Data for learning? Confirming and contesting performative practices of data governance

This article examines evidence of teachers’ work and learning in one school setting in the northern regions of Queensland, Australia, revealing how globalized performative practices that circulate around the collection and use of data in schooling settings are both confirmed and contested. Drawing upon the literature on the nature of accountability, particularly in relation to educational governance, and alternative theorizing of educational practice as praxis, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning are heavily implicated in the development and perpetuation of reductive, performative conceptions of education, even as teachers seek to foster a more educative disposition. The research draws upon interviews and meeting transcripts of teachers seeking to enhance their own learning for student learning. The article reveals that even as teachers are actively involved in developing and analysing a plethora of data to foster their own learning for enhanced student learning, they also struggle to do so in a context that ascribes particular standardized forms of school, regional and national data as the data of most value. At the same time, the article describes how more sustainable practices do exist, and serve as examples of forms of praxis that challenge more reductive, performative conceptions of learning in schools more broadly.