Using Qualitative Inquiry and Self-Study to Make Sense of Data Use Practices in Teacher Education

Using Qualitative Inquiry and Self-Study to Make Sense of Data Use Practices in Teacher Education

Jahnette Wilson, Sam Brower, Teresa Edgar, Amber Thompson, Shea Culpepper
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 11
DOI: 10.4018/IJAET.2020100104
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Abstract

Accountability and rigor in teacher education have been the focus of recent policy initiatives. Thus, data use practices have become increasingly critical to informing program improvement. Educational researchers have established self-study as a research methodology to intentionally be used by teacher educators to improve their practice. The purpose of the self-study described in this article was to examine the data use practices of one teacher preparation program in an effort to facilitate improvement of the program's capacity in using program data. The qualitative data gathered in this case study proved to be pivotal in the continuous improvement efforts of the teacher preparation program; thus, the usefulness and value of the findings within this case study have implications for how institutional self-study and qualitative data can support quantitative programmatic data in order to facilitate programmatic improvement initiatives.
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Current Data Use Expectations

Accountability pressure has pushed higher education institutions of learning to move toward evidence-based program evaluation and improvement (Smith & College, 2009). Requirements of data collection and use have been routinely seen as responses to compliance rather than opportunities for inquiry related to program improvement (Peck et al., 2015). The 2013 NAE report discusses several different types of teacher preparation program (TPP) evaluation systems, all of which may be used to evaluate a single teacher preparation program. Each of these entities use differentiated but also overlapping data to assess teacher preparation programs (Feuer et al., 2013).

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