Driven by Data 2.0: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction

I think the information is extremely helpful and will be using it moving forward with my department. Where I believe this could be improved is having easier access to the videos. Who still uses DVD at this stage of the game? That concept needs to be rethought. Other than that I have been enjoying the book tremendously.

Easy read with real school application.

I highly recommend Driven by Data 2.0: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction. The videos and materials are very helpful.

Very informative

As described.

Needed this book for class

Very helpful and practical!

Great

As someone who teaches in the FE sector in the UK, I was intrigued by this book. We use a lot of data in our profession, and I'm glad to say where I work, increasingly it is joined up and you can see patterns and the such like that you may have missed before.As noted elsewhere here, we are also obliged supply the government with data, principally results which are then put into league tables so that people can make informed choices. Of course that's a very crude measure, especially in FE where we have a lot of vocational courses and are starved of funds. It's even a cruder measure when looking at creative courses where we can have truly talented and exceptional students who go on to be very successful in their chosen field, but fail to achieve some of the crude yardsticks.Where this book clarifies is by looking at new and innovative ways of using the data you have to inform and guide your teaching. I think the idea is promising, and would like to see it in action. We may have done some of this stuff during teacher training many moons ago, but the authors suggestions and case studies, using modern data collecting and analysis bring them up to date and make for challenging reading.Where the book is limited, and to a certain extent it's not the author's fault is that it is very USA-centric. The examples are based on US schools and practice. While principles can be learned, it would be good to have a UK edition that focussed on our school/college/university system which is largely the same overall, but differs in many places in the detail. And we know where the devil is...

I was initially suspicious of this book, as UK teaching over the past ten years has become increasingly fixated on the manipulation of data to ‘prove’ that a school is meeting its externally imposed targets. Unrealistic targets have combined with a need to show that there is continuous improvement, regardless of the child’s ability or the socio-economic baggage they bring to school. All this can make data an exercise in creative recording – which is not the intention, of course.One thing this book does very well is reassert the value of data as a tool to shape teaching, rather a means to create yet another spreadsheet. Many of the ideas set out are far from new and will have formed part of the professional development programmes of recently qualified teachers and aspiring heads of department. However, they are brought together in a way that shows how data can be used as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. I especially liked the role of data in informing the construction of interim assessments. Guidance is given on how to use data as a guide for teaching and establishing accountability for cumulative learning.Each chapter is set out logically with core principles followed by case studies on their successful implementation. The author is quite messianic in his enthusiasm for the power of data to improve student outcomes – occasionally a little too messianic for my taste. I shall be dipping into this book to supplement my existing practice, but I won’t be slavishly using it as my only guide to the effective use of data.

The first 50 pages are brilliant. They make the case for data driven instruction clear and they show how we need intermediate tests in order to obtain the data. There is also a lot of stress on the need to align these intermediate assessments with external tests so that you are not collecting the wrong data as well as emphasising the need to implement change based on these results. There is also a powerful message about not needing to get everyone on board when you start and how they will buy in to data driven teaching when they see its success.Then it all goes wrong. The case studies all just say we did data driven instruction and it worked. They lack concrete guidance other than you should formalise the process in calendars, weekly meetings and follow up including re-teaching plans and that you should use best practice. This is then repeated again and again for the next 150 pages. There is a real lack of reflection which worries me. This is a practical book and it is aimed at professional development but without making practitioners reflective this only goes so far. What do you do if it doesn't work? There is no meta-thinking. It is all focused on the practicalities of the data driven approach and not if there are any more fundamental lessons to be learned about teaching and learning.

This is a US-centric and as a consequence focuses on US grading systems and the case studies are based on US schools.Saying that, there are a couple of interesting insights, in particular the use of data as a tool rather than another way of reporting metrics.Whilst there is some very interesting text in the book, it does focus on a repetitive cycle of data capture, analysis, etc - which is fine but I do feel there are a number of factors that are certainly used within the UK state schooling system that aren’t capture here A in particular socio-economic background of the child, whether English is an additional language and other items such as the rate of improvement.Overall an okay book.

This book is American! Having said that, there are useful approaches that can be used here in England too. I am currently working as a supply TA on an agency and I am hoping to go into teacher training next year. In the mean time I'm reading around the subject of teaching in order to give myself a good grounding ready for next year. As a TA, I am already working in schools so I know what it is like for teachers in our system. This book is more aimed at the SLT but I do think that some of the ideas could be put into practice by those on the ground floor, so to speak. It puts learning ahead of teaching, which seems to be an intuitively better approach and I could use techniques learnt from this book even in my capacity as a supply TA, even if that would only be on an Ad hock basis. An interesting read, even though it isn't specifically aimed at me.