The Nature of Teacher Learning in Collaborative Data Teams

As teaching evolves to become a more collaborative endeavor, it is increasingly important for educators reflect on how and why they work together in ways that provide them with learning opportunities (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Schon, 1987). The trend towards reframing teachers' collaboration as professional development is based in the rationale that critical reflections on teacher practice in collaborative settings have the potential to change teaching practice (Horn, 2005; Little, 1990; Tyack & Cuban, 1997). Concurrent with this movement has been an increased focus on the use of student data. The combination of these two simultaneous trends emphasizes an effort to capitalize on the hypothesized power of data-centric collaboration. This article explores the possibilities of this type of work through an empirical study of a data team, a team of teachers collaborating with student data as a focus. Using a social constructivist framework, this paper explores how teachers engaged on a data team learned from the experience, and what contextual factors, such as proximity and transience, influenced their learning opportunities as part of a data team (Michaud, 2015). As data teams advance as a new mode of collaborative practice in education throughout the world, policy-makers, educational leaders, and classroom teachers should be aware of their direct benefits, and the factors that influence the nature of teachers' learning from each other in collaborative data teams. The existing research literature on data teams focuses mostly on teachers' capacity for data use (Little, 2012). This comes at the expense of studying their true value, which is that teachers can change their pedagogy based on what they learn from data and each other (Katz & Dack, 2014). The social situation that surrounds such a partnership lends itself to various factors impacting the nature of the teachers' learning. It has been shown that the proximity and transience of collaborating teachers on a data team heavily influences the collaborative process. Literature Review Time available for collaboration has been identified as a significant variable in teacher collaboration (McGrath, 1991; Vadala, 2014). O'Leary et al. (2014) indicated that personal qualities, the creation of a shared meaning and identity led to perceived proximity, the closeness of which determined the relative effectiveness of the collaborative work. While much of the existing research on data teams focuses on how they are structured, there is an existing gap concerning how teachers learn from participating as data team members (Schildkamp & Poortman, 2015). Other studies have noted the nature of teacher learning in other types of collaborative teams, including the work of Little (1990), McGrath (1991), and Vadala (2014), which indicates that proximity increased the frequency and quality of collaboration among teachers. Considering the importance of joint enterprise to the working of a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and joint work to teachers' collaboration (Little, 1990), a data team's perception of their work as a team effort is critical to their function. By focusing on the nature of their collaborative work in a data team from a social constructivist perspective, this research study was able to address existing gaps in the research literature by further exploring how teachers learn from their participation in a data team. The qualitative methods, theoretical framework, and research questions of the study all coalesce around the need for further exploration of the way that teachers learn in collaborative teams when student data is the focus of their activity together. This paper discusses the findings of Michaud's (2015) study that indicate that proximity and transience of data team members influenced the politicization of meetings and the ability to forge a collaborative orientation towards joint enterprise. Theoretical Framework Collaborating on a team is inherently social. …