Data can be a language of care if we learn how to listen to it. Cognia’s Accreditation Engagement Review (AER) in 2022 challenged us to do just that: to analyze data systematically, align professional development with learner needs, and use evidence to inform program evaluation and continuous improvement. 

For readers new to the process, the AER is the cornerstone of Cognia’s international accreditation model—a rigorous on-site evaluation conducted every five years, followed by a Mid-Cycle Review in which schools reflect on their progress. Cognia uses the i3 rubric to gauge how practices evolve: from Initiation to Improvement to Impact and ultimately to Embeddedness, where systems of reflection and evidence become part of a school’s identity. 

This particular area of improvement encompassed three interconnected standards—using data in decision-making (Standard 24), fostering teacher inquiry and action research (Standard 25), and aligning professional learning with learner needs (Standard 29). We approached them as one living system. 

A central part of this work has been our use of eleot—Cognia’s Effective Learning Environments Observation Tool—a classroom observation framework that helps educators document and reflect on student engagement, learning climate, and instructional practices. At the Waldorf School of Jordan, we have reimagined eleot not as an evaluative instrument, but as a shared learning tool: a way for teachers to observe, analyze, and learn from one another in an atmosphere of trust and openness. Over the past two years, we have completed more than eight hundred eleot observations, turning peer observation into a language of collegiality and professional growth. 

At the same time, our professional learning has become deeply tied to curriculum and student data: from AP and Pre-AP programs to Mindset Mathematics and the Core Knowledge Humanities sequence. 

In the following narrative, we share how these initiatives—and the culture of transparency and inquiry they inspired—have brought us to the threshold of embedded practice, transforming WSJ into a school that not only teaches, but learns itself. 

For a full explanation of WSJ’s Cognia journey, including the larger context for this improvement area, check out our post Toward Greater Clarity and Growth: Our Cognia Accreditation Journey.

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Waldorf’s Narrative Report on Priority Area for Improvement 3 

“You will not be good teachers if you focus only on what you do and not upon who you are.”—Rudolf Steiner 

When the 2022 AER urged us to strengthen the use of data in professional learning and continuous improvement, we recognized that the message reached deeper than technique. It touched on who we are as a learning community. At Waldorf, we have long been guided by intuition, collegial trust, and the moral imagination of teaching. The evaluators’ finding challenged us to translate that inner life into an outer architecture—to make reflection visible, to systematize inquiry, and to learn how to learn from ourselves and from one another. 

The timing was again fateful. We were still emerging from pandemic disruptions and simultaneously building our new high-school program. Rather than view these as competing priorities, we saw an opportunity to weave them together: to rebuild our professional culture around evidence, reflection, and collaboration, and to make data not a constraint but a conversation. 

Cognia Performance Standard 24: Using Data Intelligently and Humanely 

Our first step was to create a living system of evidence that honors both precision and perspective. Over the past three years we have built a multi-source data ecosystem that integrates academic, behavioral, and contextual insight: 

• Academic Data: Diagnostics at the start of each year in English, Math, and Arabic establish baselines; PSAT 8/9 and 10, Pre-AP, and AP results track longitudinal progress; classroom matrices and rubrics document growth in real time. 

• Wellbeing Data: Expanded counseling and student-life teams collect and interpret behavioral and socio-emotional patterns to inform interventions. 

• Qualitative Data: Feedback from family-teacher conferences, student council petitions, and eleot observations provide narrative evidence of culture and climate. 

Leadership now reads these data not as numbers in isolation but as stories in dialogue. Regular grade-level and subject-level meetings examine trends, compare evidence, and decide on strategic actions—from resource allocation to curriculum pacing to teacher coaching. This rhythm of analysis has transformed decision-making from reactive to reflective. 

The results are tangible. Assessment analysis led to the adoption of Mindset Mathematics in Grades 1-6, revisions to our Arabic and Science readers, and early-literacy initiatives based on phonological-awareness data. Report cards were redesigned to serve as year-round tracking tools visible to students and teachers alike. Every decision now links back to evidence—but never at the expense of judgment. We have learned that data are only as moral as the conversations they inspire. 

