We undertook a research project consisting of four interrelated studies, in order to shed light on ways educational professionals make sense and make use of educational data in general and school performance feedback in particular. Theoretical insights illuminate why a sensemaking perspective is an appropriate and valuable lens to study data use.…

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a widely adopted non-parametric technique for evaluating R&D performance. However, traditional DEA models often struggle to provide reliable solutions in the presence of data uncertainty. To address this limitation, this study develops a novel robust super-efficiency DEA approach to evaluate R&D…

A shifting policy landscape in Australian teacher education has led to the introduction of teaching performance assessment tasks in initial teacher education degrees, foregrounding data literacy practices. The aim of this research was to explore pre-service teachers' uses of data to inform and evaluate their teaching practice as demonstrated in…

In this article, we discuss the potential of a critical approach to standardized tests and their results. In particular, we explore and discuss this potential not only for the assessment of students' mathematical competence, but also for teachers' professional development. We identify and describe two kinds of potential: the Informational…

The research reports how a particular school reform initiative--'Project 600'--constituted students in one school region Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon topological understandings of power and recent work on the visualisation of data in education, as well as the insights of key staff involved in the project, we reveal the complex and…

Digital skills are increasingly important for labour market outcomes and social participation. Do they also matter for academic performance? This paper investigates the effects of digital literacy on educational outcomes by merging data from the Italian National Assessment in secondary schools with an original data-set on performance tests of…

In educational technology and learning sciences, there are multiple uses for a predictive model of whether a student will perform a task correctly or not. For example, an intelligent tutoring system may use such a model to estimate whether or not a student has mastered a skill. We analyze the significance of data recency in making such…

For years California has been a leader in public education. In 1999, the state implemented some of the strongest content standards in the country through its main accountability metric, the Academic Performance Index (API). The state has also signed onto the Common Core State Standards, taking important steps to ensure its students are college-…

This article describes the use of documentation by teachers and their children with pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) to develop skills of self-determination. Visual feedback, such as photos and video, help teachers plan and children evaluate their performance in social situations, such as finding a friend to play with at recess. This…

In 1998, the California legislature passed Senate Bill SB 2042 which replaced the previous teacher certification legislation. The new law required that all elementary and secondary teacher certification programs in the State of California align their programs with new teaching standards. These standards included Teacher Performance Expectations…

Providing remedial (also known as developmental) education is the primary way colleges cope with students who do not have the academic preparation needed to succeed in college-level courses. Remediation is widespread, with nearly one-third of entering freshman taking remedial courses at a cost of at least $1 billion per year. Despite its…

The following study interprets the results of a research carried out in 2008 in Romania, on a smaller sample. The aim of the study is the analysis of the text comprehension skills of 14 year old pupils, and the presentation of the connections with the social background, learning styles and school performance. The gathering of the data was…

Explores secondary school staffs' use of value added data, summarizing evidence emerging from other studies on how value added data are used by schools and questions this raises. The paper discusses findings and issues that emerged from a recent National Foundation for Educational Research-funded project that explored the potential role of value…

In 2004 the Australian Flexible Learning Framework developed a suite of quantitative and qualitative indicators on the uptake, use and impact of e-learning in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. These indicators were used to design items for a survey to gather quantitative data for benchmarking. A series of four surveys gathered…

In this study, we examined the use of cognitive tools provided in a problem-based hypermedia learning environment for sixth graders. Purposes were to understand how the built-in tools were used, and if tool use was associated with different problem-solving stages. Results showed that tools supporting cognitive processing and sharing cognitive load…