Portrait of a Graduate: Data Analysis
This process is designed for steering committees to use once they have collected community feedback and want to use this data to create a representative Portrait of a Graduate (PoG).Â
This procedural guide will help teams process, make meaning, and utilize the feedback collected during the Seek Community Input phase of the PoG process.
To use community partner feedback in creating language for the Portrait of a Graduate.
Below are the iterative steps that support the process of taking community feedback and developing a cohesive and representative Portrait of a Graduate. This is an overview of the six steps that are then explained in more detail in this document.
- Collect feedback from community partners. This includes both people in the district and in the wider community. There are many different ways of gathering feedback from the community (focus groups, community forums, surveys). Ideally, the feedback comes from a diverse cross-section of people from across the community.
- Transcribe feedback. Feedback, regardless of the collection format, needs to be recorded in a common document. Maintaining the grouping identifiers is recommended.
- Categorize feedback. Reading through all of the transcribed feedback, repeated ideas and priorities are identified and named. This allows the exhaustive list of feedback to be consolidated into categories.
- Synthesize and build consensus on categories. This is often the work of the steering committee. The group considers the list of categories and then goes through a consensus process in order to theme the list of categories and develop PoG language.
- Gather community feedback on categories. This drafted PoG is then shared with community partners again. Often a survey is used for this second round of feedback.
- Finalize portrait language. Responses from the survey are then used to modify and finalize the PoG.
Take an equity pause. Consider who you have heard from and who is missing. Consider how to solicit and include these perspectives. When collecting feedback from partners, it’s imperative that the steering committee plans engagement opportunities and accommodations for individuals that may otherwise be marginalized from the process. This includes, but is not limited to, families and community members who speak a primary language other than English, families or caregivers for whom childcare is a barrier, individuals that work atypical hours, and more. One way of supporting a more inclusive feedback process is to collect feedback in more than just one way (i.e. offering both surveys as well as community forums), as well as having translators, child care, and food available.
This is the process of taking all of the different sources of feedback collected during the Seek Community Input phase and inputting it into one platform. This is as simple as typing up the responses in an Excel spreadsheet. A Word document may also be used, however, using spreadsheets allows for more sorting and filtering capabilities, which is often useful in the next two steps of the process. It is important to write exactly what was said in the feedback collection. Be sure to include any group identifying information (i.e. teachers at a particular school).
If data was collected using written surveys, the transcription process will already be completed. If surveys were used in conjunction with another data collection method, for example community forums, then you will want to integrate the 2+ data sets into one at this step in the process so they will all be categorized together.
Once the feedback has been transcribed, then the statements are read through multiple times with the lens of identifying common ideas, sentiments, priorities in the feedback. As commonalities arise summary statements are crafted. While there is no exact number of categories, this iterative process of consolidation should be repeated and categories should continue to be clustered together until the analyzing team feels it can no longer be pared down without losing valuable nuance or detail to the data.
This is a template agenda for a steering committee meeting tasked with refining the categories into themed groups.
Materials
- Chart paper
- Sets of category statement cards with individual statements on each card. Bring enough sets for each partner group in the steering committee.Â
- Markers
Agenda
| TIME | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| 3 minutes |
Directions and Introduction:Â
•Welcome the group and let them know that the goal of the meeting is to draft themed groupings of statements that will then be shared with the community for feedback. •The group will go through a consensus building process to determine the themes for the PoG. |
| 10 minutes |
Theming Round One:Â
•Divide the people into pairs •Each pair will be given a set of the identified categories cut up on individual cards. •Together the partners will sort the categories into groups. •They will label each group with a title. Note: It is helpful to have teams complete their sorts on chart paper so that when groups combine, they are able to move their work relatively easily. |
| 15 minutes |
Theming Round Two:
•Partners will be grouped together to form groups of four. •Each pair will share the themed groups they developed and then the two groups will work to come to consensus on groupings of categories and theme titles. |
| 15 minutes |
Theming Round Three:Â
•Two groups of four join together to form groups of eight. •Each group of four will share the themed groupings they developed and then the two groups will work to come to consensus on groupings of categories and theme titles. |
| 15 minutes |
Theming Round Four:Â
•The entire group comes together and shares their current themed groupings and titles. •A final consensus building discussion between the whole group will hopefully then result in drafted language for the PoG attributes and possibly descriptors. |
| 2 minutes |
Wrap Up:
•Thank participants for participating. •Provide an overview of next steps which includes soliciting feedback on the draft from the community and then returning as a committee to finalize the PoG language. |
This next phase in the PoG process is iterative. Once the steering committee has drafted attributes and descriptors, this recommended language should be shared with the community with the opportunity to collect feedback. A survey is a great method for collecting this phase of feedback from diverse community partners.
Once the feedback on the draft language has been gathered, the draft is then modified and adjusted to incorporate the community feedback.
This resource was produced by the Great Schools Partnership and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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