In this article, "havruta," the dominant strategy for textual higher learning where pairs pour over texts slowly to decipher and argue about the meaning with each other, is explored as an appropriate pedagogy. The author describes how to facilitate interpersonal and textual skills in the middle school and high school classrooms. Texts…

This article is aimed at teachers already experienced with activities involving small, student-collected data sets and who are now ready to begin working with large, online data sets collected by scientists and engineers. The authors discuss challenges, instructional strategies, and sources of appropriate lesson plans. With guidance, plus online…

Students may need explicit training in informal statistical reasoning in order to design experiments or use formal statistical tests effectively. By using scientific scandals and media misinterpretation, we can explore the need for good experimental design in an informal way. This article describes the use of a paper that reviews the measles mumps…

In this book, best-selling author Susan M. Brookhart helps teachers and administrators understand the critical elements and nuances of assessment data and how that information can best be used to inform improvement efforts in the school or district. Readers will learn: (1) What different kinds of data can--and cannot--tell us about student…

Eliciting, responding to, and advancing students' mathematical thinking all lie at the heart of great teaching. In this article, the authors describe a formative assessment approach that teachers can use to learn more about their students' mathematical thinking and inform their instructional decisions. This assessment approach draws on a widely…

Statistical literacy is a vital component of numeracy. Students need to learn to critically evaluate and interpret statistical information if they are to become informed citizens. This article examines a Year 5 unit of work that uses the data collection and analysis cycle within a sustainability context.

This Intersegmental Data Partnerships Resource Guide, and the accompanying PACE policy brief (see ED591080), are products of a year-long qualitative research project exploring promising practices in data sharing and data use among intersegmental partnerships throughout California. This Resource Guide provides institutions engaged in intersegmental…

In "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales that Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth" (hereafter ULR), Briggs and Peck suggest that learning progressions could be used as the basis of vertical scales with naturally benchmarked descriptions of student proficiency. They propose and provide a single example of a…

My privileged opportunity to work with renowned Drama theorist, Dorothy Heathcote, in Melbourne in the 1970s, set a foundation for what I now call Theatre as Education research. Formerly a teacher of Secondary Drama, I became very experienced at creating plays with my students, based on their own ideas, or inspired by the stories of the community.…

This paper reports on the use of QlikView business intelligence software for use in a Business Intelligence (BI) course within an undergraduate information systems program. The course provides students with concepts related to data warehousing, data mining, visualizations, and software tools to provide business intelligence solutions for decision…

A news story claiming that the cream filling of a popular "double" cream sandwich cookie is not really "double" went viral in fall 2013. A high school mathematics teacher posted a blog entry describing how he and his students measured 20 cookies, analyzed the data, and concluded that the double cream cookies had only 1.86 times…

We discuss the learning goals, content, and delivery of a University of Plymouth intensive module delivered over four weeks entitled MATH1608PP Understanding Big Data from Social Networks, aimed at introducing students to a broad range of techniques used in modern Data Science. This module made use of R, accessed through RStudio, and some popular…

When student affairs professionals assess their work, they often employ some type of survey. The use of surveys stems from a desire to objectively measure outcomes, a demand from someone else (e.g., supervisor, accreditation committee) for data, or the feeling that numbers can provide an aura of competence. Although surveys are effective tools for…

Serious curricular reform is both exhilarating in its possibilities and exhausting in its particulars. When its scope is significant and it is undertaken in response to a variety of difficult challenges, curriculum revision becomes more about cultural change than a mere matter of logistics. While studying adaptive leadership with colleagues at the…

As state and local education agencies increasingly focus on serving educators with their data systems, a common challenge has arisen: identifying the critical knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed by teachers and administrators to use data effectively. Many states are creating data literacy and data use training programs for pre- and in-service…