Verso l'adesione alla ricerca mixed methods nella valutazione dell'istruzione? : alcune indicazioni dall'Istituto Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema di Istruzione (INVALSI)

The contribution gives some descriptive elements relating to the use of mixed methods (MM) in research on the evaluation of education in the Italian context. This work highlights how, more and more, doing research in the evaluation of education requires a necessarily integrated approach towards the merge of multiple methods related to the type of information, the methods of data collection and analysis. This process, far from being linear and continuous, owes its maturation to intrinsic factors (the development of reflection) and extrinsic factors (increase in research quality benchmarks, IT potential, difficulties related to privacy and funding). Through the observation of the case study on work conducted by the Evidence Area and the Evaluation Area of the schools of the National Institute of Evaluation, it will be shown how MM represent an increasingly present reality in the research strategies adopted in the evaluation on education of the Institute. [Publisher's text].