Principals’ and Teachers’ Comprehension of School Performance Feedback Reports. Exploring Misconceptions from a User Validity Perspective

Abstract

School performance feedback can be a tool for school improvement. However, when educational professionals do not comprehend the data they are provided with, they will not arrive at valid inferences and correct diagnoses. We interviewed 23 Flemish primary school teachers and principals, asking them to explain authentic feedback from a national assessment. Framework analysis of think-aloud data reveals that participants’ comprehension of typical concepts is clouded by a range of misconceptions. We observed that that visual, verbal and mathematical building blocks in the report can become stumbling blocks. Moreover, misconceptions can be attributed to a certain extent to disconnects between feedback providers’ and feedback users’ frames of reference. These findings have important implications for data providers, considering they have a responsibility to cater to the interpretability of the data they provide.