Talking about data: an analysis of data-team conversations and principals’ influence on them

School principals are increasingly responsible for acting as instructional leaders, but research on data teams typically considers principals as secondary players responsible for ensuring that meetings occur but not necessarily for their quality. We investigated how elementary school principals in one district committed to data use influenced data team conversations.

In this study, we analyze observation data of 34 data-team meetings held in four elementary schools in one rural district.

We found that principals regularly dominated the data-team meetings, strongly influencing decisions related to students discussed, how they were discussed and what decisions were made as a result. Moreover, data-team decisions seldom resulted in actual instructional change but instead most regularly ended by “staying the course.”

There are a number of implications to consider as a result of the many squandered opportunities to leverage data to lead instructional change. This study is one of the few to focus on how principals influence (and can limit) data-team conversations about students and instructional response.