“I knew it was a problem before, but did I really?”: Engaging teachers in data use for equity

In current contexts of education, educators are tasked with using data, most often without any critical preparation to do so. In this way, data are presented as objective measures of student progress and participation in school without consideration of the systemic and structural influences on that progress and participation. This article reports on a proposed framework for preparing educators to engage in critical data-driven decision making as an engine of disrupting classroom and school-based systemic inequity through data use. We argue that if educators are to use data in ways that acknowledge the inequities of schooling and act in ways to trigger change, we must prepare them to engage with data differently. The framework we describe, data use for equity, integrates data and equity literacies in this service. We use case study to report on the outcomes of a professional development project guided by this conceptual framework of data use for equity. Participants engaged in professional development that utilized a School and Classroom Equity Audit as a triggering data event and explicitly attended to the relationship of culture and education. Findings demonstrated that professional development in data use for equity enhanced participants’ sense of agency, perceptions of equity and data, and perceived multicultural capacities. Findings also demonstrated that while participants made progress in strengthening their data and equity literacies on almost all indicators through the yearlong professional development, developing data use for equity must be an ongoing effort.