Data as Specter: A Meditation on Loss and Longing in the Midst of Educational Research

• In Event: Data Analysis: Shifting Approaches in Curriculum Inquiry

Abstract

This paper is a meditation on how data is a powerful, agential force in the research process. Researchers often talk of data as an object…we collect it, code it, analyze it…without considering the ways that it acts on us. Through the untimely death of Kate, a participant in an arts-based study I conducted, I have been offered the opportunity to consider the power of data. In this case, Kate’s data has haunted me with an absence/presence of her and produced a sense of loss and longing that I now see streaming through all of her artwork. This suggests that data is not something to be tamed, once and for all, through our research but is something endlessly dynamic and formidable.

Author

• Amanda Smith, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa