How Teacher Characteristics Relate to How Teachers Use Dashboards: Results From Two Case Studies in K-12

Teacher dashboards are a specific form of analytics in which visual displays provide teachers with information about their students; for example, concerning student progress and performance on tasks during lessons or lectures. In the present paper, we focus on the role of teacher dashboards in the context of teacher decision-making in K–12 education. There is large variation in teacher dashboard use in the classroom, which could be explained by teacher characteristics. Therefore, we investigate the role of teacher characteristics — such as experience, age, gender, and self-efficacy — in how teachers use dashboards. More specifically, we present two case studies to understand how diversity in teacher dashboard use is related to teacher characteristics. Surprisingly, in both case studies, teacher characteristics were not associated with dashboard use. Based on our findings, we propose an initial framework to understand what contributes to diversity of dashboard use. This framework might support future research to attribute diversity in dashboard use. This paper should be seen as a first step in examining the role of teacher characteristics in dashboard use in K–12 education.

Leading an Assessment Reform: Ensuring a Whole-School Approach for Decision-Making

The ability of teachers to use assessment data to inform decisions related to learning and teaching defines teaching effectiveness. However, to maximise the benefits of teacher decision-making, there is a need to ensure that all teachers across the school are supported to engage in a whole-school approach to ensuring that all students across different stages are supported. This paper reports on a case study of a school in building an assessment culture with a strong focus on using a range of data for teacher decision-making. We used an auto-ethnography to reflect on our experiences in leading this assessment reform. Using the lens of activity theory, we have identified structural, organisational, social and behavioral factors that contribute to the success of the program.

Practicing Imagination and Activism in Literacy Research, Teaching, and Teacher Education: I Still Don’t Know How to Change the World With Rocks

This address focuses on research and practice in the preparation of preservice teachers in literacy. I begin with an examination of the constructs of practice, activism, and imagination from an historical perspective. Next, I report on two initiatives in field-based literacy teacher preparation. The first initiative engages preservice teachers with inquiry as a curriculum stance. The second initiative engages preservice teachers as researchers with attention to research as too both for professional knowledge and for resistance to contentious policy environments that constrain teacher decision making. Finally, I argue for the need to become more inclusive within our community and to shift our stance from teachers as receivers of knowledge to teachers as participants in the sense-making process around practice.

School Governance and Student Achievement: Cross-National Evidence From the 2015 PISA

Although cross-national evidence suggests that decentralization of educational governance is positively related to student achievement, related research often fails to recognize the separate roles and influences of governments, school boards, principals, and teachers. We use data from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment to examine school leaders’ perceptions of governance arrangements across 68 countries and to assess whether differences in perceived governance patterns are significantly related to differences in student achievement. We find that although school governance arrangements vary substantially across countries, increases in teacher decision-making responsibilities are consistently and positively related to student achievement in math, reading, and science, all else equal. Furthermore, controlling for school principals’ leadership style does not fundamentally change the positive and significant relationships between teacher decision making and student achievement, suggesting that the impact of teachers may be independent of school principals’ attitudes and actions.

Reading Grand Theft Auto: Improvisational Urban Literacy

This article relies on nonrepresentational narrative research to consider improvisational urban literacy. The author uses narrative to theorize the choice to teach Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in urban high school English classrooms. The author positions this decision as the surprising result of an improvisational, urban literacy pedagogy meant to locate and address issues of race and gender in a video game. This article calls for a broader view of textuality that affirms, supports, and celebrates emergent teacher decision making, as well as practices of urban literacy education that broaden the notion of what constitutes a text.