Dr. Kim Schildkamp is an associate professor in the Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences of the University of Twente. Kim’s research focuses on (professional development in) data-based decision making and formative assessment. She has been invited as a guest lecturer and keynote speaker at several conferences and universities. She has been appointed as the president elect of ICSEI (International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement), and she is the chair of the ICSEI data use network. Furthermore, she is the chair of the AERA division H international relations committee and she is an executive member of the newly established AERA data-driven decision making SIG. She developed the datateam® procedure, and she has won awards for her work. She has published widely on the use of (assessment) data, for example she is editor of the book Data-based decision making in education: Challenges and opportunities, published by Springer.
In this interview, which is part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, Schildkamp shares her excitement about the potential for data use in education:
The use of data can improve the quality of decision making in education. I have seen several examples where the use of data resulted in increased learning and achievement. We have worked with schools that had experienced student achievement problems for many years. These schools had tried to solve these problems in so many different ways, which never worked. By using data to investigate the causes of their problems, they were finally able to identify and introduce solutions, which resulted in increased student achievement.
This Lead the Change interview appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently Lead the Change has also published interviews with Diane Ravitch, and the contributors to Leading Educational Change: Global Issues, Challenges, and Lessons on Whole-System Reform (Teachers College Press, 2013) edited by Helen Janc Malone, have participated in a series of blogs from Education Week.
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