 | Dr. June Ahn Associate Professor Founder & Director | Orange County Educational Advancement Network (OCEAN) https://ocean.education.uci.edu/ |
Supporting students to develop a deeper understanding of mathematics and positive academic identities requires complex shifts in classroom pedagogy. For the past 6 years, I’ve been exploring how to systematically support middle school mathematics teachers in their journey of instructional improvement, with a wide ranging team of scholars across the country (Co-PIs: Paul Cobb, Marsha Ing, Kara Jackson, and Thomas Smith). Our collaborative team has focused on creating a system of practical measures, routines, and representations that support improvement cycles in mathematics teaching. The first idea of practical measures involves creating data that can provide teachers with actionable information, that is finely tuned to help them determine whether changes they make to their practices result in improvements. These practical measures are a different type of data, in contrast to research or accountability measures, that are minimally burdensome to administer, and with resulting data that is easily acted upon.
The second idea of routines focuses our attention on attending to the work-place routines of teachers and instructional coaches, and the protocols and actions they undertake to improve classroom practice. Research by colleagues Paul Cobb, Kara Jackson and others highlight the importance of systematic supports such as instructional coaching techniques, professional development, and teacher learning routines to help mathematics teachers make use of practical measures that support their goals.
Finally, our team at UCI (Dr. June Ahn, Ha Nguyen UCI PhD ‘22) leads the design and study of data visualization tools (e.g. representations) that can be created to support the use of practical measures for instructional improvement. How one designs and presents the measures has key influences on the improvement process. Some visualization choices may hinder the process, and other choices may enhance the process. Our team has published several case studies of how co-designing data visualization tools with our partner teachers both (a) creates data representations that aid in teacher sensemaking of their practice and (b) expands the theoretical framework of designers of learning analytics, to not only design graphs/charts/visualizations from purely cognitive perspectives, but also from a deeper appreciation of the work of teachers.
We are showing the field of design and learning analytics, how one might attend to organizational, cultural, political, and social contexts of teachers and coaches, and how to create tools that better cater to local needs. Ultimately, we are forwarding new design research practices that blend frameworks from research-practice partnerships (RPPs), improvement science, and human-centered design.
For more information on our work, please see the following links and papers:
Ahn, J., Campos, F., Hays, M., & DiGiacomo, D. (2019). Designing in Context: Reaching beyond Usability in Learning Analytics Dashboard Design. Journal of Learning Analytics, 6(2), 70-85. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2019.62.5
Ahn, J., Campos, F., Nguyen, H., Hays, M., & Morrison, J. (2021, April). Co-designing for privacy, transparency, and trust in K-12 learning analytics. In LAK21: 11th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (pp. 55-65). https://doi.org/10.1145/3448139.3448145
Ahn, J., Nguyen, H., & Campos, F. (2021). From visible to understandable: Designing for teacher agency in education data visualizations. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 21(1), 155-186. https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/215720/
Campos, F. C., Ahn, J., DiGiacomo, D. K., Nguyen, H., & Hays, M. (2021). Making Sense of Sensemaking: Understanding How K–12 Teachers and Coaches React to Visual Analytics. Journal of Learning Analytics, 8(3), 60-80. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2021.7113
Nguyen, H., Campos, F., & Ahn, J. (2021). Discovering Generative Uncertainty in Learning Analytics Dashboards. In Visualizations and Dashboards for Learning Analytics (pp. 457-475). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81222-5_21
Nguyen, H., Campos, F., & Ahn, J. Expanding the Design Space of Data and Action in Education: What Co-designing with Educators Reveal about Current Possibilities and Limitations. In Data Visualization, Dashboards, and Evidence Use in Schools: Data Collaborative Workshop (p. 85).