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ERIC Number: EJ1285778
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1750-8487
EISSN: N/A
The Power of Relation-Making: Insights into the Production and Operation of Digital School Performance Platforms in the US
Hartong, Sigrid
Critical Studies in Education, v62 n1 p34-49 2021
This contribution takes a critical perspective on digital school performance platforms (SPP), which today play a key role in US state education monitoring and accountability. Using examples from two different US state education agencies, I provide an analytical disentanglement of some key dimensions of such platforms' enactment and materiality. I do so using a "topological" lens, which in recent years has increasingly been adopted in education policy research as a useful tool for capturing complex and simultaneously "generative" manifestations of the digital. In the case of platforms, such a topological lens focuses on the power of relation-making and, consequently, on the fabrication and stabilization of particular data representations of education through relational (platform) settings, while simultaneously embracing the ongoing enactment and dynamism of these settings through various data practices. As an empirical example of this ambiguity, this contribution discusses the complex, highly dynamic relational production of US school performance platforms as reported by state education agency experts, as well as the invisibilization of these very production processes when observing the seemingly neutral, compressed, simplified and ready-to-use platforms themselves. Consequently, despite their customized and interactive nature, such platforms powerfully (re)shape what is publicly perceived and can be acted upon as 'good' schooling.
Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States; Germany; Massachusetts; Georgia
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Every Student Succeeds Act 2015
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A