Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena
Item
Title
Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena
Abstract/Description
“Data use” and “data-based decision making” are increasingly popular mantras in public policy discourses and texts. Policy makers place tremendous faith in the power of data to transform practice, but the fate of policy makers’ efforts will depend in great measure on the very practice they hope to move. In most conversations about data use, however, relations between data and practice have been underconceptualized. In this essay, I identify and discuss some conceptual and analytical tools for studying data in practice by drawing on work from various theoretical traditions. I explore some ways in which we might frame a research agenda in order to investigate data in everyday practice in schools. My account is centered on schoolhouse work practice, but the research apparatus I consider can be applied to practice in other organizations in the education sector and indeed to interorganizational practice, a critical consideration in the education sector.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Volume
118
Issue
2
Pages
113-141
Resource type
Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form
Published Text
Scholarship genre
Theoretical
Open access/full-text available
Yes
Peer reviewed
Yes
ISSN
0195-6744
DOI
URL
Citation
Spillane, J. P. (2012). Data in Practice: Conceptualizing the Data-Based Decision-Making Phenomena. American Journal of Education, 118(2), 113–141. https://doi.org/10.1086/663283
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