Reflective entry 6: Describe and Analysing the Data

The Data I Have Collected So Far:
Babione (2014) talks of ‘the overwhelming overwhelming task of making sense of our data collection” (p1) and as far as I can tell he is not wrong! As teachers, we carry a lot of ‘data’ around in our heads, and the same is true for this inquiry. Much of the data is qualitative, that is, based on observations that I have made throughout the implementation of the inquiry. While designing our action plan, we identified the following data that we would use.



We were able to collect the two key types of the data that we had originally intended to, however, the results and data from the survey were not useful. There were a number of reasons for this - and in the end, I decided against using this as a measure of progress. While it was discarded, it did not change the fact that it opened my eyes initially to the perceptions of the children in terms of how they perceive the roles of teachers and themselves. This could become my next inquiry!

The rubric and student work samples were useful, however. We decided to score the rubric in order to give us some numeric data that could be quantitative, mainly because the rest of the data was qualitative. What we didn’t know at the time, was that this was an interpretive technique mentioned by Babione (2014). He says this is coding data in order to make it more manageable. We scored each area of the rubric with a value of 1-5 to get an overall score for each child, and then we were able to identify the area that had the lowest score overall students and specifically target these areas in our actions. To analyse the data at the endpoint, we needed to complete the survey again and re-score the rubric. We also had to review the children’s workbooks and gather our ideas. This involved moderation against other students within the cohort.

Here is what the analysis of the rubric data looks like:
(Student names are coded for privacy purposes)

The student’s work was another element of data collected. At the beginning of the inquiry, I collected 3 pieces of work and assigned them an asTTle (Ministry of Education, nd) level. Then at the end of the inquiry, I did the same. This is another example of coding the data.


As you can see, both of these data sources have been organised according to the temporary timeframe in which they were collected and then compared. (Reil 2014) calls this Temporal Organisation. Another point of interest for me, was Reil’s (2014) mention of not collecting so much data that it becomes a mission to analyse it. In my case, there were several ways that I could analyse the data from the rubric. I could also compare the sub-headings and movement within each disposition and look for emerging themes, but as this assignment has a finite amount of time I have not done that yet. The spiral of inquiry IS cyclic and this is an area I could investigate further at a later date.

Reflect on your evidence so far:
It appears that I now have evidence that the students have all made significant gains in terms of their dispositions towards writing and they have also made accelerated curriculum progress in terms of academic achievement.

What I don’t have though is the evidence that it is the inquiry that caused this to happen. The missing piece of this puzzle is that student form that was dismissed as being a useful piece of data. Next time, that part of the puzzle needs to be amended. I will have to consider another way to collect that voice and maintain its integrity.

Reference List: 

Babione, C. (2015). Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research. USA: John Wiley & Sons.

Ministry of Education (nd).  Using evidence for learning: Reading and Analysing Data. downloaded from: 

http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Using-evidence-for-learning/Reading-and-analysing-data/e-asTTle-reports

Riel, M. (2014, August 5).T8 Analyzing Data.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWPwyv60E4