Quality assurance (QA) in education has become increasingly decentralised in many European countries over the past decades, making schools increasingly responsible for the monitoring, safeguarding and development of their own quality. Although the main concern of quality assurance in schools is to develop the quality of teaching and learning; different, more school-level approaches to QA can be taken, for instance by drawing on a distinction between external and internal evaluation (Eurydice, 2015). Although quality assurance mechanisms are embedded in educational systems’ regulations, several initiatives and evolutions overarch the differences across jurisdictions in Europe. The European Commission’s Education and Training working group, for instance, points towards the need for capacity building in quality assurance processes (European Commission, 2018).

This capacity building is linked primarily to the pursuit of evidence-informed quality assurance in schools (Brown & Malin, 2022). As part of their (internal) evaluation procedures and quality development, schools are stimulated to make use of different sources of evidence (Wiseman, 2010) to further develop their quality and inform their decision making. Following the digital transformation in education, huge amounts of digital resources and data have been introduced and proliferated in schools for (re)designing and evaluating education, for instance through the introduction of digital learning management systems and Learning Analytics (LA). LA assess, elicit and analyse static and dynamic information about learners and learning environments for the optimisation of learning processes and environments, as well as for educational decision making in organisations (Ifenthaler & Drachsler, 2020; Rodríguez-Triana, Martínez-Monés, & Villagrá-Sobrino, 2016).

Despite its potential, the actual use of LA is still rather scarce in K-12 education compared to the context of higher education (Andresen, 2017; Gander, 2020). Existing literature focused on higher education points to organisational readiness, (Clark et al., 2020), characteristics of data(systems), the ethical issues around the use of LA (Cerratto Pargman & McGrath, 2021; Tzimas & Demetriadis, 2021), and staff readiness (Mandinach & Abrams, 2022) to play an important role in the successful use of LA. In K-12 education, however, LA are currently primarily used at the micro level to identify learners’ needs and tailor instruction to meet these needs (Wise & Jung, 2019). The use of LA by educational professionals, f.i. at the school (management) level, has therefore not yet reached its full potential. This could be due to the fact that K-12 students are mostly minors and even more pressing ethical considerations and caution in the use and processing of learning analytics data are at play. Furthermore, the way secondary schools are organised is very different from higher education. However, the fact remains that schools’ own data regarding learning processes remain largely un(der)explored (Ifenthaler, 2021) due to, i.e., lack of awareness of the vast amount of data available and a lack of capacity to work with these data (Datnow & Hubbard, 2016; O’Brien, McNamara, O’Hara, & Brown, 2019).

In this contribution, we present a systematic literature study conducted as part of a larger Erasmus+ KA project titled ‘QUALAS’ (Quality Assurance with Learning Analytics in Schools), which aims to promote capacity building in secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium), Ireland, Italy and Spain to use (different) LA data for quality assurance (QA); according to the key principles for QA put forward by (European Commission, 2018). Our overall aim is to identify and put into practice possibilities for enhancing the capacity of educational professionals in secondary schools to make appropriately use of learning analytics for quality assurance.

As a first step, we addressed the following research question: what affordances and constraints does existing literature identify for the use of learning analytics in the context of quality assurance in secondary education?

This systematic literature review was conducted as a rapid narrative summary, following the guidelines provided by Amog et al. (2022). It concerns a qualitative review based on the fixed research question mentioned above, which paid no specific attention to the role of theory in the selected studies and made use of purposive sampling. Due to time constraints (as this review presents the first step in the first phase of our overall project), the review concerned a limited number op studies, by: searching by specific years (2011-2023), databases (ScienceDirect, Scopus, Web of Science and EBSCOhost), language (English), and sources (scientific papers). While only one reviewer conducted the title and abstract reviewing, the full text review was conducted jointly by all partners to minimise potential bias (Ganann, Ciliska & Thomas, 2010). Additionally, the review followed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) protocol by Moher et al., 2020 for developing and conducting the search strategy, selection, analysis synthesis and assessment. The review contained 40 papers that met our criteria for inclusion and exclusion. The criteria for inclusion were: articles written in English within the time span of 2011-2023, and discussing the context of secondary education. Exclusion criteria were: papers only discussing LA in the context of higher education or post-secondary education, papers only mentioning LA as a keyword or descriptor but not studying LA or LA use in or for schools (e.g. by teachers, school leaders, school staff, students, etc.), or studies following (quasi-)experimental designs that only mentioned a form or resource of LA as a means of research data collection without coupling LA to school use by educational professionals or without embedding them in teaching and school practices. The appraisal (coding) of the selected studies was conducted according to the following categories: • Thematic grouping according to: focus on effectiveness or user experiences • Forms or elements of capacity building mentioned • Type of study: empirical, theoretical, review, etc. • Meta data Additionnally, our focus on affordances and constraints for QA was translated to adopting QA as the main coding category for the selected studies. This category included the following themes or sub-categories:- • Function of LA use: accountability, improvement, etc. • Level of LA use: school, team, teacher, students • Type of LA data: descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, prescriptive • Quality of processes, outputs, inputs, or contextual factors

Overall, our review confirms the observation made by Hernandez-Leal et al.(2021) that the vast majority of studies concerning LA in secondary education are usually focusing on experimentation with specific techniques or methods (flipped learning, serious games, dashboards, etc.) providing specific types of LA applied as research methods for data collection. Moreover, these are often applied in a very restricted manner, e.g. within a specific subject area or discipline (robotics, language learning, programming, etc.). In response to our research question, we identified a large number of both affordances or opportunities, and constraints or challenges linked to the use of learning analytics for quality assurance in secondary schools. Four main categories can be discerned: 1) Teacher and school staff characteristics (perceptions, intentions, behaviour, data literacy and digital competence, technology acceptance, confidence, pedagogical content knowledge, etc.) 2) School culture: quality of communication, decision making, provision of support, school policy-making and governance, reflexivity and assessment practices, social structures, etc. 3) LA characteristics: private vs. public stakeholders, potential for co-design and inquiry, materiality and accessibility, design, human-technology interactions, etc. 4) Concerns: privacy and ethics, student protection, teacher professionalism and educational marketisation Overall, we find little explicit connections between quality assurance and LA. However, the affordances and constraints we identified for the use of LA for QA in secondary schools, largely mirror those identified in the existing literature on LA in higher education. However, privacy and ethical concerns appear to be even more fundamental in the context of the use of LA for QA in secondary schools. Moreover, LA are generally considered a supplement and aid to the teaching processes, professional judgements and decision-making on the part of educational stakeholders and are approached with due caution; whereas their potential as a means of improving the quality of learning processes and outcomes, is generally assumed and promoted.

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