Editorial

This edition of IE continues to highlight the professional voice and expertise of educators.

IEUA Federal Secretary Chris Watt calls on federal and state governments to cease undermining the professional voice of teachers and disregarding their professional expertise (p9).

Many professional teacher regulatory and advisory bodies have continued to appoint very few teachers to their boards and in some cases, are even reducing the numbers of teachers.

In a previous editorial, I referred to one of the fastest growing pressures on teachers and schools, that of data driven performance improvement measures.

This edition takes a closer look at this issue by exploring whether one of the newest ‘tools’ in the data toolbox, data walls, are effective in informing teachers’ decisions and actions to improve learning (p18).

While this method of visualising data isn’t new – first developed in 1990 in the United States as a tool for teachers – it is now being taken up in Australia in highly diverse ways. As with most tools, there is potential for positively motivating teacher inquiry, but also negatively impacting students and teachers.

IE examines the research on the effectiveness to date and finds there is at present only limited evidence to show the impact data walls of differing types have on student learning and their ability to help teachers engage in better decision making about next teaching strategies and goal setting.

Data is also the focus of Dr Misty Adoniou’s article (p28), which examines what happened when teachers’ voices are silenced, and we let others ‘read’ the data. She highlights that what is missing from the big data puzzle is the expertise of the teacher.

It’s time to change that!

Deb James

iemagazine@ieu.asn.au