Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena

Item

Title

Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena

Abstract/Description

“Data use” and “data-based decision making” are increasingly popular mantras in public policy discourses and texts. Policy makers place tremendous faith in the power of data to transform practice, but the fate of policy makers’ efforts will depend in great measure on the very practice they hope to move. In most conversations about data use, however, relations between data and practice have been underconceptualized. In this essay, I identify and discuss some conceptual and analytical tools for studying data in practice by drawing on work from various theoretical traditions. I explore some ways in which we might frame a research agenda in order to investigate data in everyday practice in schools. My account is centered on schoolhouse work practice, but the research apparatus I consider can be applied to practice in other organizations in the education sector and indeed to interorganizational practice, a critical consideration in the education sector.

Author/creator

Spillane, James P.

Date

2012

In publication

American Journal of Education

Volume

118

Issue

2

Pages

113-141

Resource type

en Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Theoretical

Open access/full-text available

en Yes

Peer reviewed

en Yes

ISSN

0195-6744

DOI

10.1086/663283

URL

Official Publisher's Webpage (The University of Chicago Press)

Full-text PDF Shared by Author (ResearchGate)

Citation

Spillane, J. P. (2012). Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena. American Journal of Education, 118(2), 113–141. https://doi.org/10.1086/663283

Item sets

OB Citations: Teacher Collaboration in School Improvement

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