Teaching+Inquiry+Data



So you have decided on what to focus on and now you need to decide how you will measure the difference you have made. Below are some steps you may need to consider, remember this is your project so these decisions are your own, you can consult and get advice from others but you are the best judge of what will produce the outcomes from this process which best benefit you and the children you teach.

Do you need to get permission to begin your research, this will depend on your school, your research, or yourself. You are welcome to use the resources below to adapt your own permission letters etc. If your research is a part of your normal programme or does not require you to do the types of things you normally do in your classroom it may not be necessary to do this.
 * Step one **

Please make sure you have permission from parents and students before you share their images and work online and that you have systems to protect students as much as you can online. Facilitators and Lead Teachers can help with this. If your school does not have policies for this perhaps this is a discussion you could bring up. Resources to support policy making here.

Permission letters for Action Research (Thanks Keith Mulholland GSNS)

What to measure? A simple way to think about data collection is to think about before and after, basically you want to know where students are at, then you 'act' or have some form of teacher intervention, then you want to perform the same assessment so you can compare the two sets of data.
 * Step Two **

This may be slightly different or more complex if you have limitations e.g. few computers so students need to work on various activities so you may need several data collection schedules. These complexities can always be overcome with a bit of thinking planning and creativity. Remember your Inquiry does not have to include data for every child in the class, you could monitor a few and use this information as a case study.

This is the same type of data you may collect for assessments, anything that gives you numerical/ measurable results. Most tests, even rubrics and questionnaires can give quantitative data as they correspond to a level or some numerical measurement.
 * Quantitative Data** ?

This data is usually linguistic, it may be in the form of a student or parent comment or reflection which expresses their own voice, or it may be your own reflections on your inquiry along the way. You can easily use video and/or audio to collect and present this type of data. When you collect this data you need to put a lot of thought in to the questions you will ask students, parents, yourself etc, you obviously need to do this before you ask the questions. This is really important as you will want to ask these same questions after your intervention. Of course you can ask some new questions then also, these will give you extra information but to compare or attempt to capture how someones views may have changed or developed you need to ask them the same or similar things.
 * Qualitative Data** ?

It is great if you can use both types of data, this way they compliment one another. One of the aims of the cluster work is to help teachers utilise student voice or perspective to engage and enhance student learning, so that this is a resource for teachers. The insights students can give about their own learning offer rich assessment information for teachers as well as the numerical measures of achievement.
 * Both ?**

Create a folder on your computer to store all of the files, data, etc related to your Teaching Inquiry. Many people keep these things on a wiki or blog as they go so that when they are ready to share this it is all together and easy to sort through and present. Just remember if you do this to keep these private or remove student names etc if you are putting this information online.
 * Some Tips**