Data Driven Decision-Making in the Era of Accountability: Fostering Faculty Data Cultures for Learning

In this article the authors report findings from a practice-based study that examines the cultural practices of data use among 59 science and engineering faculty from three large, public research universities. In this exploratory study they documented how faculty use teaching-related data "in the wild" using interviews and classroom observations, which were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, exploratory data reduction, and causal network techniques. The study was guided by the following questions: (1) What types of data and other information are used by faculty? (2) What are some defining characteristics regarding faculty data use? (3) Can patterns be discerned in these data practices across the study sample? and (4) What role do these cultural practices and contextual factors play in shaping individual-level practice?