Towards a culture of inquiry for data use in schools: Breaking down professional learning barriers through intentional interruption

•Real professional learning is about making changes to thinking and practice.•Human beings fall prey to cognitive biases that work to impede new learning.•We describe how a number of cognitive biases emerge in a professional learning context.•We describe how data-use can help to interrupt the cognitive biases.

Real professional learning is about making changes to thinking and practice. Data-use has the potential to yield real professional learning when it interrupts the status-quo. However, people have a natural propensity to avoid new learning by transforming the world to fit what is already in their minds, rather than changing their mental structures to fit new information. Cognitive biases work to preserve the status-quo and impede new learning. Data-use can interrupt the cognitive biases, but only if informed by knowledge of how these biases work. This article describes a number of cognitive biases, how they emerge in a professional learning context, and how data-use within a culture of inquiry can intentionally interrupt the biases to lead to authentic professional learning.