As Twitter's (or X's) influence permeates aspects of education, researchers must consider how to ethically and effectively leverage the unique types of data that this social media platform offers. This paper provides recommended methodological practice considerations for working with qualitative Twitter data toward the advancement of education…

Digital learning environments are becoming increasingly ubiquitous as a wide range of EdTech products and services enter classrooms and households across the globe. One salient attribute of these environments is their capacity to generate large amounts of data as students interact with the technology. These data logs can help construct a detailed…

Data reflects a series of decisions made by people--and those decisions affect the story that data tells, what it captures, and how it can and should be used to inform decision-making. Because of this, mistrust in data is often the result of incomplete information and a lack of context. This resource breaks down what it means to build trust in…

In recent years, career and technical education (CTE) programs that include quality work-based learning (WBL) opportunities for students have gained significant traction among educators, policymakers, and stakeholders as an effective way to prepare students for the labor market. However, a lack of data on WBL--which many CTE students participate…

LearnSphere is a web-based data infrastructure designed to transform scientific discovery and innovation in education. It supports learning researchers in addressing a broad range of issues including cognitive, social, and motivational factors in learning, educational content analysis, and educational technology innovation. LearnSphere integrates…

The emerging field of Data Science has had a large impact on science and society. This has led to over a decade of calls to establish a corresponding field of Data Science Education. There is still a need, however, to more deeply conceptualize what a field of Data Science Education might entail in terms of scope, responsibility, and execution.…

Because learning from failures is just as important as learning from successes, we used qualitative case study data gathered in the Netherlands and the United States to examine instances in which data teams struggle to contribute to school improvement. Similar factors in both the Dutch and U.S. case hindered the work of the data teams, such as…

State education agencies play critically important roles in promoting research use in education. They influence policy design and implementation, collect data about schools and districts, and can use their statewide reach to advance research use within the state agency and in districts. As Carrie Conaway explains, the states that have done the…

"The Forum Guide to Strategies for Education Data Collection and Reporting (SEDCAR)" was created to provide timely and useful best practices for education agencies that are interested in designing and implementing a strategy for data collection and reporting, focusing on these as key elements of the larger data process. It builds upon…

This dissertation is composed of projects on three aspects of gathering and learning from data in the social sciences: drawing representative samples, taking valid measurement, and making warranted inductive inferences. Chapter one studies the challenge of drawing representative human samples. It is well documented that most samples used by…

When the COVID-19 pandemic drove schools online in March 2020, state education leaders were left without access to data needed to understand how best to support students. The pandemic revealed the strengths and limitations of state education data systems while inspiring new strategies for collecting, reporting and using data. In 2021, DataSmith…

As the education and workforce development community looks more and more to CTE to help ensure students are both college and career ready, understanding and using CTE data and research becomes increasingly important. This is the first in a series of six practitioner training modules developed as part of the Career & Technical Education (CTE)…

This article presents the findings of a systematic qualitative analysis of research in the ethics of digital trace data use in learning and education. From the resulting analysis of 77 peer-reviewed studies, we (1) map the characteristics of research by study type, academic community, institutional setting, and national context; (2) identify the…

Purpose: This paper aims to present a review of case studies on the use of learning analytics in Science, Technology, Engineering, (Arts), and Mathematics (or STE[A]M) education. It covers the features and trends of learning analytics practices as revealed in case studies. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 34 case studies published from 2013…

The "Forum Guide to Metadata" presents and examines the ways in which metadata can be used by education agencies to improve data quality and promote a better understanding of education data. Supported by metadata-related case studies from state and local education agencies, the guide highlights the uses of metadata from a technical point…