Great expectations: understanding perceptions of the affordances and constraints of dashboard data

Drawing upon literature and theorising in relation to the sociology of expectations and critical data studies, we elaborate perceptions of the nature of dashboard data in one state educational jurisdiction in Australia. Our research utilises interviews with senior educational bureaucrats, who engaged with a new dashboard, and the data it generated, during the initial stages of the development and implementation of the dashboard. This included personnel involved in the technical development of the dashboard, through to those who were responsible for engaging with such data to help facilitate enhanced school organisational, teaching and learning practices across the state. The research reveals that at the same time as data provided through the dashboard were understood by educators as more current and potentially beneficial for making sense of students' learning, such data also simultaneously conveyed information that was potentially not as accurate, accessible, or timely as desired. Consequently, such dashboards are complex sites of ‘great expectations', in which positive futures about dashboard data are expressed, even as reservations are simultaneously articulated. While such dashboards enhance access of information to educators in a more ‘timely’ fashion, there is a need for further scrutiny into such platforms and the veracity of the data generated.