The Global Infrastructuring of Research Data and its Risks for (Particularly Qualitative and Critical) Education Scholarship

Abstract

This essay problematizes the so-far absence of broader critical debate on the governing dynamics around research data infrastructuring (not only) in education scholarship. More specifically, it refers to the growing role of large-scale data infrastructures as well as complexes of Research Data Management (RDM) that seek to foster ‘open’, reusable, and increasingly machine-readable (education) science. While research data infrastructuring in general, and RDM in particular, have so far been predominantly discussed from solutionist-positivist perspectives, this essay discusses the underestimated risks that lie in the governance dynamics of research data infrastructuring, including: (1) the gradual narrowing of what kind of education, but also what kind of education research become visible in and through data infrastructures (namely those that build on already dominant hierarchies in the field); (2) a gradual shift from doing research towards ‘doing data’, including a shift of political attention and research funding, as well as (3) effects of normalization, also triggered through extensive dataveillance, shareveillance, and ‘ethical monitoring’ of researchers. This particularly endangers genuinely qualitative and critical research in education.