Noise in Professional Assessment: Preventing long-term unhappiness in schools

The objective of this project is to enhance pupil well-being in Danish public schools by improving the preventive wellbeing work. Previous studies have demonstrated a significant amount of noise (variability) when teachers, pedagogues, and social workers assess the risk of a pupil. This implies that the preventive wellbeing work can be based on flaws in human judgment. The project thus tests experimentally the impact of the elsewhere successful Estimate-Talk-Estimate method, a structured group assessment approach, on both the level of noise and professionals’ attitudes towards risk assessment. The project employs a mixed methods design, including a survey experiment, focus groups and interviews. The introduction of noise to education research is further combined with insights from theory on impartiality. It is anticipated that the project will yield evidence on the impact of, as well as the barriers and opportunities for, the implementation of the Estimate-Talk-Estimate method.