What is Data Systems

Educational leaders and teacher educators face a very real dilemma within the current teacher education policy context, as there currently exist numerous accreditation and accountability mandates for which teacher education programs are responsible. Many of these accountability pressures require teacher educators and teacher education programs to provide evidence of consistent data use for continuous program improvement. Teacher education programs are also increasingly responsible for providing evidence-based measures of the quality of their teacher candidates. These data-driven expectations can create additional pressures, stresses, and workload responsibilities for teacher educators and teacher education program leaders. By drawing on the lessons learned from three exemplary teacher education programs, this chapter will discuss the benefits and the challenges related to organizing collaborative data use efforts within teacher education programs for the purpose of fostering teacher candidate development.