Making network markets in education: the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling with a specific focus on interoperability standards that help to make new markets for education data. The conceptual framework combines insights from studies of infrastructure, economic markets and digital data. The case of the Australian National Schools Interoperability Program is analysed, drawing on a corpus of web-based technical and promotional documents and supporting interviews. The paper shows that Australia has well-developed data infrastructure in schooling that is creating new relations between schools, school systems and commercial vendors within network markets for data-driven educational technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Data
• infrastructure
• interoperability
• markets
• education policy
• standards

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The acronym also stands for Systems Interoperability Framework in the UK.

2 The project is titled Data infrastructure, mobilities and network governance in education and is funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project scheme (DP150102098). The Chief Investigators are Bob Lingard, Kalervo N. Gulson, Sam Sellar and Keita Takayama. The Partner Investigators are Christopher Lubienski and P. Taylor Webb.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP150102098].