KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Guido Benvenuto
Full Professor in the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Title of Presentation
Assessment Literacy in the Italian Education System: Traditions, Transitions, and Transformations.
Abstract
Assessment Literacy training in Italy is a crucial process for school teachers and education professionals. It must be integrated into university degree programs and subsequently regulated by the self-assessment frameworks of individual schools and the national assessment system. The different levels of this tripartite system—national, local, and individual—are designed to balance skills, specific responsibilities, and distinct autonomy.
This educational and assessment system is constantly evolving, driven by legislative updates and transformations, as well as changes in teaching and organisational autonomy. In recent decades, many decrees have brought about changes and innovations, both for historical and cultural reasons and in relation to changes in education policies and various government structures.
Describing the skills, specific responsibilities, and distinct autonomy in Assessment Literacy training helps understand the resulting complexity of the system. Regional socioeconomic differences, as well as unequal teacher training, should find school and university autonomy a useful tool for ensuring equity in the system. National data on learning outcomes reveal significant disparities, which can be attributed to socioeconomic differences among students and regions, as well as organisational challenges in staff education and training.
Within this framework, assessment issues can be analysed from several perspectives:
- The persistence of traditional summative assessment models, more oriented toward subject-matter than competences, with high variability in the use of formative and ongoing assessment, is essential for improving student learning.
- Discontinuity in recent years, especially in primary education, in assessment methods (grades, grading scales, descriptive and/or summary assessments), leading to instability and subjectivity at both an individual and collective level, in addition to the inevitable sustainability of ongoing changes in the communication of the various formats to students’ parents.
- The different initial training models that have emerged in recent decades, and their management by the university system (state, private, and online), have led to differences in the acquisition of professional skills, including docimology.
- Difficulty integrating external assessment data (gathered by INVALSI – the national institute with responsibility for evaluating student achievement and the overall quality of schools in Italy) for use as part of mandatory annual school self-assessment reports (termed RAVs). Complications arise due to divergence between the national standardised testing framework and the grading system used in schools.
The keynote talk will highlight some possible solutions to the challenges identified to ensure necessary balance among the macro/meso/micro levels of the assessment system and to ensure targeted, uniform training at the national level and a more consistent assessment culture.
Biography
Guido Benvenuto is Full Professor (Research Method in Education) in the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. His main teaching courses and research interests are: Assessment and Evaluation Studies, Literacy, Student dropout, and Social Education. He has participated in numerous research projects at international level: IEA Reading Literacy Study, IEA Writing Assessment, OECD/PISA (Programme for International Students Assessment).
His involvements at national level include research commissioned by the Ministry of Education, the Regional Institutes for Educational Research (IRRSAE), now regional Institutes for Educational Research (IRRE), and the European Centre of Education (INVALSI – National Institute for the Evaluation of the Educational System of Instruction and Training).
Kim Schildkamp
Full Professor in the Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences of the University of Twente, the Netherlands
Title of Presentation
Lost in Literacies? Building Capacity for Assessment, Data, and AI Literacy in Education
Abstract
Assessment literacy has long been recognized as essential for improving teaching, learning, and educational quality. Yet assessment data represent only one part of a rapidly expanding educational data landscape. Educators and system stakeholders must also interpret and act on information from surveys, classroom observations, learning analytics, and other data sources. As a result, data literacy has become increasingly important across educational systems.
At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming education and assessment. AI offers new opportunities to enhance assessment quality, feedback, and decision-making, while simultaneously raising critical concerns regarding validity, fairness, transparency, and ethics. In addition, AI literacy itself is emerging as a key competence for both educators and learners.
With multiple “literacies” gaining prominence, there is a growing risk of conceptual fragmentation. In this keynote, I argue that assessment literacy, data literacy, and AI literacy should be understood as interconnected, multidimensional constructs encompassing knowledge, skills, attitudes, and ethical awareness. I will present a framework that can support educators and system stakeholders in designing assessments and tools to measure and support different types of literacies. I will discuss how strengthening assessment, data, and AI literacy among teachers, students, and assessment developers can contribute to higher-quality educational decision-making and more responsible use of data and AI. A central thread of the keynote is the role of students, not as passive data sources, but as active partners in shaping their education, assessment and learning.
Biography
Prof. Dr. Kim Schildkamp is a full professor in the Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences of the University of Twente in the Netherlands. She is the chair of the Department for Teacher Development. Her research focuses on data-informed decision making for learning and development, which includes the use of data and AI in education. She also works for NPuls, a National Growth Fund program for all public vocational education training schools, universities of applied sciences, and research universities in the Netherlands. For this program she focuses on professional development in data and AI literacy for teachers and students. Kim is also the past president of ICSEI (International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement).
Stephen G. Sireci
Distinguished University Professor
Executive Director, Center for Educational Assessment
College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Title of Presentation
Has Validity Really Changed? What Will the Forthcoming Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing Say?
