Emerging data infrastructures and the new topologies of education policy

Abstract

This paper examines how datafication is creating new topologies of education policy. Specifically, we analyse how the creation of data infrastructures that enable the generation, communication and representation of digital data are changing relations of power, including both centralised and dispersed forms, and space in education. The paper uses conceptual resources from cultural topology and infrastructure studies to provide a framework for analysing spatial relations between educational data, discourses, policies and practices, in new governance configurations. The paper outlines a case study of an emergent data infrastructure in Australian schooling, the National Schools Interoperability Program, to provide empirical evidence of the movement, connection and enactment of digital data across policy spaces. Key aspects of this case include the ways that data infrastructure is: i) enabling new private and public connections across policy topologies; ii) creating a new role for technical standards in education policy; and, iii) changing the topological spaces of education governance. 2 Emerging data infrastructures and the new topologies of education policy This paper examines how datafication is creating new topologies of education policy. We aim to provide new theorisations and empirical evidence to understand how the creation of data infrastructures, which enable the generation, communication and representation of digital data, is contributing to the emergence of digital educational governance (Williamson, 2016) and changing relations of power and space in education. We aim to engage in conversation with two key literatures. The first is the literature on critical geographies of education (Pini, Gulson, Kraftl & Duffy-Jones, 2017; Nguyen, Cohen & Huff, 2017), or more specifically the geographies of education policy (e.g., Basu, 2007). This work has primarily focused on the ways in which education policy performs a spatial ordering of organisations, such as schools, and especially the connections between policy, schools and urban change (Butler, Hamnett & Ramsden, 2013; Gulson, 2011). Relational notions of space and place, including mobility (e.g., Cohen, 2017), have informed these inquiries. In this paper, we build on this work by utilising topological theorisations of space (Martin and Secor, 2014) that have recently been introduced into studies of education policy and data in education (e.g., Lewis & Hardy, 2017; Thompson & Cook, 2014). The second literature is that which makes new and novel connections between public policy, infrastructure and governance (Sage et al., 2015; Prince, 2016), with a focus on data. Lawn (2013a: 8) argues that 'the creation and flow of data has become a powerful governing tool in education,' in a similar manner to the focus on calculation, metrics and benchmarking in urban policy (e.g., McCann, 2008). In education producing the right second order objectives (numbers) has become as important as first order objectives (pedagogy, curriculum, assessment) in new performative accountabil...

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Measured Education: Sensing, Configuring and Intervening With Advanced Media

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