The configurative agency of metrics in education: a research agenda involving a different engagement with data

Abstract

The increased use of quantitative education data is often regarded by scholars as evidence of the emergence of'governing by numbers'. These scholars ascribe major stakeholders such as the OECD and nation states agency as they produce, distribute and consume data, and respond to these with policy and management initiatives. This paper argues that metrics themselves have a configurative agency that affects education in terms of educational ideas and designs. The paper illustrates this point by analysing two cases of graduate employability metrics, each of which configures education differently, and discusses how the configurative agency of metrics can become the focal point of a different research agenda using distinct analytical concepts drawn from the sociology of quantification and new materialism. The paper concludes that such a research agenda can enable actors involved in the design and development of education to enter into a professional dialogue and engagement with education data, rather than merely dismissing it.

Education and the UN Development Goals Projects (MDGs and SDGs): Definitions, Links, Operationalisations

“…It is done through data generation at the heart of the establishment of the list of MDGs and SDGs, their relevant targets and indicators and their further specification through growing networks. Data – performance indicators, benchmarks and standards – are at the heart of ‘fabricating’ an education space (Grek, 2008; Grek et al, 2009; Lawn & Grek, 2012) and governing the world more generally in the age of the rise of metronomy (Madsen, 2021). Data generation and metrology is what invites us to view UN’s soft power not as the opposite of hard legislative power but rather as a continuum.…”

Competitive/comparative governance mechanisms beyond marketization: A refined concept of competition in education governance research

“…All three dimensions are unfolded through examples from the field of educational governance and the comparative turn in education. The examples mainly concern competition between institutions, but also include individuals as the direct subjects of governance initiatives in education (for empirical examples, see for example Dixon-Román, 2017; Espeland and Sauder, 2016;Madsen, 2019a).…”

“…Different designs, whether these are a product of public policy instruments (Lascoumes and Le Gales, 2007), or of the capitalist model of free markets, affect the ontology of competition in a particular context. Both the competition criteria (Fourcade and Healy, 2017), the hierarchical organization of contestants (Madsen, 2019a), and the fabrication of particular temporalities (Decuypere and Vanden Broeck, 2020) play an important role here.…”

“…This is where we can begin to discuss the boundaries between competition and other phenomena. The attitudes of the contestants are affected differently in situations where the hierarchical organization does not involve sorting the contestants on a numerical continuum of performance but merely dichotomizes good and bad performance (Madsen, 2019a).…”

“…These competitive orientations, whether horizontal, vertical, or temporal, or a complex entanglement of different orientations, critically affect what is at stake for the competing entities, and thereby how the affective economies of competition appear in a given context. For the competing entities, a vertically oriented type of competition is not so much about besting one's peers, but rather about avoiding an externally imposed reform from above, such as a closure or take-over of a school (Krejsler, 2018: 400), or an externally imposed regulation (Madsen, 2019a). Thereby, vertically and temporally oriented competition will often result in a struggle to become "good enough" to ward off the ever-looming threat of reform, rather than a competition to achieve the highest possible result.…”