Data, Numbers and Accountability: the Complexity, Nature and Effects of Data Use in Schools

This article draws upon research in one school in Queensland, Australia, to explore how the push to data influences teacher work and subsequent student learning. This ‘rise of data’ (Lawn, 2013), often oriented towards ‘external’ and performative processes of accountability, exhibits itself in many ways, but is particularly evident in teachers’ engagement with various forms of regionally and centrally-sanctioned, and often standardized, measures of attainment, typically expressed in numbers. Drawing upon the sociology of numbers, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’, the research shows how the emphasis upon data collection reveals a ‘field of schooling practices’ characterised by: concerns about collecting, analysing and improving numeric data; standardized and centrally-sanctioned data as forms of capital of increasing value, and; a teaching disposition/habitus characterised by constant monitoring of student performance through virtual and physical data bases. The research reveals how the ‘logics’ of schooling may be in danger of being dominated by more centralised, standardized forms of numeric data for performative accountability purposes, even as more educative logics are evident.

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