Data-Driven Culture Research Quotes

Relational Trust

“Relational trust does not directly affect student learning. Rather, trust fosters a set of organizational conditions, some structural and others social-psychological, that make it more conducive for individuals to initiate and sustain the kinds of activities necessary to affect productivity improvements.”

Critical Attributes that Build Trust Include…

Respect: Genuinely listening and valuing the opinions of others during social discourse that takes place across the school community.
Personal Regard for Others: The willingness of members of a school community to extend themselves beyond what their role might formally require in any given situation. Actions are made in an effort to reduce others’ sense of vulnerability.
Competence: Execution of an individual’s formal responsibilities. There is recognition of the interdependence of our roles in attaining the desired outcome. When negligence or incompetence is allowed to persist in any one role in the school, it undermines trust.
Integrity: Consistency between what a person says and does. Others believe and perceive that a moral-ethical perspective guides one’s work. (Expeditionary Learning, 2011)

Clear Roles and Established Norms

Teams improve their ability to grapple with the critical questions when they clarify the norms that will guide their work. These collective commitments represent the “promises we make to ourselves and others, promises that underpin two critical aspects of teams—commitment and trust” (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993)

Referring back to the norms can help “the members of a group to ‘re-member,’ to once again take out membership in what the group values and stands for; to ‘remember,’ to bring the group back into one cooperating whole” (KeganLahey, 2001)

Explicit team norms help to increase the emotional intelligence of the group by cultivating trust, a sense of group identity, and belief in group efficacy (DruskatWolf, 2001)

In every team, over time, a set of rules is developed for how team members will interact with each other and their team's mission. These rules or norms will form regardless of whether they are effective for the team. In fact, left to develop on their own, some of the ways of interacting and making progress may actually undermine the team's efforts to succeed. (Heathfield, 2013)

Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is critical in establishing a data-driven culture. Often data surfaces realities that are uncomfortable. Students might not be achieving after long months of teacher and student effort. Teachers who feel powerful due to their positive, productive classroom culture might not see data results. Students often arrive far behind grade-level in their skills and knowledge. Teachers who see the expected level of rigor and who become aware of how students align (or don’t) to these high standards may look at the gap and see a chasm – leading some educators to blame students, the system, the test, or be self-critical in unproductive ways. This ailment is a huge obstacle in a data-driven culture.

A growth mindset is the antidote. An educator with a growth mindset looks at the struggles of their students as a surgeon would with a patient. What is the diagnosis? What is the best route of action? How should she follow-up?

The most powerful word in the arsenal of growth mindset educator is the word “yet”: “My students cannot organize a paragraph…yet.” (Expeditionary Learning, 2011)

Equity and Urgency

Rather than asking “what are the correlates of marginally greater success within the parameters of traditional schools?” we are asking “what entirely different parameters for schooling appear to enable far greater numbers of students of all kinds to succeed in ways that are not found within traditional schools.” (Darling-Hammond, 1996)

Highly successful schools focus on high expectations is based on the belief that the natural condition of all children is high performance. They are fiercely committed, not just to holding out high expectations for all children but for achieving high levels of success with all children. The question is not whether it can be done; the only question is how is it to be done for all – not just for a few, some, or many, but for all – of the children in the school. (Scheurich, 1998)