Developing Data Leadership: Contextual Influences on Administrators’ Data Use

Abstract

This study aimed to understand administrators’ data leadership influenced by multiple contexts by analyzing interviews with 24 administrators from three Midwestern districts. Findings highlight ways that the accountability movement narrowed administrators’ data leadership. At the same time, the accountability movement was not totalizing, as principals’ teaching backgrounds offered possibilities for alternative narratives to thinking about how data can inform instruction. We conclude with implications for practice around ways to combat the accountability movement’s conceptions of data and provide administrators with knowledge and skills to engage in more holistic data leadership.