This chapter discusses principles that support using data about teaching and learning and offers several strategies particularly well suited for use by institutional researchers at small colleges in helping faculty, staff, and administrators use data on student learning for improvement.

This article details the process the authors--a doctoral student at the time, and a faculty member--engaged in to change the ways the University of Iowa (UI) asks for and reports student name, gender pronouns, sex, and gender identity. The UI Inclusive Student Records Initiative raises implications for practice and research. Two focus groups--one…

Many campuses across the California State University (CSU) system are seeking to improve academic advising as part of their efforts to increase student progress and graduation rates. In this exploratory study of efforts to improve academic advising at five CSU campuses, researchers at the Education Insights Center (EdInsights) working on behalf of…

Improving school climate takes time and commitment from a variety of people in a variety of roles. This document outlines key action steps that noninstructional staff--including guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologists, office staff, bus drivers, maintenance and facility staff, and food service staff--can take to support school…

The increase in education data and advance in technology are bringing about enhanced teaching and learning methodology. The emerging field of Learning Analytics (LA) continues to seek ways to improve the different methods of gathering, analysing, managing and presenting learners' data with the sole aim of using it to improve the student learning…

This report identifies effective strategies to tackle skills imbalances in Italy. It provides an assessment of practices and policies in the following areas: the collection and use of information on skill needs to foster a better alignment of skills acquisitions with labour market needs; the design of education and training systems and their…

Numerous actors influence how educational policies play out in practice, but this does not mean that policies themselves are without power. Policies are crafted and enacted in part because they serve as signal and symbol: How a policy is formally codified establishes expectations, exerts norming influence, and catalyzes shifts in how issues are…

This article makes the case for an approach to reflective practice (RP) that is both evidence-based and data-led. We argue that, while RP within the field of TESOL enjoys a relatively high level of acceptance and status (perhaps even an orthodoxy), it has little corresponding knowledge base that demonstrates how RP "gets done". We…

London schools continue to constitute an extraordinary "success story." By common consent, the government school system in London achieves extremely good results compared to the rest of England, and students from disadvantaged backgrounds do particularly well. In 2014, the authors sought to document and provisionally explain the London…

As more students, faculty, and staff from traditionally underrepresented groups enter universities and colleges, academic libraries must find ways to reach out to these groups in order to better meet their unique educational needs. In this article, librarians from two large public universities describe how they used data about their communities to…

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this 'Big Data' can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated…

The federal role in higher education has grown over the past two decades, and now a new administration has the opportunity to strengthen policies that support students and their colleges and universities. To help inform these decisions, the Urban Institute convened a bipartisan group of scholars and policy advisers to write a series of memos…

For educator preparation programs (EPPs) to produce effective teachers, they must engage in a process of continuous improvement using timely, high-quality information about the performance of their respective graduates in the classroom as measured by student outcomes. While states have the capacity to provide this information through their…

In today's world, much of what used to be individual work has become collaborative. Moreover, complex change initiatives often require individuals within and across organizations to team up to set and achieve meaningful goals. The role of researchers and evaluators is to offer support that can be used to strengthen the work of organizations and…

This case discusses early work to implement the Common Core State Standards at a fictitious school in Florida. The case is designed to support students' efforts to use school accountability data for inquiry and to conceptualize change in schools where previous leaders' efforts were not successful. Shell Elementary is an exurban school that serves…