Navigating datascapes: mapping testing practices within and across national and global contexts

ABSTRACT

We draw upon Appadurai’s ‘scapes’ and Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT) to interrogate historical and spatial flows in relation to specific testing technologies. We reveal how testing systems, conceptualised as actor-networks, rearticulate colonial legacies of inequality which are intensified by new and emerging technologies. ANT helps trace social and relational interactions occurring in various national and global data spaces, and helps make sense of incessant transformations in education datascapes. Mapping actor-networks, and translations, help name and navigate neoliberal forces acting through colonial legacies via emerging educational datascapes. Our examination shows how educational technologies associated with standardised testing in northern and southern contexts – specifically, England, Singapore, Bangladesh and Australia – exacerbate structural inequalities. We consider how such technologies are actants and reflective of co-existing historical and temporal influences, and global cultural and spatial flows, allowing us to map the multiple ways in which educational technologies are manifested in an emerging education datascape.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational technology
• meritocracy
• inequality
• datascapes
• testing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant [DP210100832].