Linking Data and Learning: A Case-Study of Teachers' Data-analysis Procedures in Kindergarten Literacy Instruction

A School Year in Kindergarten Classrooms: Literacy and Data Use Practices is a research project funded by The Spencer Foundation. The research team from the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and Human Development was interested in the extent kindergarten teachers use their assessment data, including interim-benchmark assessment data, to modify literacy instruction for their students. For my capstone project, I examined a narrow aspect of this research project: five kindergarten teachers from one site and their interpretations of and responses to literacy assessment data to meet the instructional needs of their students. My goal was to better understand the teachers’ processes of using their literacy assessment data within the organizational and political context of the school environment as well as, the structures that influence these processes. In this capstone project, I shared my professional problem of practice, site description, conceptual framework, literature review, and methodology to answer the proposed research questions.
Keywords: data-based decision making, data use, interim-benchmark assessments, pedagogical data literacy