developmental indicators, and requirements for transitioning from one stage to the next. The data story illustrates a middle school team working with a group-development inventory to assess its growth as a team.
Chapter 6 presents distinctions between three essential modes of discourse in data-based conversations: (1) dialogue, (2) discussion, and (3) decision making. We describe common constraints to productive discourse and identify problematic and productive elements in six decision-making methods. The data story illustrates a middle school team applying effective discourse patterns within the collaborative learning cycle to improve a new behavior management program.
Chapter 7 presents approaches for turning decisions into productive plans for action driven by clear and measurable goals. We offer ten tips for avoiding common planning problems and addressing barriers to effectiveness. The data story illustrates a high school science team moving from making a decision to crafting an action plan for improving student inquiry skills across the science curriculum.
The Road to Learning
School improvement is not easy and quick. Data-driven change requires the commitment and perseverance of individual practitioners sustained by the focused efforts of the whole school community. Collaborative inquiry requires the vulnerability to learn in public, be patient with process, and suspend self-interest to serve a larger purpose. Groups that embrace these challenges, invest energy in their own development, and put data in the center of their conversations produce significant learning gains for themselves and their students.
School improvement is not easy and quick. Data-driven change requires the commitment and perseverance of individual practitioners sustained by the focused efforts of the whole school community.
We invite you to use this book as one vehicle on your road to learning. To accelerate your progress, use the exercises in each chapter individually or as a group study. Exploring the web resources will open further avenues for investigation. While at times the road ahead might be steep or bumpy, we believe the journey will both exhilarate and surprise you.
CHAPTER ONE
Developing Cultures of Collaborative Inquiry
In a rapidly changing world, the role of teaching and teachers has remained highly stable. Images from novels, old photographs, and movies portray instructors at the front and center of the classroom, delivering lessons to sometimes docile, sometimes unruly groups of students. When the backstage life of teachers is depicted, we see staffrooms filled with banter, gossip, and complaint. In these settings, social interaction with other adults is a way station offering respite from the arduous work of enlightening young minds.
Outdated expectations and structures cannot meet the learning needs of today’s students. Data bounce off these entrenched cultures of individualism, cultures that maintain isolated pockets of both excellence and mediocrity in the same organization with no mechanisms for sharing and transferring success (Newman, King, & Rigdon, 1997). A cohesive approach to school improvement requires new ways of thinking about and structuring teachers’ work. The emerging models of professional engagement rally all resources to produce greater cumulative effects on student achievement.
Some teachers still perceive working with colleagues outside the classroom as shifting away from their real work with students. However, in this changing climate, collaborative interaction is, in fact, as much a part of teachers’ work as is their time in the classroom with students.
Outdated expectations and structures cannot meet the learning needs of today’s students…. A cohesive approach to school improvement requires new ways of thinking about and structuring teachers’ work.
Shifting Values, Shifting Cultures
As work cultures evolve, the underlying values and beliefs inherent in shifting models are in transition. Table 1.1 (page 8) describes four major value shifts. Each value shift encompasses a set of related beliefs and observable behaviors that emerge from these beliefs.
From Professional Autonomy to Collaborative Practice
In cultures of high professional autonomy, the dominant values are entitlement and individualism. A strong belief in privacy translates to closed classroom doors, protection of turf, and a perspective that data reflect personal success or failure. These are cultures of my: my content—you can’t tell me what and what not to teach; my book—you can’t teach it; my unit—you can’t alter it; my materials—you can’t use them; and my students—you can’t talk about them. In these cultures, the locus of change is the individual teacher. Teachers working in schools where this value is strong operate in isolation from one another, holding on to all of their personal strengths and weaknesses inside their private domains. Professional development becomes either a private choice or an imposed remediation.
Table 1.1: Four Value Shifts
| Shifting From | Shifting To |
| Professional autonomy | Collaborative practice |
| Knowledge delivery | Knowledge construction |
| Externally mandated improvement | Internally motivated improvement |
| Quick fix | Continuous growth |
In cultures of collaborative practice, the dominant value is co-construction of a shared knowledge base. The belief that teachers learn best with others drives the use of common assessments to inform individual and collective practice. Teachers share resources and strategies, successes and failures. They engage in systematic and ongoing experimentation and analyze data to learn from and with their students and colleagues.
In these cultures, the group is the focus of change, paying attention to its interactions and the cumulative effects being produced for students. Gap analysis and ongoing data exploration drive the professional learning agendas, not individual passion, interest, or the trend du jour. Professional development is a collective resource, not a personal prerogative. Peer engagement forges powerful links between teacher learning and student growth.
From Knowledge Delivery to Knowledge Construction
In a knowledge delivery model, the classroom is the domain of the individual teacher, who controls the learning. In this authority culture, there are right and wrong answers, and students are expected to passively comply. Teachers uniformly dispense information aimed at covering the curriculum. Failure is seen as the student’s fault; an intellectual or motivational deficit. In these classrooms, isolated learners sit row by row, competing with classmates for rank and reward. Summative data are used to demonstrate success or failure. Assessment is done to students. Teachers record and report grades, and instruction moves on.
In a knowledge construction model, the purpose of education is to create self-reliant learners. In this social learning climate, knowledge is co-constructed; students are critical thinkers and collaborators in learning. Teaching choices are in response to student needs. Teaching is for understanding and application of concepts and skills. Student grouping is flexible, based on skill level and interests, within each classroom and between classes. Colleagues invest in the success of all students. In this model, teachers use formative data to determine student growth and identify gaps to
