Learning analytics as modes of anticipation: enacting time in actor-networks

Abstract

ABSTRACT Learning analytics platforms (LAPs) have become important modes of anticipatory governance in education. Educational futures are governed by utilizing various forms of learning analytics to track student data over time, suggesting that school leaders and teachers are expected to improve school quality by engaging with digital presentations of prediction, anticipation, and decision-making. This study investigates the LAPs Conexus Engage and Insight as they unfold in school leaders’ practice by drawing from actor-network theory. School leaders’ interaction with the tools are examined through audio and screen recorded interviews at three lower secondary schools in Norway. The findings show how anticipation emerged in actor-networks as both fluid and stable, encouraging the problematizations and priorities of school leaders. School leaders also adapted the LAPs to their own practice. The findings further suggested that time emerges on the premises of LAPs as entangled events rather than through chronological understandings of time.