Steven Katz

Leading Schools in a Data-Rich World

Each week we receive the Times Educational Supplement from England and Education Week from the US. Between us, we also subscribe to several Canadian newspapers and a number of educational journals and popular magazines from different countries. A quick glance at any of these publications makes it very clear that there is no escaping the presence of data in education. As researchers whose stock in trade is “data”, we have become increasingly interested in the role that data have to play in educational change, particularly in how school and district leaders feel about, understand, and use the mountains of data that are being generated about schools.

Leadership in networked learning communities: defining the terrain

This article describes results related to leadership that emerged from a series of studies commissioned by the Networked Learning Group of the National College of School Leadership to draw on the experiences of the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) Programme, with a view to informing the work of other groups and agencies in England and beyond who are incorporating networking into their educational change efforts. The focus of the evaluation was not on the effects of the NLC Programme as a separate entity. Instead, the focus was on identifying promising features and processes being implemented in NLCs and NLC schools and ascertaining the importance of these features to the success of educational networks generally.

Competency, epistemology and pedagogy: curriculums holy trinity

In this era of heightened calls for accountability and standards, clear visions of competence are more necessary than ever and, moreover, these planned products of education need explicit articulation. Such articulation falls within the purview of the formal curriculum and it is with this that the present article concerns itself. It draws on a past Ontario, Canada curricular initiative, The Common Curriculum, as the vehicle through which to examine the difficulties inherent in spelling out a conception of competence. Such difficulties, it is argued, stem from the inextricable link between definitions of competence and their associated epistemological and pedagogical implications.

Getting to the Core of Learning: Using Assessment for Self-Monitoring and Self-Regulation

Pupils in modern society are living in confusing and unpredictable times, in which they must be equipped with skills that enable them to think for themselves and be self-initiating, self-modifying and self-directing. They must acquire the capacity to learn and change consciously, continuously and quickly, to anticipate what might happen and to continually search for more creative solutions. Learning for the twenty-first century involves much more than acquiring knowledge. It requires the capacity for ‘reflective judgement’ – the ability to make judgements and interpretations, less on the basis of ‘right answers’ than on the basis of ‘good reasons’ (King and Kitchener 1994).

Towards Data-Informed Decisions: From Ministry Policy to School Practice

This chapter describes how the province of Ontario, Canada structured a large-scale initiative to ensure that all schools in the province had access to high-quality data and to develop a culture of inquiry, in which there is widespread capacity to work with data and where using data becomes a routine part of the operation of the educational system at all levels. This initiative—the Managing Information for Student Achievement/Professional Network Centres (MISA/PNC) was created to support development in school districts to establish data systems and build capacity for using data. This chapter traces the influence of this policy initiative from ministry policy through its implementation at one regional MISA/PNC and into one of the school districts in the PNC to exemplify its influence at the district and school level. The results of this study show, for example, that policy can have a large influence on data use in schools if it combines pressure with support. In Ontario districts and schools have to provide the Ministry of Education with different data through their data systems (e.g., pressure). The Ministry provides districts and schools with professional development opportunities (e.g., support).