Data use as the heart of data literacy: an exploration of pre-service teachers' data literacy practices in a teaching performance assessment

A shifting policy landscape in Australian teacher education has led to the introduction of teaching performance assessment tasks in initial teacher education degrees, foregrounding data literacy practices. The aim of this research was to explore pre-service teachers’ uses of data to inform and evaluate their teaching practice as demonstrated in their Graduate Teacher Performance Assessment task. To do so, we drew on a pool of 37 assessment responses and a group interview held with six assessors and moderators of the task, analysing these through the Data Literacy for Teachers framework. In our analysis, we identified data use as both a central element of this framework and an area in need of further support, as illustrated by some pre-service teachers’ tendency to “throw all the data in”. Our research also confirms the importance of teaching-related knowledge to effectively use data. The findings suggest that such models can be useful for teacher education curriculum renewal in light of increasing requirements for teachers to be data literate. A revision to the model is also suggested, moving away from a linear approach and instead centring data use as the heart of data literacy