School-University Partnership for Evidence-Driven School Improvement in Estonia

Abstract

It has been acknowledged that evidence-driven practices may lead schools to improved instructional practices, student learning, or organizational improvement; still the evidence is underused by the teachers or school leaders. This study focuses on analyzing how to strengthen the evidence-driven school improvement in school-university partnership programs. Five schools learnt over a period of one school year in collaboration with the university coaches how to collect evidence in classroom and organizational level for improvement process. The results of our study illustrate profiles of the schools based on the usage of data-informed evidence, research-based evidence, or both to make decisions in the instructional and organizational level. Enablers and barriers of data use from the perspective of organizational, user, and data characteristics to implement evidence-driven practices are discussed.

Exploring the Perceptions of Estonian Teachers’ Data Use in School Development

“…Unlike data, information has 'meaning, relevance and purpose by contextualizing, calculating, connecting and summarizing data' [8] (p. 482). This information can further be used as evidence: a type of information that helps assess the truth or the validity of any possible claim [19]. In Estonian, however, these terms are often used interchangeably, which may cause confusion.…”

The Patterns of School Improvement in Digitally Innovative Schools

“…Evidence-based school improvement practices are needed to guide these interwoven processes in digitally innovative schools. Vanari et al (2020) have demonstrated that when schools are scaffolded with frameworks and tools to plan, monitor and evaluate their digital maturity (e.g. Ilomäki & Lakkala, 2018), the evidence-driven practices are more widely adopted as part of the school improvement process.…”