Being a Data-Driven Educator: Skills & Competencies for the 21st Century

This article is part of our datafication in education series, in which we share our survey findings from educators. These educators have experienced how the increasing use of data has shifted the way we think about teaching, learning, and schooling.

Our respondents emphasized the need for educators to have basic data literacy skills in order to navigate this change effectively. In these two articles, we’ll reflect on what educators shared about the specific skills they imagined for teachers versus principals and school leaders and how this relates to our experience training educators in the basics of data analysis.

What does it take to be a data-driven teacher?

In our survey, respondents could choose from the following list of skills:

• Data literacy

• Data analysis

• Data-driven curriculum design

• Data system creation

• Data collection

• Data communication

While respondents selected every option on the list, two skills stood out as the ones that almost all respondents thought data-driven teachers today need. These two are data collection and data literacy. Here are our thoughts on why these got the number of votes that they did:

• Data Collection: Using data to make informed decisions can only go so far if teachers cannot collect data. What’s more, collecting data is easier said than done. On top of the fact that teachers have very little time built into their day to formally collect data, they often also have to collect data for a range of different data systems with their own requirements. Knowing how to collect data effectively and efficiently is an integral skill.

• Data Literacy: While it’s essential that teachers know how to organize, analyze and act upon student data, it’s easy to underestimate how high the bar for data literacy has become. A lot of this likely has to do with the fact that the skills needed to manage the volume of data teachers must wade through (think twenty columns-long spreadsheets) are now more sophisticated. But this awareness isn’t widespread. We’ve seen many educators assess themselves as being data literate and later discover major gaps in their understanding of how to analyze data. 

What about data-driven school leaders?

Here, the answers shifted. Our respondents expected principals/school leaders to be versed in a wider range of data competencies. Two skills – data communication and data analysis – stood out.

• Data Analysis: Interestingly, data analysis seemed to fall more within the domain of school leaders and principals than it did in that of teachers. It seems to be one thing to be able to “read” data, another to understand it well enough to draw your own conclusions. Given the increased responsibility that school leaders and principals have for the well-being of their entire school, respondents felt that this skill is an essential part of their leadership toolkit.

• Data Communication: Data analysis can only go so far without communication. To that end, it is crucial that school leaders and principals are effective data storytellers. And not just for their teachers! We’ve written at length about the importance of communicating about data to non-educators. Using ed data well means making it inclusive - and that includes your students and families.

We’ll be back next week with some reflections on what we think these differences in skills reveal about how we imagine our schools today and what this implies for data literacy training in the future.