‘There’s so much data’: Exploring the realities of data-based school governance

Abstract

Educational governance is commonly predicated around the generation, collation and processing of data through digital technologies. Drawing upon an empirical study of two Australian secondary schools, this paper explores the different forms of data-based governance that are being enacted by school leaders, managers, administrators and teachers. These findings illustrate a range of routinized ways in which digital data is being used within schools as a means of accountability. Alongside data regimes associated with the ‘governing by numbers’ enforced by state and federal governments, are smaller-scale accountability procedures and practices initiated ‘in-house’ by school managers and/or teaching staff. While digital technologies are clearly reinforcing wider trends in educational managerialism, the paper also considers the subtle ways that local enactments of such governance are shaped by schools’ relatively unsophisticated data processing technologies and techniques.

Soviet, post-Soviet and neo-liberal: Governing Russian schools through quality assurance and evaluation

“…Hardy and Lewis, 2017;Selwyn, 2016;Steiner-Khamsi, 2012). Historical studies of Soviet education also document the ambiguity and complexity of education policies and practices at the micro-level (Byford and Jones, 2006).…”

The “digital subjects” of twenty-first-century education: On datafication, educational technology and subject formation

“…attendance, grading, risk assessment, personalized or adaptive learning) and within individual classrooms (Allert, 2017;Anagnastopoulos, Rutledge & Jacobsen, 2013;Bodén, 2015;Selwyn, Henderson & Chao, 2015;Williamson, 2016). Studies argue that digital data infrastructures and the associated data work simplify complex situations into apparently solvable problems (Selwyn, 2016), reduce education to continual personalized training (Thompson & Cook, 2016), affect teachers' professionalization and autonomy (Selwyn, Nemorin & Johnson, 2016), and increase the influence of a diverse range of powerful, yet hidden, data mediators in education (Hartong, 2016).…”

“…And they aim to rethink how data infrastructure -understood as "an assemblage of material, semiotic and social flows or practices" (Sellar, 2014: 770)can be designed. How, for instance, can we open up new ways of relating to the abundance of digital data in the 21 st century, ways which counter dominant audit cultures or performance rankings and accountability measures, and instead generate nuanced, critical data which can be used as empowering tools by marginalized groups (Selwyn, 2016)? Or how can we, at the very least, design technology which enables individuals to obfuscate the data traces they produce (Brunton & Nissenbaum, 2015)?…”

Teacher data agency and the mediation of new ways of knowing in schools: A socio-cultural perspective of professional learning, relationships and educational change

“…However, while external policies and interventions attempt to constitute what happens within schools, there is recognition that efforts to implement changes in data use do not necessarily recognise or take into account the culture and structures already in place (Hubbard et al, 2014;O'Day, 2002). Data-use routines (Kallemeyn, 2014;Volkoff, Strong, & Elmes, 2007), access to data (Coburn & Turner, 2011b), leadership (Datnow et al, 2017;Sharratt & Fullan, 2012;Spillane, 2012), norms of interaction (Earl & Timperley, 2008), data literacy and the unequal power relations that may emerge (Selwyn, 2015;Selwyn, 2016) are components of the organisational and political context that comprise a school.…”

“…School responses to data are predicated in the understanding that data do not objectively guide school practices alone-it still remains with people to interact with data (Spillane, 2012) to make sense of it. This perspective argues that people bring agency to the processes of data usethey can notice or ignore data depending on their knowledge, beliefs, experiences, motivation and self-interest (Mandinach & Gummer, 2016;Mandinach & Jimerson, 2016;Selwyn, 2016).…”