Considering Performance Tasks

When considering my performance in teaching and administrative tasks, the first challenge was trying to decide what I would consider administrative versus what I would consider teaching. Many times the two categories intersect and blend together and can be difficult to separate. Below are two charts illustrating how I decided to separate the two, accompanied with the factors involved for each category.

Data-driven Knowledge?

Data

Simply put, knowledge is the ability to apply information in a manner that displays your skills and/or understanding of that particular field or area of study. This would fall in line with the constructivist approach of knowledge where one selects the necessary information and then is able to "construct" their knowledge to display their understanding. In knowledge, information "comes alive" since it is applied to help solve a problem, address an issue, create alternative solutions, etc.

Data is an essential element for creating information and producing knowledge, but on its own it is simply symbols, words, or numbers waiting to be applied by the practitioner. For example, I may be presented with a list of literary terms. This list would be the data. I then can research the terms and discover their definitions and begin to see how they can be meaningful to my learning. This is information. Now, if I learned the terms and definitions by heart, it may appear I am knowledgeable of literary terms. However, recall is not really knowledge. Additionally, recall in the 21st century does not appear as impressive as it might have ten or twenty years ago (although it works well in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit). But if I was then asked to apply those terms to an analysis of a poem or short story, that is when the information "comes alive," and where I would illustrate my level of knowledge of those terms.