Learning from practice: case studies across Europe

EVIDALI Development Diary #2

The EVIDALI project continues to build a clearer picture of how data literacy is understood, developed and applied in schools across Europe. Recent work has focused on a set of Data Literacy Case Studies from Diverse School Contexts Across Europe. The case studies aim to deepen our understanding of how schools engage with data in practice and what conditions enable meaningful data-informed decision-making.

As a continuation of the earlier Mapping Analysis carried out within the project, EVIDALI is exploring how data literacy initiatives are implemented in real school contexts across EU Member States. While the Mapping Analysis identified fragmentation in national approaches and gaps in policies supporting schools’ data literacy development, the case studies bring these findings to life by examining concrete examples of practice.

Five initiatives from five different EU countries were selected to illustrate a diverse range of approaches to developing data literacy in primary and secondary schools. These initiatives reflect different governance structures, policy priorities and implementation models, highlighting how strategies designed at national or regional levels translate into everyday school practices.

The case studies were developed through remote interviews with key stakeholders directly involved in each initiative. A combination of shared and case-specific questions allowed the project team to gather comparable insights while also exploring each context in depth. Discussions focused on the school environment, the core activities of the initiatives, practical examples of implementation, lessons learned and the potential for transferring these practices to other educational contexts.

Data can support personalisation, dropout prevention, and planning professional development

The selected initiatives reveal a broad spectrum of purposes and approaches to data literacy across Europe:

  1.  A school in Greece regularly performs a needs analysis on teachers’ professional development needs, to decide what to prioritise in terms of teacher training activities. The practice has made it easier to organise support among colleagues and overall professional development.
  2. A school in Italy collects systematic feedback from students to decide providing bonuses to teachers who have been more positively evaluated. The school is happy to see that the practice remains valid because teachers who are more severe are not evaluated worse and teachers reflect more on their practices.
  3. Teachers in a school in Croatia initiated a data-informed decision making project to regularly inspect data from a learning management system to adapt their teaching to students’ needs. They became pilot testers of a digital tool and continued their data practices beyond the pilot.
  4. In Malta, a national strategy set up a platform that gathers data from multiple sources to allow predictive analysis and understand factors underpinning early school leaving.
  5. In Slovenia, data from national assessments are aggregated on a platform and offered to teachers and school leaders as a tool to investigate how their teaching impacted performance on various national assessment topics.

Across these examples, two secondary schools and three primary schools are represented, ensuring insights that are relevant across educational levels.

Taken together, these initiatives show that the development of data literacy is shaped not only by national policies or top-down mandates, but also by teacher-led initiatives emerging organically within schools. They highlight the importance of leadership, collaboration and professional trust in transforming data into meaningful action. While engaging with data may initially require time and capacity-building, the case studies indicate that systematic and reflective use of data can ultimately strengthen teaching efficiency, professional confidence and student outcomes.

The case studies help policy makers build a common understanding of data literacy

Importantly, the examples also broaden the understanding of what “data literacy” means in educational settings. For instance, the Croatian case emphasises the role of peer support in helping teachers interpret and apply data in their teaching practice. The Maltese and Slovenian examples highlight the importance of support from ministries in providing schools with accessible tools for working with data. Meanwhile, the Greek and Italian initiatives demonstrate more traditional approaches using surveys, questionnaires and structured data analysis to support data-informed decision-making.

These case studies therefore provide practical inspiration for school leaders, teachers and policymakers seeking to embed sustainable data-informed practices in education systems.

They also serve as a bridge towards the next stages of the EVIDALI project. The initiatives will inform the project’s collection of good practices and will be integrated into the online training course (MOOC) currently under development. They will also provide concrete examples for policy makers to discuss in the upcoming Policy Learning Labs of the project.