Abstract
Validity has been described as the most important consideration in educational and psychological testing. However since its inception, there have been debates over what validity means and how educational and psychological assessments should be validated. Since 1954, three organizations in the USA—the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education—have published six editions of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. These six editions illustrate changing conceptualizations of validity theory and test validation from 1952 through 2014, and these Standards are currently under revision. With respect to revising the Validity chapter, concerns raised by the field include the effects of technologies such as AI, the esoteric and inaccessible language used to describe foundational validity principles, and the degree to which concerns over cultural and other aspects of diversity are addressed. In this presentation I will share how the subgroup charged with revising the Validity chapter addressed these and other issues, and how the revised chapter reflects both enduring principles of validity theory and test validation, and evolving notions that characterize 21st -century assessment practices.
The presentation will focus on four questions as they were addressed by the Committee:
- What are the foundational validity questions that should be answered in any effort to validate the interpretation and uses of test scores?
- Are the five sources of validity evidence established in the 1999 version and continued in 2014 still sufficient for guiding validation practices?”
- How have AI and other technologies affected testing, and how do these effects impact validity?”
- How can the validity chapter incorporate principles of culturally responsive assessment to prevent the contribution of assessments to systemic racism?
The first two questions suggest a reformulation of the validity chapter to make the Standards more accessible to a wider audience and also more direct with respect to avoiding a “checklist” approach to validation. The third question required ensuring the chapter is current with respect to technology-enhanced assessment. The fourth question addressed the overlap between validity and fairness, which required collaborative coordination across those revising the Validity and Fairness chapters.
Before we can talk about assessment “literacy” with respect to validity, we must first reach common ground on its foundational principles.
Biography
Stephen G. Sireci, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Educational Assessment in the College of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He earned his Ph.D. in psychometrics from Fordham University and his master and bachelor degrees in psychology from Loyola College Maryland. Before UMass, he was Senior Psychometrician at GED Testing Service, Psychometrician for the CPA Exam and Research Supervisor of Testing for the Newark NJ Board of Education. He is known for his research in validity and fairness of educational tests, and for innovations in test development. He currently serves/has served on several advisory boards including the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards, Duolingo English Test, and technical advisory committees for Florida, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Montana, Puerto Rico, and Texas. He is a Fellow of American Educational Research Association and of Division 5 of American Psychological Association, and a lifetime member of the National Academy of Education. He is a past President of International Test Commission, Northeastern Educational Research Association, and National Council on Measurement in Education. His UMass honors include School of Education’s Outstanding Teacher Award, Conti Faculty Fellowship, Public Engagement Fellowship, Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity Award, and the Chancellor’s Medal. He also received the Messick Memorial Lecture Award from Educational Testing Service/International Language Testing Association. He serves on several editorial boards including Applied Measurement in Education, Educational Assessment, Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Practical Assessment Research and Evaluation, and Psicothema.
Karianne Megard Grønli
Norwegian Reading Center
Faculty of Education and Art
University of Stavanger
Title of Presentation
Feedback, agency, and equity in early reading instruction
Abstract
Reading aloud to a teacher is an everyday part of early reading instruction. In these moments, while students are practising reading, teachers listen, assess, and provide feedback that communicates far more than whether a word was read correctly. It also says something about what counts in reading, what kind of reader they are, and whether reading is something they may eventually succeed in.
In this keynote, I present findings from the Read To Me project, drawing on two systematic reviews and a classroom intervention from my doctoral research. The research reveals a troubling pattern: struggling readers and second-language learners consistently receive the most corrective and narrowly focused feedback, while having the fewest opportunities to participate as independent, meaning-making readers. In other words, the students who may need agency-supporting feedback the most are often the least likely to receive it.
Explicit instruction in foundational skills is essential, especially for students who struggle. But if assessment and feedback in early reading instruction are reduced to correction and accuracy, some students may rarely experience themselves as capable readers. The Read To Me Checklist was developed to help teachers broaden their feedback practices — supporting not only accuracy, but also comprehension, motivation, and student agency.
The keynote invites us to reconsider what reading is, what counts as progress, and how everyday feedback practices may either open or close the door to becoming a reader — for all children.
Biography
Dr Karianne Megard Grønli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Norwegian Reading Centre, University of Stavanger. Her research focuses on early reading education, assessment, and teacher feedback, with particular emphasis on how feedback practices can support students’ motivation, persistence, reading interest, and reader identity.
Her work is characterised by the use of design-based research to develop and test research-informed tools and approaches that are directly relevant for classroom practice. She combines systematic reviews, theory development, and intervention research to investigate how assessment and feedback shape classroom practices and influence the learning opportunities available to students in early reading.
Dr Grønli has a background as a primary school teacher and literacy advisor and collaborates closely with schools and teachers in her research. She is also an author of teaching materials for early literacy education.