The purpose of this action research study was to investigate the actual motivation for application to graduate school for first-generation and international students from historically marginalized communities (HMCS). The specific goal was to augment data on college advisory work, recruiting, and marketing, and look at the wants and needs of…

Building on the need for developing educational responses to the impact of data practices in our everyday lives, a new curriculum called Nayah-Irú was designed and implemented in the context of five alternative schools in Uruguay. Nayah-Irú aimed at fostering Critical Data Literacy (CDL) using speculative civic literacies, helping youth and…

The utilization of learning analytics to support teaching and learning has emerged as a newer phenomenon combining instructor-oriented action research, the mining of educational data, and the analyses of statistics and patterns. Learning analytics have documented, quantified and graphically displayed students' interactions, engagement, and…

The idea of data use as an educational reform strategy has gained significant traction in recent years, but there is limited research that illuminates what actually happens when teachers use data in practice. This study investigates the ways a group of middle school mathematics teachers used data in their classrooms and as part of an action…

The Common Core Math Standards were written to address concerns that the math curriculum in the United States was not focused and coherent. Based on national and international assessments, the United States math scores have remained stagnant, while other countries have seen significant growth in their scores. This study, designed as an action…

This study uses a sequential, mixed method, action research, quantitative to qualitative research design. The purpose of this study was to develop a useful standardized hiring process at a state medical college that brings clarity to the hiring process and policies. Two conceptual frameworks guided the innovations in this study--communities of…

The purpose of this action research study was to conduct a professional development activity to provide content-area teachers with academic vocabulary strategies to be implemented during instruction on a daily basis. Professional development is essential for teachers to gain new knowledge and skills in order to hone their craft to improve student…

Two-year community colleges are commissioned to close the assessment-outcome loop, which includes the research site for this study. This action research study, which utilized quantitative and qualitative data sets, was designed to close the assessments, learning outcomes and the professional development budget proposal process gap. The developed…

Data and the use of data to make educational decisions have attained new-found prominence in K-12 education following the inception of high-stakes testing and subsequent linking of teacher evaluations and teacher-performance pay to students' outcomes on standardized assessments. Although the research literature suggested students' academic…

The role of data analysis in the jobs of instructional leaders has become as commonplace as teachers creating lesson plans and taking roll in the classroom. Teachers and building leaders routinely use interim assessment data to develop thoughtful and robust instructional plans that address identified areas of student need. The link between the…

As an insider-action research project, there are really two projects at work in this study (Coghlan & Brannick, 2010)--the core project and the dissertation project. The aim of the core project is to promote organizational change for my organization, the Women's Center, by facilitating the first iteration of a participatory evaluation with our…

The purpose of this study was to determine if using a student-centered approach to data analysis could have an effect on the attitudes of the teachers involved in the process. Interventions were developed that would be representative of a student-centered model and implemented for a specific duration. The action research project gathered teachers'…

This qualitative action research study examined teachers' perceptions about co-teaching and its effectiveness as an instructional model for students with disabilities. One-on-one interviews were conducted with eight elementary and secondary teachers from a medium sized school district located in Southwest Ohio that has a students' with…

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to investigate and describe how elementary teachers in exited Program Improvement-Safe Harbor schools acquire student achievement data through assessments, the strategies and reflections utilized to make sense of the data to improve student achievement, ensure curriculum and instructional goals are aligned,…

The case studies examined how three preservice teachers within a Master of Arts in Teaching program at a small, private university negotiated meaning around an educational practice--collaborative action research. Preservice teachers must negotiate multiple, and often competing, internal and external discourses as they "sort out" what educational…