Facilitating Data Discussions at Your School

This week’s “Taking Data to New Depths” Required Reading (Tool 9.2 on the Becoming a Learning School companion CD) discusses the role of a data facilitator in leading teachers through the data analysis and goal-setting process. In this Application Assignment, you will practice your data facilitation skills by engaging in a collaborative inquiry about the data you have collected. You may wish to invite team members to share other relevant data.

Prior to meeting with your Learning Team:

Assemble and display the data you have gathered in a user-friendly format following the go visual guidelines provided in the “Teamwork is Not Enough—There Has to be Learning” article.
Gather your ideas about what you are seeing in the data. State your observations in one or more of the following ways: “It appears…” , “It seems…” , “The data show…” , or “I see that…” .
Then meet with your team to discuss:

Exploring/Observing Data:

Display the data and explain what you are seeing.
Ask team members for reactions, suggestions, and thoughts about other data that might be missing.
Explaining the Data:

Ask: “What inferences, explanations, or conclusions might we draw? What do we know about previous attempts around this problem?”
Goal Setting:

Ask, “Based on the data we have, what learning goals might we set in terms of SMART goals? How do these goals align to school improvement goals?”
To achieve these goals, what are the associated KASABs for students and teachers?
Possible Actions:

What are some solutions we might explore as a result of our conversation?
What data do we still need and how will we get it?
Submit the following:

A summary of your collaborative inquiry with your Learning Team, including your SMART goals and KASABs and address each of the bullets above.
A synthesis of your responses to the Design Questions Related to Data presented last week, focusing your responses on the most relevant context, process, and content considerations related to data use and availability at the school.