Learning in the ‘platform society’: Disassembling an educational data assemblage

Abstract

Schools are increasingly involved in diverse forms of student data collection. This article provides a sociotechnical survey of a data assemblage used in education. ClassDojo is a commercial platform for tracking students' behaviour data in classrooms and a social media network for connecting teachers, students and parents. The hybridization of for-profit platforms with a key public institution of society raises significant issues. ClassDojo is designed to influence how school leaders and teachers make decisions, how schools connect with parents, and how teachers act to change students' behaviour. Conceptualized as a 'public sphere platform' ClassDojo is reshaping discourses, practices and subjectivities in schools.In particular, ClassDojo provides evidence of how the business model and political economy governing social media-'platform capitalism'-is being inserted into public education. It is prototypical of education in an emerging 'platform society,' and of how student and teacher subjectivities are being reshaped by the presumptions and worldviews encoded in digital platforms.

The Servitization of Australian K-12 Educational Settings

“…The findings demonstrated concerns that externally modulated ideas and designs are entering educational settings (Molnar 2005) and that platforms act as a conduit for the aims of external stakeholders (Biesta 2009b). The servitization model also aligns with work described by Srnicek (2017) and the various impacts explored by Williamson (2017) and Selwyn (2016) in the context of K-12 education. Impacts on educational practice from a perspective of deliberative democracy and servitization form the basis of the discussion moving forward.…”

“…Williamson (2016b: 123) has also explored apps and platforms according to various democratic principles, seeing digital 'instruments and infrastructures…at the center of efforts to know, govern and manage education both nationally and globally.' Further work into how educational practice and various other domains may be manufactured for purposes of commercialization include impacts related to platform capitalism (Srnicek 2017), which includes the presence of data-driven targeted advertising and participatory online cultures (Williamson 2017). Selwyn (2016: 55) states, 'Data, analytics and algorithms play a central role in what contemporary 'education' is' and highlights how intangible data may provide the contemporary vehicle for external stakeholder goals and drivers to be perpetuated in the classroom.…”

Datafied child welfare services: unpacking politics, economics and power

“…The concept is based on an understanding of data systems as socio-technical systems comprising people, political, social and legal contexts, infrastructures and processes of sense-making (Kitchin 2014;boyd and Crawford 2012;Ruppert 2012). We use the "data assemblage" as an analytical framework can to deconstruct data infrastructures in order to better understand the relations and processes that are influencing how a particular data application works (Williamson 2017). Doing so provides a means to better understand how the data system in question reinforces particular sets of rationalities, influences, how people and issues are represented and understood, and can lead to shifts in policy and governance more broadly (Bennett et al 2014).…”

“…provides a means to consider how these systems are socially constructed while also taking them seriously as technical artefacts in their own right (Winner 1980;Kennedy 2016, Couldry andPowell 2014;Gangadharan and Jedrzej 2019). While others have advanced an analysis of data assemblages in education, health and cities (Williamson 2017;Kitchin 2015;Lupton 2016), to our knowledge this is the first attempt to do so in the area of child welfare.…”

Brave new platforms: a possible platform future for highly decentralised schooling

“…Furthermore, the algorithmic powers of digital platform data production not only make it possible to predict and profile individual user behaviour, but also to regulate and differentiate groups of users in intricate and unpredictable ways, black-boxed by the technology (Couldry and Mejias 2018;Macgilchrist 2019;Williamson 2017b). Such factors already have consequences in educational contexts with platforms themselves becoming templates for how education is arranged (Williamson 2017a). However, as the centrality of digital platforms increases, it is reasonable to assume that the near future will see an increase in the seriousness of consequences for the mission of public education and the practices of schooling.…”