Got Data? Now What?: Creating and Leading Cultures of Inquiry, Feb/2012

With survey questions, group work structures, strategies, and more, this compelling guide will help school teams efficiently gather, interpret, and utilize school data.

Explore three defining challenges that school teams face when gathering, interpreting, and utilizing school data. Complete with survey questions for efficient data collection, suggested group work structures, strategies, and tools—along with essential definitions and descriptions of data types—this compelling guide will help you confront data obstacles to turn struggling committees into powerful communities of learners.

1. Apply each chapter's content with the Exercise Your Learning sections.
2. Learn more about each chapter's topic in the Extend Your Learning sections, which suggest additional websites and resources.
3. Discover relevant, team-related anecdotes in each chapter's Data Story.

About The Authors:

Laura Lipton, EdD, has been a featured speaker at international, national, and state conferences since 1984. She shares her expertise with thousands of educators throughout North America, Central America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. As an international consultant, her writing, research, and seminars focus on effective and innovative instructional practices and on building professional and organizational capacities for enhanced learning. 

Laura engages with schools and school districts, designing and conducting workshops on learning-focused instruction, literacy development, and strategies to support beginning teachers. She facilitates organizational adaptivity and learning through training and development in data-driven dialogue, group development, action research, and learning-focused collaborations. 

Her authored and co-authored publications relate to organizational and professional development, learning-focused schools, and literacy development. Laura’s recent books include Groups at Work, More Than 100 Ways to Learner-Centered Literacy, Data-Driven Dialogue, Making Mentoring Work, Mentoring Matters, and Pathways to Understanding. 

She received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from City University of New York/Herbert Lehman College and a master’s degree in special education and reading instruction from Long Island University and State University of New York/New Paltz. She also holds a doctorate from Fordham University. 

Bruce Wellman, a consultant, has served as a classroom teacher, curriculum coordinator, and staff developer in Oberlin, Ohio, and Concord, Massachusetts, public schools. He consults with school systems and professional groups and organizations throughout North America, presenting workshops and courses for teachers and administrators on the patterns and practices of learning-focused classrooms, learning-focused conversations for supervisors and mentors, presentation skills, and facilitating and developing collaborative groups.

Bruce is author or coauthor of Groups at Work: Strategies and Structures for Professional Learning; Data-Driven Dialogue: A Facilitator’s Guide to Collaborative Inquiry; Learning-Focused Mentoring: A Professional Development Resource Kit; Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide to Learning-Focused Relationships; Pathways to Understanding: Patterns and Practices in the Learning-Focused Classroom; The Adaptive School: A Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups; and How to Make Presentations That Teach and Transform.

He has been honored by the Education Writers Association and National Staff Development Council, and has written for numerous publications on organization and professional development, mentoring, quality teaching, and improving professional cultures.

Bruce holds a BA from Antioch College and an MEd from Lesley College.