Building Pre-service Teacher Capacity to Use External Assessment Data: An Intervention Study

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the use of data to inform instructional decision making has become a particularly prominent facet of K–12 educators' professional practice. However, research estimates limited opportunities for preservice teachers to learn how to use data, including standardized test data, for such purposes. In response, this article describes the results of a pretest–posttest study of a 6-hour standardized assessment data use intervention for preservice teachers. The facilitated, collaborative, and highly structured assessment course-embedded intervention engaged preservice teachers in asking and answering four different kinds of questions (e.g., achievement strengths and weaknesses, instructional implications) at five different student levels (e.g., individual, subgroup, school) with external assessment data presented in tables, charts, and score reports. Findings—which include highly favorable preservice teacher perceptions of the intervention's impact on their data-driven decision making skills, and changes in their self-efficacy and data interpretation skills—indicate that the intervention holds promise as a preservice teacher learning mechanism.

Notes

¹ We recognize that a dichotomous conception of assessments as either “internal” or “external” is simplistic (Pellegrino, 2014). By Ruiz-Primo, Shavelson, Hamilton, and Klein's (2002) framework, the data preservice teachers worked with in this study were specifically derived from “distal” and “remote” assessments.

² A post hoc power analysis showed that statistical power for testing the pretest–posttest difference in anxiety was only .42.