Narratives of Data Use in Educational Administration: How Leaders Interpret, Trust, and Act on Digital Data in Pakistan

Abstract

The evolving nature of the digital data systems in the education sector has changed the manner in which the leaders of the institutions perceive information, decision-making, and administrative responsibility. The research explores the stories of educators who utilize data in Pakistani schools and colleges to explore how administrators perceive, believe, and take action with digital data created with the assistance of information systems, analytics dashboard, and reporting tools. The research problem deals with the current sparse knowledge of how leaders conceptualize data-driven governance rather than judging it based on how precise the technicality of the data it operates on is. The main idea of the research was to investigate the experience, beliefs, and stories of leaders on digital information application in administrative decision-making. Using qualitative research design, the data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with both the educational administrators of the public and private institutions. The aim of the research was to hold that institutional culture, accountability pressure and past experience determine the level of trust in data and that the level of trust is bounded by the quality of data, the system of systems and the expectations and demands of the policy. The results suggest that leaders are discriminating when dealing with digital data, incorporating formal measures with professional judgment, situational knowledge, and experience. These conclusions are in line with global studies on the use of data in decision-making as well as providing context-related knowledge in Pakistan. The research findings conclude that the narratives of administrators are core in the determination of how the digital information influences educational governance.

Keywords: Data-driven decision-making; Educational leadership; Trust in data; Narrative sense-making; Digital governance; Pakistan education