Research and Personal Action Plan to Enhance Leadership

Throughout my Leadership in 21st Century Schools mini-course, I have been introduced to the leadership domains. Although, I am not a master on any of these I have narrowed my focus to Domain II: Accessing and Using Research to Improve Practice and Student Learning. 

My action plan question: 

How will I increase my understanding of Domain II in order to increase my effectiveness as a teacher leader? 

 The functions of teacher leaders for this domain: 

• Assist colleagues in accessing and using research in order to select appropriate strategies to improve student learning
• Facilitate the analysis of student learning data, collaborative interpretation of results, and application of findings to improve teaching and learning
• Support colleagues in collaborating with the higher education institutions and other organizations engaged in researching critical educational issues
• Teach and support colleagues to collect, analyze, and communicate data from their classrooms to improve teaching and learning

The reason why I need to improve domain is because, even though I may already do some of these functions I have not assisted, facilitated, supported, or taught other colleagues to do so as well.

My research:

My second step was to find an outline or format as to how I could begin my process of supporting other teachers. Research for Better Teaching did a great job of outlining skillful data use. They believe "the bridge between data and results is collaborative inquiry". Collaborative inquiry is not the only thing that matters between data and results but, it is what will support a meaningful process for student success.  

 Collaborative inquiry may be easier said than done which is why they listed how it can be seen. A few of those examples were facilitating data teams and professional learning communities or applying collaborative inquiry and dialogue skills. Research for Better Teaching made it a point to end with the most critical step which is instructional improvement. There is no purpose for collecting data if we do not understand how we assess. 

This led to my next discovery, data notebooks. Many times teachers are handed their data in percentage scores and simply check to see how many students met the standards. This has caused teachers to misrepresent data as a way of being judged rather than as a way to improve teaching practices. Leaders should "first urge teachers to think about what questions they would ideally like to ask to improve their classroom conditions, instruction, and repertoire of interventions." You can not analyze data without knowing what you are looking for or what the purpose of collecting it was. Teachers would be the ones questioning and collecting data on their own to answer these questions. As a leader you would be able to support teachers in answering their questions or research solutions to solve the questions. By having data notebooks it changes the role of the leader from being the provider of data to the provider of support. 

Immediately after learning about data notebooks I found an article titled No More Data Notebooks, stating why we shouldn't do it. The largest concern was "teachers got stuck on making pretty or correct notebooks and filling them up, not asking the questions that led to assessment design and data collection to inform instruction." Meaning the purpose was lost. This can definitely be prevented if we remind our selves as leaders and those we support to always remember our "Why". Here is a Ted talk to explain what I mean. 

I understand this reminder will not be the only way to support colleagues. For this reason I arrive to my last resource, Educational Leadership Changing Classroom Practice. Just like Research for Better Teaching, this article focused on the professional learning community. There were many helpful tips such as how the PLC time could be used, suggestions as to who should be put together for PLC's, and again understanding the why. What I appreciated the most though, was the probing questions that were given to help support teachers (these can be found on the last page of the article). Examples of these questions are: 

• What assumptions did you start with? Were they accurate?
• What was your intention when you implemented...?
• What would happen with your students' work and thinking if...?

My Personal Action Plan: 

The first part for my plan to increase my understanding of Domain II, in order to increase my effectiveness as a teacher leader will start by creating my own data notebook immediately. The second part of my plan is to also ask my teaching partner to create one as well. The hope for this is that we can  both compare, communicate, and collaborate after reflecting with the help of the data notebooks. While communicating with my teaching partner I can begin practicing asking probing questions. This will be a continuous process until the end of the school year. Starting out small will create a safe way to practice what I will one day be able to do with an entire mathematics department as a mathematics specialist.