THE POWER OF SOUND DATA
Sound Data removes the noise from data, enabling educators to make more meaningful impact.
The first data use infrastructure platform allowing teachers to accurately analyse student achievement data, with coaching for high confidence decision making, to improve teaching and student outcomes.
Sound Data has evolved over the last two decades from the personal data-driven leadership of Darcy Fawcett and the ‘It Worked! Data analysis made easy’ project he implemented in the Tūranganui a Kiwa Gisborne Community of Learning (CoL). Sound Data is now available across New Zealand in the Education as well as other sectors.
Data Driven Leadership
Sound Data began at Gisborne Boys’ High School when Darcy was Head of the Science Department. In 2013 he introduced research-level methods of inquiry and data analysis into the department’s efforts to improve their teaching. Find out more about how their teaching initiatives significantly enhanced NCEA outcomes in e-learning in Level 1 – 3 Physics Investigations and Closing the Gap in Level 1 Science. His efforts led to Woolf Fisher Teaching fellowship for “excellence in educational leadership and ‘in-school’ practice” and a trip to Finland to present at EARLI2017, the 17th Biennial European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction.
‘It Worked! Data analysis made easy’
In 2014 Darcy began to coach other curriculum leaders at Gisborne Boys’ High School who wanted to develop their own data-driven teaching initiatives. In 2018 Darcy was appointed as an Across-Community Teacher in the Tūranganui a Kiwa Gisborne Community of Learning and was awarded one of The Education Hub’s inaugural Bright Spots Awards to support the introduction of data-driven inquiry into the Gisborne CoL. Find out more about how primary, intermediate and secondary schools can use data to improve their practice in our Data Stories section including It worked! Data analysis made easy, Year 2 and 3 Split Level classes, Reading Approaches in Year 7 and 8, Wananga in Level 1 Art and Maths and Innovative Learning Environments.
Data-use infrastructure
The major challenges revealed during It worked! were to do with data-literacy and data infrastructure. The Sound Data online dashboards, data-driven inquiry cycle and workshops meet these challenges.
TEACHER-FRIENDLY ONLINE DASHBOARDS
We’re the only platform using longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses to create statistically valid conclusions from source data. We filter out the noise and flag the trends and changes that only have a 5% chance of being noise. Currently, most decisions are made on trends that are not reflective of the real state of things. Flawed data can lead to flawed decisions.
THE DATA-INFORMED TEACHING INITIATIVE CYCLE
Once you have a statistically valid signal a change is occurring / has occurred, the next step is to interpret the data to understand what elements may have changed, and form a hypothesis. We coach and empower teachers to identify, isolate and interrogate factors, and create plans to implement and evaluate interventions.
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WORKSHOPS
Teaching is an evolving and collaborative discipline. The way we improve is by experimentation and iteration, by identifying successful initiatives and sharing and implementing them widely. Our workshops help educators isolate excellence and apply it within a department, and across departments.
MEAINGFUL IMPACT
When high confidence decisions are based on statistically valid data, magic happens. By concentrating effort where it’s most needed, you can create outsize results in student and teaching outcomes. Teachers are always working hard. By focusing effort where it is truly most needed, and standardising excellence, you can create the most impact, and make meaningful change.