Topologies of Policy Analysis: Studying the Space-Times of Data and Marketized Education

• In Event: 35.038 - Critical Geographies of School Choice: Methodologies Toward a More Democratic Education Policy Making

Abstract

Objectives
Investigating school choice has often focused on movement – of students between schools, of schools closing and others opening, and of performance data on schools. This paper looks at the connections between two ideas of topology from critical human geography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) that can study this movement, its spaces and its effects. Encounters between critical human geography and GIS stretch back to the early 1990s (Schuurman 2006). This paper builds on these encounters to experiment with points of connection between topology (a) as a concept mobilized in social theory and (b) as formalized in GIS practices or ‘code-spaces’. We ask: What types of epistemologies and ontologies are mobilized in topology as a concept and its formalization in GIS? In the context of a ‘topological turn’ in the social sciences, we draw on Stengers (2005) notion of an ecology of practices to identify points of affinity between social theory and GIS practices for education policy studies.

Theoretical framework
The paper draws on critical geographies and science studies literatures. Lury, Parisi and Terranova’s (2012) argue practices of measurement, comparison and ranking are producing topological rationalities that establish new orders of relations between things (new spaces) and enables new kinds of action in the world (new modes of power). We draw on topological concepts of relational space and topological conceptions of power that emphasize action at a distance that cuts across different polities at multiple scales (Allen and Cochrane, 2010).

Modes of inquiry
This theoretical paper will (a) outline topological concepts in critical geographies and (b) work through examples of performance data to consider how these concepts can interface with GIS to afford new perspectives and research practices in relation to these data. The focus will be on data produced through large-scale assessments and their use in relation to school choice.

Substantiated conclusions
We propose that topological concepts and their formalization in GIS software and practices opens up to examination the movement of educational data, as well as connections between data and other objects across time-spaces. These data establish relationships between producers (e.g. OECD) and users (e.g. schools, parents) that generate new topological spaces of governance enable both to ‘reach into’ policy processes at different scales. Educational measurement quantifies while at the same time producing new qualitative spaces that exceed quantification but through which educational data have effects. Topological thinking thus provides us with ‘a way of thinking about relationality, space, and movement beyond metrics, mapping, and calculation’ (Martin & Secor, 2014: 420), but also in relation to these practices as mobilized in GIS.

Scholarly significance
An encounter between different practices of topological thinking raises implications not only for analysis but for representation. The significance of the paper is two-fold. First, we apply emerging conceptual work in critical geographies of education to theorize the production and use of educational data by parents and systems. Second, we pursue affinities between social theory and the scientific practices of GIS, particularly in relation to debates about marketization and education policy.

Authors

• Kalervo N. Gulson, University of New South Wales

• Sam Sellar, The University of Queensland