Event highlight: Using data to improve learning

10 November 2020
picture for the event
Credit: World Bank Photo Collection

On October 29, 2020, NORRAG and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) hosted the 4th webinar for the KIX EAP hub on "Using data to improve learning: Engaging with policy and reform." The webinar brought together 128 participants from 38 countries to discuss the use of data to define, measure, understand and improve learning outcomes. There was simultaneous interpretation in Russian and Arabic.

Against the backdrop of the global learning crisis, Dr Elizabeth Cassity, Senior Research Fellow at ACER, briefly discussed the work that ACER has been engaged in. Jeanine Spink, Research Director of the Education and Development Program at ACER, facilitated the discussion on 'defining and measuring learning'. Dr Tim Friedman, Senior Research Fellow at ACER, explored 'Understanding learning' through cognitive instruments which help measure achievement and, contextual instruments which help explain achievement. Finally, Professor Pauline Taylor-Guy, the director of the ACER Institute and Centre for School and System Improvement, discussed 'Improving learning' and stressed that the ultimate goal of school improvement is to enhance academic and well-being outcomes for all students.

Lively discussions took place across the webinar on: (i) how qualitative data can be overlooked; (ii) the streamlining between national and regional/global learning assessment systems; (iii) the impact of cognitive and non-cognitive student characteristics on learning measurement, and; (iv) the low investment on teachers' use of learning data.

Watch the replay here:

Next on the KIX EAP Webinar series:

25 November 2020 (9:00 – 10:30 AM Geneva/CET) in partnership with UNESCO Bangkok: Curriculum implementation - competency-based learning and the alignment of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Please register here.

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