Conference Program

Expectations for schools to use data from multiple sources to improve the education they provide have been increasing globally (Verger & Skedsmo, 2021). What counts as data in education has expanded beyond standardised national large-scale assessments. Within the Italian school autonomy and accountability system, schools are expected to analyse and reflect on data provided by central administration as well as data produced locally to support pedagogical and organisational improvement.
This research investigates how schools engage with such data, including INVALSI national large-scale assessment tests, schools’ interim assessments and self-evaluation reports, as well as grades, demographic information, and more. The study asks how Italian schools and their actors conceptualise and engage with different types of data in practice, data use purposes and enabling conditions.
In 2016, Pastori and Pagani reported growing trust but difficulty in using national assessment data. Several years later, with a fully operational national school evaluation system, Italian schools appear to interact with data from multiple sources at varying levels of intensity. This study therefore examines the extent to which data-use processes and routines are present in Italian schools, what actors consider to be data, and what attitudes they hold towards its role in organisational and pedagogical improvement.
The analysis examines how school organisational and political contexts, individual factors, and the accountability system mediate data use, and whether and how data informs pedagogical and organisational decision-making. Attention is given to collaboration, collective reflection, and shared spaces and time within schools to understand how data are interpreted by school actors and how they contribute to decision-making processes.
The study adopts an understanding of policy as enacted, interpreted and reconfigured by local actors rather than neutrally implemented (Ball et al., 2012). It draws on conceptualisations of data use in education (Coburn and Turner, 2011; Spillane, 2012), engages with the notion of data-informed rather than strictly data-based decision-making (Schildkamp et al., 2019), and considers the potential role of data use in supporting equity-oriented practices (Datnow & Park, 2018).
Methodologically, this qualitative study draws on interviews (n=88) and focus groups (n=13) with principals, leadership teams, and teachers, and school document analysis in ten comprehensive primary and lower-secondary schools in Rome, of different socio-economic contexts.
Preliminary findings suggest a limited and heterogeneous presence of structured data-use practices. Organisational constraints and uneven levels of data literacy appear to constitute important barriers to sustained engagement with data. Often, data provide evidence for already known issues and are experienced as legitimising action to address them. More rarely, data are used to inform decision-making that fully exploits school autonomy to address equity issues. While schools express interest in using data to better understand student needs and inequalities, systematic processes supporting equity-oriented data use remain unevenly embedded in school practices.
This study contributes empirical evidence on data use practices in a Southern European low-stakes accountability context still relatively underexplored in the literature. It also advances understanding of how organisational conditions, data literacy, and collaborative practices shape data-informed decision-making and the potential use of data for equity-oriented purposes.