Using Data Meaningfully to Teach for Understanding in Middle-School Science

Persistence of the two‐worlds pitfall: Learning to teach within and across settings

“…I created ethnographic fieldnotes for a total of 88 classroom observations (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011). For example, in the following fieldnotes § See Braaten, et al ( , 2018 The decision to capture classroom observations through handwritten fieldnotes rather than videorecordings or audio-recordings was a compromise made with the school districts and school sites wary of data collection methods involving video and audio-recordings of youth. Handwritten fieldnotes are a staple of data collection techniques, but it is not possible to capture everything during a complex set of interactions.…”

“…1 This work is publicly available at: ambitiousscienceteaching.org 2 See Braaten, Bradford, Kirchgasler, and Barocas (2017) and Braaten, Bradford, Barocas, and Kirchgasler (2018) for more about the local school context, accountability and improvement initiatives, and science teaching. 3 Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw (2011) argue that attending to this kind of "talk-in-interaction" is one key method for pursing a deeper understanding of "what people do in relation to others in order to produce specific, situated meanings" that when considered alongside other data sources and across cases of participants and their practices allows for better understanding of "members' meanings" in qualitative research (p. 158).…”

“…4 See Braaten, et al ( , 2018. 5 The decision to capture classroom observations through handwritten fieldnotes rather than video-recordings or audiorecordings was a compromise made with the school districts and school sites wary of data collection methods involving video and audio-recordings of youth.…”

“…However, building and sustaining a system‐wide depth for university–school–community partnerships does not happen automatically. In the cases featured in this study, local schools readily agreed to host PSTs but the district declined to participate in further partnership work focused on science teaching and learning (Braaten, Bradford, Barocas, & Kirchgasler, ; Braaten, et al., ). In other cases, teacher education programs may have organized coursework and field work in such a way that field experiences are conceptually and temporally out of sync with coursework (e.g., Stroupe & Gotwals, ).…”

Toward a Framework for Classifying Teachers’ Use of Assessment Data

“…Several observational studies also adopt a functional approach and have been instrumental in identifying data use practices such as grouping (including “triage” strategies for students on the cusp of proficiency as well as for differentiation; Breiter & Light, 2006; Brimijoin, Marquissee, & Tomlinson, 2003; Ebby, 2018; Nabors-Olah et al, 2010; Park & Datnow, 2017), reflective sense making and inquiry (Blanc et al, 2010; Braaten, Bradford, Barocas, & Kirchgasler, 2018; Garner & Horn, 2018; Riehl, Earle, Nagarajan, Schwitzman, & Vernikoff, 2018), predicting performance on other assessments (Young & Kim, 2010), adjusting curriculum content and pacing (Hamilton et al, 2009; Kerr, Marsh, Ikemoto, Darilek, & Barney, 2006; Nabors-Olah et al, 2010), selecting materials (Evans et al, 2018; Marsh et al, 2015), engaging students in data use (Kennedy & Datnow, 2011; Marsh, Farrell, & Bertrand, 2016), and identifying students for out-of-class support (Marsh et al, 2015; Supovitz & Morrison, 2011). Like survey research, each study has contributed to our knowledge of data use, while often focusing on a narrow or specific data use practice.…”