Using data wisely: A workshop with Professsor Alex Bowers
Educational organisations in Australia and elsewhere are awash with data. However, turning data into useful information which may inform policy and practice is not easy and not often done. There are also cautions about data and just because we can collect data and link it together and analyse it in ways not possible in the past, is not a reason to do so unless you are sure it makes sense and you can mitigate the unintended consequences that can arise.
When My School began in January 2010 there was a lot of concern about the positive and negative impacts it might have. I remember an article by The Age journalist Carolyn Milburn exploring how some schools had used the new NAPLAN data to change their approach to student learning, and how other schools had come under scrutiny from parents for not performing to expectations (Milburn, 2010). In the same year, the Los Angeles Times accessed and linked two publicly available data bases to provide teacher level value-added reporting of student learning. Flech et al. (2010) wrote an article that compared the performance of real teachers, John Smith and Miguel Aguilar at Broadous Elementary School in a challenging area in the San Fernando Valley. The article described the different teaching approaches of the two teachers and how Aguilar was far more effective Smith. Whilst these data allowed for this analysis, the school system had not done so, and where not interested in doing this at the time in doing this. And this generated much discussion about parental right to data about their teachers and schools, balanced against the unintended consequences of allowing this to happen, such as public shaming of teachers and schools. These events are in the distant past, but there is so much data collected now, and many new data analytic tools, like AI supported analysis, that it is timely again to reflect on the data collected in schools and school systems, and how this might be used for benefit and to consider some new ways of working with data.
I mention these historical events because I recently had the privilege to hear Professor Alex Bowers from Teacher College, Colombia University, give a workshop for ACEL Victoria, entitled, Leading with Evidence in Schools: Bridging Research, Data, and Practice for Continuous Improvement. Professor Bowers is concerned to ensure that we use the data that is already collected in and about schools to help improve schools. In his own words, his research focuses on how education data science is critical to helping school and system education leaders bring the vast amounts of data that schools already collect closer to the evidence-based improvement goals of educators and communities.
In the workshop he explored the some of the challenges and gave examples of best practice in relation to using data to create evidence to school and system improvement. He described alignment between research findings and school system data and provided examples of data visualisation techniques to communicate findings. He also showed examples of how at the school level educators can strengthen their data-driven improvement cycles. The more than 40 participants were engaged and challenged by Professor Bower’s views on data construction and use in education.
Professor Bower’s call for better use of data is both timely and controversial. Timely because data can be used to generate knowledge to help improve schools and systems and so we should be more active and discerning about its collection, analysis and use. We should also be making better use of the data that we already collect – what we collect at the school, system and national levels. It is also controversial in that we need to be mindful of unintended consequences, and governments may be reluctant to allow public use of the collected data in ways that they don’t control.
For those that want to explore his ideas there are several suggestions:
- Read this free e-book: Bowers (2021) Data Visualization, Dashboards, and Evidence Use in Schools
- Explore the work of the Education Leadership Data Analytics research group: https://www.tc.columbia.edu/elda/
- Reach out to Professor Bowers to explore professional learning and support opportunities: Bowers@tc.edu
You can also explore ACEL resources on the topic. The work of Dr Selena Fisk is notable in this regard. She has featured in ACEL workshops and conferences over the past few years, and you can get her publications through the ACEL bookshop. And, don’t forget that the national conference in Perth in October.
References
Bowers, A.J. (Ed.). (2021) Data Visualization, Dashboards, and Evidence Use in Schools: Data Collaborative Workshop Perspectives of Educators, Researchers, and Data Scientists. Teachers College, Columbia University. New York, NY.https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-jj2g-e225
Felch, J., Song, J. & Smith, D. (2010) Who’s teaching L.A.’s kids? Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2010. Accessed March 3, 2026 from https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815-story.html
Milburn, C. (2010). Your school and My School, The Age, February 9, 2010.