Expectations for schools to use data from a variety of sources to improve the education they offer have been increasing globally (Verger & Skedsmo, 2021). Over time, what data is and means has expanded from only considering standardised national large-scale assessments. In the Italian school autonomy and accountability system, schools’ own analysis and reflection about data both received from central administration and produced locally are expected to be used for didactic and organizational improvement. In this research, the use by schools of internally and externally produced data of organisational, administrative, assessment, pedagogic nature and beyond is analysed. These include national tests, schools’ self-evaluation reports, grades, teacher observation, demographic data, and more. Research on data use in the Italian context is particularly limited. Specifically, no research has been conducted following the conceptualization of data going beyond national assessment data. Pastori and Pagani (2016) report a growing trust in the validity of data from national assessments results, but difficulty in making use of it because of time, skills necessary to analyse data, and lack of habit in engaging is such processes. This research seeks to understand to what extent and how data use processes and routines happen in Italian schools, what facilitates them, what schools consider as data and their attitudes towards it. The paper specifically analyses how school organizational and political context, individual factors, and the accountability system mediate data use, and whether and how data influences pedagogical and organizational decisions in schools. This study uses data use conceptualisations and frameworks (Coburn and Turner, 2011; Spillane, 2012) to study data use in education in a specific Southern-European low-stakes accountability context. It places emphasis on the use of data for equity purposes (Datnow & Park, 2018), through a conceptual model for critical data-driven decision making (Dodman et al., 2021), and embraces the notion of data-informed decision making rather than data-based decision making (Schildkamp et al., 2019). Methodologically, this qualitative study uses interviews of principals and teachers in 12 primary and lower-secondary schools, selected to guarantee variety of socio-economic context, in the city of Rome. Expected results include limited structured use of data, positive attitudes regarding conceptualization of data beyond national assessment results, organizational and data literacy barriers for data use. It is also anticipated that ideas of data use include data use to increase equity, but that processes for this to happen may not be structured or systematically present.

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