons from the Queensland experience indicate that it is important to build teachers' assessment capacity and their assessment literacy for the promotion of student learning. It is argued that teacher assessment can be a source of dependable results through moderation practice. The Queensland Studies Authority has recognised and supported the development of teacher assessment and moderation practice in the context of standards-driven, national reform. Recent research findings explain how the focus on learning can be maintained by avoiding an over-interpretation of test results in terms of innate ability and limitations and by encouraging teachers to adopt more tailored diagnosis of assessment data to address equity through focus on achievement for all. Such efforts are challenged as political pressures related to the Australian government’s implementation of national testing and national partnership funding arrangements tied to the performance of students at or below minimum standards become increasingly apparent