Using PACT for Data focused improvement of Teacher

EducationCap Peck, University of Washington

Morva McDonald, University of Washington

A Vision of Evidence Use: Data Feedback to Faculty for Continuous

Program Improvement

What are students’ opportunities to learn in A&S & TEP?

What practices do they enact in classrooms?

What do pupils learn in grad’s classrooms?

Who are they?What knowledge & skills do they enter with?

What knowledge & skills do they have when they graduate?

Feedback to Program Faculty

A Systems View to Understand Data Use in Teacher Education

Why take a systems view?

Supporting the use of data to improve programs in a sustained way:

Requires careful attention to “the social life of information” (Brown & Duguid, 2002)

Recognition that all aspects of the system are connected Division of labor affects opportunities to learn; Rules and norms affect division of labor; Community values and beliefs shape rules; Rules and routines impact how tools are used and so on.

Requires new data that can disturb the equilibrium of the system Strategic analysis to shift toward programmatic change

Exploring the system Object: What’s the goal of data analysis? Inquiry and program improvement

This is about us learning about what our students really know based on what we think we're teaching them.”

Because when you look at it as fulfilling--or becoming compliant with a mandate, it loses its power completely. It becomes an exercise in getting it done rather than a tool for moving practice forward.

Focused problem solving I think there are two domains that are problematic for everybody, and

that’s assessment and academic language. So we have tackled both of them throughout this process, with great attention. I think we’ve been improving a lot in both.

 

 

Tools Analysis of Exemplary Cases

Nominating cases of PACT for examination Possible Criteria: Range, Modal case, Exemplary

Data Sampling Random sample of completed PACT assessment Mini scorer training and scoring of assessments Dialogue about strengths and needs

Developing ESAs fromTE Data Analysis Areas of challenge Academic language and

Assessment

Community Collegiality

Well, I think the thing that we had in our favor was the collegial relationships… if the respectful relationships between the leader and the faculty..if those respectful relationships are not put in place, it's an uphill climb 

the best way to work is to lay it out and then to give everybody a chance to shine and to look for the ways in which you can learn from each other and always integrate everybody

Community Shared Values

Walking the talk of: Equity (e.g., addressing academic language) Using assessment to inform instruction

Inquiry Orientation So we might as well invest in an assessment that seems to be

high quality (that) pushed forward our program dialogue. And that we could learn something ourselves from the data.

Rules/Regularities Data Oriented Faculty Meetings

We had retreats around this, usually a fall and a spring, or at least an annual retreat, in addition to a department meeting… where we looked at the work. We helped people understand what it was. And we were able to have some pretty open discussions about it, I think

every year we look at our data from the year previous and we have retreats and discuss it and then decide what we want to tackle

Well, we meet over two weeks and we try to have a monthly meeting that’s not just organizational in nature, but research-oriented. And then we have a retreat a quarter. So the approach that we took was to take it piece by piece, to consider the individual domains and discuss them in rotation, to use cases as a way to kind of say, “Okay, what do we learn from this”?

Division of Labor Everybody who scores learns

we had virtually every faculty member, whether they were tenure track, adjunct or supervisor, virtually everyone came and scored one.

talking to other people that were further ahead about the power of having everybody see the data and having everybody score and experience that, that we just said we're going to do it. And we're going to use retreat time.

We’ve worked with an integrated model where we get cooperating teachers or teachers in residence to participate

“Distributed” roles We use our curriculum committee and our assessment

committee in our department as kind of leadership committees—where they help shape the--leadership teams--where they help shape the focus of the department meetings

Leadership: Integral to Data Use

Framing the work: Inquiry vs. Compliance

Preserving program identity Distributing leadership & decision

making

Framing the Work as Inquiry

An opportunity toto provide a forum for our

programs to improve their practice..far more of a focus on gathering data and using it.

Examine Teacher Ed. Pedagogy

… but once they saw the student work, they said, "Wait a minute. I thought I taught that. I did teach that." So the student work is pretty compelling.

  So well, where do you actually do it?

Here's what you're doing--doing what you say it's--but it doesn't seem to be manifesting specifically in the literacy event. So that says something. So it kind of opens up a crack in the conversation.

Preserving Program Identity

PACT as reflecting prior work not colonizing it

So we’ve been battling with how to keep PACT in its proper place. It’s an assessment…we don’t consider it something that should drive the program. We consider that our mission is, to some degree, independent of that.

  So we’ve been very committed to this notion of our students

learning to take baseline and outcome data and process data as they implement whatever they decide to do as an instructional intervention. And I saw that PACT had some commonalities with that, although it didn’t do it as richly as we did it, that we felt that was like, “That’s good,” because there’s another way to look at it, and that was a complement

Distributing Leadership & Decision

Making Deciding on which assessment

So we started out with two. So with that in mind, it made sense, though, for the faculty to be able to look at both the TPA, developed by the state, and the PACT model.

Well, we decided that we [did] want to explore both, so we had a discussion among the teacher and faculty and then people volunteered to kind of take different roles in both systems.

A Systems View to Understand Data Use in Teacher Education

Your own data-use practices to improve your

program At your tables discuss:

What are some practices that you use that others might benefit from?

Identify two to three practices at your table Describe them in enough detail that others would

understand what they are

Email Capeck@uw.edu two to three practices

A Dominant Theme of Teacher Education

Today“Schools, colleges and departments of

education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom." He will call for a "revolutionary" change in teacher preparation programs.” CNN Politics.com 10.21.09