Cognia Performance Standard 25: Action Research and Professional Inquiry 

To deepen reflection and collegial learning, we adopted Cognia’s eleot as a cornerstone of our professional-growth system. Our goal was not surveillance, but self-study. We wanted observation to become a habit of mind—a way to see our teaching and one another anew. 

We committed to making eleot certification universal. Today, 53 of our approximately 80 teachers are certified observers; new staff enter a mentored pathway toward the same goal. Over the past two years we have conducted approximately 800 eleot observations, averaging one every other day. Each observation is shared openly on our digital platforms so that any teacher can learn from any classroom. 

This openness has redefined our notion of professional credibility. Observation is no longer a test of compliance but an act of trust. Teachers visit one another’s classes, exchange feedback, and study patterns in the aggregate data to identify shared priorities for improvement. Leadership then uses those findings to shape schoolwide PD themes and resource allocation. 

The cultural impact has been profound. A sense of collegial courage has replaced the old privacy of classroom walls. As teachers open their practice to their peers, students witness adults modeling the very habits we ask of them: openness, candor, and the understanding that mistakes are materials for growth. 

The eleot system operates in concert with our four annual Teacher Team Days, shared planning folders, and peer-coaching cycles. Together these structures form a continuous inquiry loop: observe → analyze → plan → act → reflect. They have turned what was once a series of isolated workshops into a living culture of action research. 

Cognia Performance Standard 29: Aligning Professional Learning 

We next focused on aligning professional learning directly with student data and curriculum goals. The lesson from our earlier efforts was clear: professional development is most powerful when it grows from the curriculum itself and from the students who inhabit it. 

Our strategic identity as an AP and Pre-AP school has made this alignment natural and sustainable. Teachers participate in dozens of College Board Summer Institutes and workshops each year, while others engage in Pre-AP training and subject-specific PD aligned to our AP course offerings. These sessions do not exist in a vacuum; their lessons feed directly back into classroom practice through eleot observation and team discussion. 

Similarly, our adoption of Mindset Mathematics, the reform of our Arabic curriculum, and the integration of the Core Knowledge Humanities sequence (Grades 1-8) were guided by a dual criterion: the availability of rich PD ecosystems and their alignment with student learning data. We no longer choose programs and then seek training; we choose programs because they teach us how to teach better. 

Professional learning is now organized around a documented cycle of selection, delivery, implementation, and evaluation. Program Heads and eleot leaders monitor fidelity and impact by reviewing lesson plans, student work, and classroom data. Feedback from teachers and students feeds into subsequent planning. Each PD initiative thus becomes a micro-cycle of continuous improvement—alive, visible, and accountable. 

The outcome is a faculty that is not merely trained but transformed: a professional community whose learning rhythm mirrors that of its students. 

Over time, the boundaries between these three standards have blurred into one coherent system of growth. Data informs leadership decisions (Standard 24); leadership nurtures a culture of inquiry (Standard 25); inquiry generates professional learning (Standard 29); and professional learning feeds back into new data and decisions. It is a self-renewing cycle of learning and reflection. 

The results are visible across the school: greater consistency of instructional language across departments; more confident teachers who see themselves as researchers; and students who feel the benefit of teaching that is responsive, coherent, and alive to their needs. In leadership terms, we now operate in what Cognia’s i³ Rubric describes as the Sustainability band, approaching Embeddedness. Yet we see this not as an end point but as proof of life—a culture that thinks about its thinking. 

Rudolf Steiner’s words at the top of this report remind us that good teaching flows from character as much as from method. Our journey since 2022 has been less about perfecting what we do than about deepening who we are as a professional community. We have built systems that help us see ourselves clearly and structures that invite us to grow together. Through data, dialogue, and trust, we have learned to listen to the evidence of our own practice—and to let that evidence teach us. 

In the spirit of Steiner and in the language of our own school, we might say: our greatest achievement is not that we have learned to measure better, but that we have learned to see ourselves as learners. The story of our data is the story of our becoming.