Teachers and learners in a time of big data

Rachel Buchanan,Amy Mcpherson

doi:10.21913/jps.v6i1.1566

Abstract

Policy and technological transformation have coalesced to usher in massive changes to educational systems over the past two decades. Teachers’ roles, subjectivities and professional identities have been subject to sweeping changes enabled by sophisticated forms of governance. Simultaneously, students have been recast as ‘learners’; like teachers, learners have become subject to new forms of governance, through technological surveillance and datafication. This paper focuses on the intersection of the metrics driven approach to education and the political as a way to re-think the future of schooling in more explicitly philosophical terms. This exploration starts with a critical examination of constructions of teachers, learners and the digital data-driven educational culture in order to explicate the futures being generated. The trajectory of this future is explored through reference to the techno-educational models currently being developed in Silicon Valley. Drawing on Deleuze’s notion of control societies we contribute to the ongoing philosophical investigation of the datafication of education; a necessary discussion if we are to explore the future implications of schooling in a technologically saturated world. We present consideration of the past, present and future, as three ways of considering alternatives to a datafied education system. Alternative conceptualisations of the future of schooling are possible which offer ways of understanding and politicising what happens when we impose data-driven accountabilities into people’s lives.

Highlights

We have indicated how teachers’ documentation of their own practice and measurement of their students’ performance subjects them to increasingly sophisticated processes of datafication, we turn to an examination of the datafication of students
Pulling together a variety of contemporary research which explores these policies and practices, we have examined the datafication of teachers’ work and of students’ schooling
The risk is that such processes shut down educational possibility and that students’ prior actions determine the future learning made available to them

Summary

Introduction

The changes in the Australian system reflect broader global shifts, in which similar patterns can be discerned in education systems internationally (Rizvi & Lingard 2010) These changes include: a loss of teacher autonomy, a push for evidence-based education policy, the increased use of standardised testing, rising levels of corporate involvement in schooling, and a resolute push for the technologisation of education. Williamson (2016b) alerts us to some of the modes and methods of digitising educational governance He describes how from the global or supranational, national, and local levels, we see big data, database architectures, datasets, codes, algorithms, analytic packages, and data dashboards—just some of the emerging technologies that are subjectifying the ‘quantified teacher’. We have indicated how teachers’ documentation of their own practice and measurement of their students’ performance subjects them to increasingly sophisticated processes of datafication, we turn to an examination of the datafication of students

Datafication of the learner

An educational future designed in Silicon Valley

Conclusion