Assessment Literacy, Data Use, and Teacher Decision-making: A Feasible Balance?

Together with the spread of standardized assessment, there is a relevant growth of systems and technologies aimed to store, manage, analyse, and report data on student performance. Despite the broad recognition of advisability of using data on student learning for decision-making (at educational policy and practice levels) data use of instructional decision-making is not widely recognized. Few research studies, indeed, have tried to understand what schools and teachers do with data on student learning. Given these assumptions, the present papers reports on an attempt realized in the Italian school system to implement an interim assessment. A light professional development path has been designed and implemented with the aim to improve teacher assessment literacy, data use, and instructional decision-making. The teacher inquiry path, through the implementation of the interim assessment system, involved 37 primary school teachers. The present paper reports the main aspects of this path and critically reflects on how to support teacher assessment literacy and data use.