Data use is a phenomenon that spans boundaries of disciplines, implicating issues of measurement and assessment, issues of learning and cognition, issues of organizational context and change, and issues of power and politics, among others. Traditionally, scholarship on these different aspects of data use lives in different disciplinary homes. In…

Coburn and Turner's "Research on Data Use: A Framework and Analysis" is a major step forward for educational researchers in the still-young community studying how educational systems are impacted by information tools. Even though the "data" that Coburn and Turner focus on in this paper are largely from traditional assessments, this work has…

One of the central lessons from research on data use in schools and school districts is that assessments, student tests, and other forms of data are only as good as how they are used. But what influences how they are used? This relatively straightforward question turns out to be fairly complex to answer. Data use implicates a number of processes,…