Data Driven Education

Data is the key to any successful educator. Without data, teachers won’t know how well a lesson is progressing, whether their students have learned the content, or whether or not a topic or skill needs to be retaught. Being able to analyze data is a skill on it’s own, and should be practiced and honed like any other. Teachers should be able to practice metacognitive skills in order to improve their teaching which hopefully will raise student achievement. Metacognition refers to one’s understanding of the cognitive process, strategies and products (Öztürk & Özyurt, 2020). To put it more simply, teachers need to be able to understand how people think, including themselves, and be able to apply that to the classroom. Thinking can be broken down into eight different categories as defined by Elder and Paul (2007). These are, Generates purpose, raises questions, uses information, utilizes concepts, makes inferences, makes assumptions, generates implications and embodies a point of view (Elder & Paul, 2007). The following research will rely on these elements of thinking, with special focus given to using data to make assumptions/inferences while breaking down the implications. The data that will be analyzed are the math and reading scores for the State of Delaware over from 2013-2019.

Elder, L., & Paul, R., (2007). The thinker’s guide to analytical thinking. The Foundation
for Critical Thinking, 2-57. http://www.criticalthinking.org/files/SAM_Analytic_Think2007b.pdf

Öztürk, A., & Özyurt, M. (2020). The function of metacognition in instructional skills: A
comparative case study. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET), 7(3). 1143-1166. https://iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/843