Posted: January 27th, 2016

Post the interrelationships you will be looking for among the data you collect for your evaluation plan and share any change you will make to your data plan

Post the interrelationships you will be looking for among the data you collect for your evaluation plan and share any change you will make to your data plan based on your learning this week. Include your thoughts about the science team’s methods in the “ Using Data to Enhance Teaching Practice and Student Learning” video program. Then, share an example of a “well-supported finding” that you would hope to be able to make based on the data you collect for your evaluation plan.

Analyzing and Interpreting Data

Think about the data sources and collection methods you plan to use to answer your evaluation questions. Based on this week’s Learning Resources—including the data sources and collection methods used by the high school science team you observed in the “Collecting, Analyzing, and Interpreting Data: Example” video program—consider the interrelationships you see between and among the different types of data you will collect. What might one piece of data tell you about another data source or type? What “data intersections” (Champion, 2005) will you be looking for in the data you collect about your program?

Which of the four categories of data mentioned by Victoria Bernhardt in the “Pause to Look at the Intersections in the Data” article do you plan to collect for your evaluation? Did any other sources of data occur to you as you considered the information related to triangulating data this week? For example, if your evaluation plan includes collecting process data about teachers’ implementation of a particular practice, are you also collecting perceptual data about how teachers think about and perceive their practice and classroom learning environment? What changes or additions might you make to your data plan?

Finally, based on your professional development program’s goals, create a best-case scenario, in which the data you collect for your professional development program provides a “ well-supported finding with triangulated evidence,” as discussed in this week’s course text reading (Chapter 9, “Interpreting Data”). Use the examples provided in Figure 9A, “Simple Finding with Limited Support,” and Figure 9B, “Well-Supported Finding with Triangulated Evidence,” to guide you in creating a visual to represent how various data types and sources might support this finding.