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DATA LITERACY FOR EDUCATORS: MAKING IT COUNT IN TEACHER PREPARATION AND PRACTICE by Ellen B. Mandinach and Edith S. Gummer New York: Teachers College Press, 2016. 116 pp. $34.95.
In Data Literacy for Educators: Making It Count in Teacher Preparation and Practice, Ellen B. Mandinach and Edith S. Gummer detail a conceptual framework they refer to as Data Literacy for Teachers (DLFT) and describe how schools of teacher education, among other K-12 US education stakeholders, can support teachers' development of data literacy skills, the skills and habits of mind teachers need to responsibly use student data.
In the first half of the book, Mandinach and Gummer explain what DLFT entails and argue that it has been increasingly important for all teachers to master as policy mandates (e.g., accountability policies like ESSA) have generated a plethora of data on students. In chapter 1, the authors draw on the research base on teachers' data use to develop an overall definition of DLFT, writing, "Data literacy for teaching is the ability to transform information into actionable instructional knowledge and practices" (p. 14). They go on to argue that DLFT draws on multiple sources of teacher knowledge, including knowledge of assessments, standards, how students learn, curriculum, and pedagogical content (i.e., specialized knowledge of instruction, students, and content needed to teach a particular subject) as well as discipline-specific knowledge. In this manner, the DLFT construct goes beyond simple knowledge of data to attend to how teachers use data in concert with their knowledge of teaching in order to shape classroom practice. In this sense, DLFT is a dynamic process of action rather than an inert knowledge base.
In the second chapter, Mandinach and Gummer give the policy context for how DLFT, in their view, came to be a core component of teaching. They argue that while the origins of DLFT trace back to high-stakes accountability and testing initiated by the federal government under George W. Bush, policy makers' views on appropriate data use have evolved over time-as has the messaging from the US Department of Education. Rather than solely a means of compliance, data are now largely seen by policy makers, school leader, and teachers as a key tool to inform continuous improvement efforts, in addition to being used in...