Teacher professional development interventions to promote data use in education

The main goal of the doctoral research is to evaluate the role of professional development interventions (PDIs) to develop teachers’ data literacy for teaching or the ability to use various types of data (information) to inform educational decision-making (‘data use’ for short). This research is conducted in response to the increasing need and pressure for making teaching an evidence-based profession and for continuous educational improvement. In particular, the aims of the research focus on 1) evaluating the effectiveness of the PDIs, 2) investigating the characteristics of online teacher professional development (OTPD) for data use that may promote or hinder teachers’ willingness to participate in them, and 3) examining the predictors of teachers’ individual-characteristics on the degree of data use practice. The main findings of two systematic literature reviews, a meta-analysis, a discrete choice experiment and a decision tree analysis show that supporting teachers through effective PDIs leads to increased student learning outcomes. It is also found that the characteristics of the interventions determine both the effectiveness of the PDIs and teachers’ willingness to participate in them. Furthermore, teachers with more pedagogical knowledge are likely to practice data use more frequently. Finally, given that there exist many influencing factors, there is a need for a systems approach to PDIs to promote data use by using a systematic process of data use and involving multiple stakeholders, tools and resources.