Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning (Corwin Mathematics Series)

by Peter Liljedahl

Triangulating data means that we are gathering data from multiple sources in order to seek correspondence within the data. Correspondence indicates that you are getting close to the truth about what a student has learned. So, if a student’s performance on a test corresponds with the evidence gathered in an observation, you have correspondence and you are close to having a true measure of what that student knows. Once you have correspondence between two forms of data, then you can stop. Additional data from the third data form will either be redundant and unnecessary or an outlier you can disregard. Only if the first two data forms do not produce correspondence will you need to go to the third. Triangulating data means that we are gathering data from multiple sources in order to seek correspondence within the data. Correspondence indicates that you are getting close to the truth about what a student has learned. So, if the correspondence is between a test and a conversation, the final grade will be equivalent to that of the grade the student received on the test. This is not to say that all the data come only from the test—it only means that equivalence, as a product of correspondence, exists.

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