Toward Understanding How Frames Shape, and Are Shaped by, Teachers' Interpretation of Interim Assessment Data

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Investigating Teachers' Understanding and Use of Assessment Data

Abstract

Conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research on data use in education indicates teachers’ beliefs, understandings, and process models shape how they make sense of data. However, such research does not explicitly account for how teachers’ interpretation of assessment data in turn reinforces and challenges their underlying beliefs, understandings, and process models. In the present study, I draw on the data-frame theory of sensemaking to model and explore how teachers’ existing understandings shape, and are in turn shaped by, how they make sense of data. Mixed methods integrated findings suggest teachers broadly understand students as achievers and learners with implications for how they notice and interpret interim assessment data. Furthermore, teachers elaborate, preserve, and reframe these understandings in response to new information.

Author

• Austin Jennings, DiplomaSender