As an educator, I see so many theories or frameworks or models of advocated by school leaders, scholars, vendors, philanthropists, and others. I share the frustration of those educators who wish their endless series of “innovative” (an adjective used by the advocates) practice would end, and we would decide what we should do and just Read More
Category: Using Data
Bridging Gaps: Research and Instruction
Education is one of several soft technologies that share an interesting trait: The scholars who discover the science behind the natural phenomena that are the basis of the technology and the practitioners who apply that science to the human purpose are different people. Other examples of human technologies marked by this trait include agriculture (botanists, Read More
Naturalistic Approaches to Research and Teaching
In their seminal book on Naturalistic inquiry, Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba (1985) argued that much scientific research is based on a reduction of the problem according to positivist principles, and that those assumptions are increasingly insufficient to describe many problems in the social sciences, including education. Whereas, positivist theory holds that a single reality Read More
Why Standardized Testing Flopped
In the fall of 2018, an article appeared in my news feed multiple times. Peter Greene, a contributor to Forbes magazine posed the question “Is The Big Standardized Test A Big Standardized Flop?” in the title of his article. No educator (or parent, or higher education professional, or employer) is going to be surprised to Read More
A Disturbing Observation
I recently visited a classroom in which there were two activities planned for the day. First, students were gathering data that is to be used to answer the question “Is anyone average?” Second, the students were completing some standardized tests which are part of the school’s assessment plan. While the measuring was intended to be Read More
Reflections on a Conversation with an ABD
(Please forgive the male pronouns in this post… the individuals featured in it all identify as male and prefer make pronouns, so I used that convention.) A school leader who is working on his dissertation asked me to give him some feedback on his project. He was defining his research question which focused on Read More
Triangulation
“Data” and “research” have been recurring themes in this blog: The Problem with Data On #Data and the Quality of Data On the Ethics of Data Collection in Education Data versus Evidence This post continues the theme, and is focused on one of the fundamental ideas of those who seek to use “data’ or “evidence” Read More
#Edtech for #Edleaders: Managing Users, Resources, and Data
Once IT infrastructure has been installed, IT professionals hired by the school adjust the configurations of devices installed by the engineers and technicians so the network is secure, robust and reliable. They configure settings to authenticate users; give them access to servers, printers, and other devices; and adjust addressing and security functions as devices are Read More
The Problem with Data
Data is atopic that has been addressed on this blog previously: Being Data Driven is Nothing to Brag About Data versus Evidence If you read those posts, it is going to become clear that I am not a fan of the fascination educators have developed for data. It can be a part of how we Read More
Reflexivity: Teachers and Technology
In a previous post, I presented reflexivity as a phenomenon that we can observe in schools. The concept is grounded in the mutual feedback and feedforward influences that exist between humans and the technologies they use (especially the information technologies they use). Reflexivity can be extended to other observations in schools as well. For example, Read More