Accountability and datafication in francophone contexts: A reinforcing cognitive state still challenged by local actors

Abstract

In Belgium, France and Quebec (Canada), there is a certain similarity in the tools used by the accountability policies, sometimes described as soft or reflective. Beyond such a characterization, this chapter analyses the political forces, institutional mechanisms and structural contexts that give orientation and form to the specific trajectories of their performance-based accountability policies. To trace these trajectories, we use an analytical framework (Maroy & Pons, 2019), which interweaves three concepts: the translation of global discourse; path dependencies and institutional conversion; and the political or cognitive bricolage of the policy tools. Despite various institutional contexts and political forces in action, we show that each specific policy trajectory leads to a consolidation of the role of the State in the school field, through either its regulatory or its cognitive power. The available research data also bring to light the rather contrasting effects of these policies on schools and their stakeholders. The analysis of these particular cases may thus invite us not to overestimate the extent of the changes brought about by datafication and accountability policies, highlighting some structural factors and institutional mechanisms that modify their potential effects.