Configuring the teacher as data user: public-private sector mediations of national test data

ABSTRACT

Datafication of student learning has carved out an influential space for public and private actors who design technologies for visualizing data. As data visualizations shape how teachers’ interpret data, they are powerful devices. This paper examines how teachers get configured as data users in the making of Danish national test data visualizations for municipal primary and lower secondary schools. The paper is based on a qualitative study of the Danish Ministry of Education, which develops the official visualizations, and NordicMetrics, a private consultancy offering a supplementing visualization of student progression. We draw on science and technology studies (STS) to theorize techno-organizational dynamics of developing visualizations. We propose to understand data visualizations as contingent, situated and socio-material achievements that configure teacher as data users. Comparing two institutions’ respective negotiations of different concerns when developing data visualizations enables us to consider the otherwise ‘hidden’ data mediators and the entwined relations between public and private data mediators.

KEYWORDS:

• Data visualization
• national testing
• teacher configuration
• public-private
• science and technology studies
• data politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the editors and reviewers. We wish also to thank our interlocutors in the Danish Ministry of Education and NordicMetrics, for providing access to empirical material and for commenting on the analysis. Finally, we thank Christopher Gad for providing helpful comments in preparing this manuscript for submission.

Notes on contributors

Helene Ratner is associate professor at Danish School of education. In her research, she explores intersections between educational governance and data. She is currently researching datafication of educational governance and the emergence of data ethics, drawing on ethnography and Science and Technology Studies. She is currently completing the scientific reporting of a qualitative study in The National Agency for IT and Learning, the Danish Ministry of Education.

Bjarke Lindsø Andersen is ph.d. in education science from Danish School of Education. Bjarke has given talks internationally and published about entanglements of technology in education. His current research concerns the organizational implications of moving from traditional teaching to online modes of teaching at university level. A central topic in this regard is how teachers and support staff co-work in order to make sense of what technology means to teaching practices. Beyond his research, Bjarke has experience with teaching both online and offline at local and global scales. Currently, Bjarke works as a senior consultant at Epinion.

Simon Ryberg Madsen holds a teachers degree and a master in education science from Danish School of Education. As former research assistant at DPU, he has done research on the pedagogical implications of policy reforms. He has also spend several years doing workshops at public schools with NordicMetrics on how to interpret and explore quantitative data within a pedagogical context, with a primary focus on data from the national testing system. He is currently working at Epinion Education as senior consultant, where he has done several evaluations for the Danish Ministry of Education regarding public schools use and storage of data in regards to security and ethics.

ORCID

Bjarke Lindsø Andersen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4214-9789

Notes

1. While Danish national test results are confidential by law, the Ministry of Education and municipalities use results to compare schools and hold them accountable for national targets whereas teachers, according to legislation, are to use testing pedagogically.

2. We respect Wandall’s wish to figure by his true name. The civil servants from the Ministry of Education, however, are anonymized.

3. For instance, the target all children should improve as much as possible is operationalized with the objective that ‘at least 80% of all students are “good” in reading and math’ (Ministry of Education 2018). This, in turn, required the Ministry of Education to define criteria for the ‘good’ performance.

4. The probabilistic Rasch psychometrics, also used in PISA.