Contextualizing the datafication of schooling – a comparative discussion of Germany and Russia

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ABSTRACT This paper contributes to a growing body of research on the increasing datafication of schooling, which has become a salient topic in comparative education and education policy research. Specifically, we address the rising scholarly concern about the meaning of (comparing) contexts as bounded localities facing an increasingly fluid and generative process of datafication. This concern is closely related to wider (and also older) calls to denaturalize space as a territory and instead to approach space as relational and consisting of complex constellations of changing topologies. Topological theorizing emphasizes spatial complexity and dynamism, and it simultaneously maintains that it is necessary to bridge topological and topographical perspectives and to understand their mutually constitutive nature in space-(re)making. Accordingly, we use the recent expansion of standardized assessments in Germany and Russia to illustrate the coming-together of topological and topographical space-making in datafication. One of our arguments is that the value of the concept of data infrastructures does not stop with pointing to the topological ‘side’ of datafication, but may also help to capture the complexity of the interplay of multiple topological and topographical moments of bordering, their mutual constitution and simultaneity at different phases of data design, collection, processing, analysis and reporting.