Advancing Assessment Literacy Data Informed Decision Making I: Building a Collaborative Culture

Advancing Assessment Literacy

Data Informed Decision Making I:

Building a Collaborative Culture

Advancing Assessment Literacy Modules: Data Informed Decision Making I (February 2008) 2

A Learning Profession

Improved learning must be achieved through methods that inspire good teaching and that retain good teachers. If schools are to become real knowledge communities for all students, then teaching must be made into a real learning profession for all teachers.

Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.


A Learning Profession

• Re-culturing holds great promise as an improvement strategy, but by itself it sometimes fails to make real improvements in student achievement and is hard to generalize across a broad system.

• A strong professional learning community is a social process for turning information into knowledge.

• Professional learning communities exert their effects slowly, yet sustainably, over time.



Learning Community Survey

• Individually, complete the Learning Community Survey.

• When each member of your table group is done, compare and discuss your results.– In what ways are your perceptions similar or

different?– What elements in the survey seem to promote

the richest professional learning?

Professional Learning Communities

– Transform knowledge– Shared inquiry– Evidence informed– Situated certainty– Local solutions– Joint responsibility– Continuous learning– Communities of

practice

Performance-Training Sects

– Transfer knowledge– Imposed requirements– Results driven– False certainty– Standardized scripts– Deference to authority– Intensive training– Sects of performance



The Importance ofShared Vision

Read Green & Protheroe’s “Building Capacity for Success: Learning by Trial and Evidence”.

• How clearly are you able to articulate the core values and beliefs of your school?

• How do these impact the ways in which data is received and interpreted?

• What key lessons can be taken from this reading and applied to your context?

Lezotte, L. W. & McKee, K. M. (2006). Stepping up: Leading the charge to improve our schools. Okemos, MI: Effective Schools Products, Ltd.

8

Double-Loop Exercise

• As a table group, use the provided double-loop to clarify the connections between the mission, vision, and values of your school to the strategies, tactics and behaviours that are observed.

• In the top circle write out the mission, core values, and core beliefs of the school.

• In the bottom circle identify significant strategies, tactics, and behaviours currently observed in the school.

• Draw arrows from the items in the bottom circle that have come from the items in the top circle.

Lezotte, L. W. & McKee, K. M. (2006). Stepping up: Leading the charge to improve our schools.

Okemos, MI: Effective Schools Products, Ltd.

All students can

achieve success.

Zeros are given

to incomplete work.

Students can redo

assignments.


Double-Loop Exercise

Once you have completed the diagrams, use the following questions to guide discussion at your table:

• What current strategies support our mission, vision, and values?

• What strategies are contrary to our mission, vision, and values?

• How might we address these contradictions?


Foundations Inquiry

Around the room are posted a set of posters asking for examples of positive experiences in the following learning community elements:

• Moral Purpose• Capacity Building• Understanding the Change Process• Creating a Culture of Learning• Creating a Culture of Evaluation

Fullan, M. & St. Germain, C. (2006). Learning places: A field guide for improving the context of schooling. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.


Foundations Inquiry

• Create five groups. Ensure that each group is diverse in its representation.

• Each group will begin at one station. Take time to discuss examples and suggestions before writing any down.

• At the signal, groups will move through each station in succession until they return to the original.

Reprinted with permission from The World Café Community Foundation at www.theworldcafe.com


Foundations Inquiry

• Encourage each person in the group to contribute to the discussion. Each person brings a different perspective to the topic at hand.

• Each person should offer their individual perspective.

• As people share, listen for what is emerging in the conversation.

• Write or visually represent what you are hearing as a group.



Foundations Inquiry

• Ask one person to remain at a table to act as the table host.

• This person will summarize the conversation of the previous round for the newcomers ensuring that any important points are available for consideration in the upcoming round.

• They then invite the travelers to likewise do a brief sharing of the essence from the previous round allowing everyone to become more deeply connected to the web of conversation.



Foundations Inquiry Sharing

• Each group has two minutes to share the main themes from their table.

• Following the reports, individually take a moment to consider any or all of the following:– What is emerging here?– If there was a single voice in the room, what would it be saying?– What deeper questions are emerging as a result of these

conversations?– Do we notice any patterns and what do those patterns point to,

or how do they inform us?– What do we now see and know as a result of these

conversations?


Next Steps

As you begin creating the structures for collaboration around the issues you’ve identified, what key features do you believe need to be in place?

Documents

Advancing Assessment Literacy Data Informed Decision Making I: Building a Collaborative Culture