Data analysis

Students miss school for a whole range of different reasons, such as illness, suspension, or family holidays. Today, we’ll be speaking with Kirsten Hancock, Honorary Research Associate from Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia about how different types of absences affect student outcomes, and what families and schools can do to tailor their support to students who are missing school.

As a school leader, how do you apply research in education to your practice? How does it inform the goals and progress of your school? This month at Teacher, we’ve been digging into the research to bring you updates from Australia and abroad. Catch up on these stories in today’s podcast.

In his second article on data-driven school improvement, Patrick Sanders from Brighton Grammar School shares examples of how staff have used data to influence decision-making and improve the teaching, learning and wellbeing of the school community.

In the first of two articles on data-driven school improvement, Patrick Sanders (Associate Head of the Crowther Centre, Curriculum and Assessment at Brighton Grammar School) shares the steps that have been taken to capture better quality, and more actionable, data to inform decision-making.

At Skillset Senior College, a senior secondary school educating young people experiencing barriers to schooling, Dr Martin Hughes has been investigating the efficacy of the wellbeing and mental health strategies they have in place. Here, he shares more about his research and some of the early findings.

In this Q&A we speak with Dr Katie Richardson about looking at student assessment data from different angles, identifying patterns in data, and why working collaboratively to interpret assessment data is a useful technique.

Our connections with others have an influence on our own behaviour. Social networks form in lots of different contexts, including at school and in the workplace. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is now offering insights into these important, but often invisible relationships.

Genazzano FCJ College’s Mary Jones shares her experience of being involved in a Data Collective with three other schools, and how the support of Lyn Sharratt has helped to strengthen staff use of data to drive learning and teaching.

Primary school principal Lorraine Evans believes every child can learn – maybe not at the same pace or in the same way, but everyone can learn. Here, she explains how this attitude to learning led to a dramatic turnaround in student results.

In a fortnightly series, Teacher has been taking a closer look at some of the Gonski recommendations and highlighting existing work happening in Australian schools. This final instalment focuses on assessment of student learning.