Datafication and Teacher Discretion: What Is Expertise?

• In Event: Enacting Accountabilities in Education (Part 2): Its Effects on Teachers' Work and on the Teaching Profession

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
Globally, data-centric forms of teacher accountability have progressively undermined teacher expertise and authority by constraining the capacity for teachers to act on behalf of their professional discretion (Bradbury & Guy-Holmes, 2018; Perryman, 2009). Teachers face increased pressures to rely on numerical data (e.g., standardized achievement tests), evaluative tools (e.g., observation rubrics) and predictive analytics (e.g., value-added measurement) to guide their pedagogical decisions and classroom practices (Author(s), 2018; Hardy, 2018). Such changes present interesting questions about how data have changed the relationship between teachers and expertise, especially as data and metrics are increasingly privileged over teachers’ professional expertise (Bradbury, 2019; Buchanan, 2019). With this paper, we are interested in understanding how data-centric accountability is transforming the structural and epistemic dimensions of expertise in English schools.

Methods
Drawing on (1) interviews with teachers and principals, (2) policy documents, and (3) data instruments, tools and artefacts, we use this paper to explore:
1. how data-centric practices impact teachers’ capacities to exercise professional discretion; and
2. how data-centric practices change the epistemic dimension of expertise.
We draw on Lipsky’s (1980/2010) ‘street-level bureaucrats’ to understand how data practices constrain the discretionary space for teachers to employ professional judgement. Then, we draw on Foucault’s (1980; 2003) discourse and power/knowledge to understand how data change the epistemic dimension of expertise. We ask: what is known, how is it known, and how do teachers respond accordingly (e.g., what counts as ‘knowing’ students and their needs)?

Findings
We argue that, in a structural sense, data-centric practices constrain teachers within data arrangements that leave them with little space to activate their professional expertise (e.g., against the data). We find that ‘compliance’ is a key feature of these systems, which makes responding to individual and changing needs of students difficult.

Second, in an epistemic sense, expertise has become ‘datafied’ (Lupton & Williamson, 2017), and the expert authority of teachers is increasingly supplanted by numerical measurement and predictive analytics. The knowledges upon which teachers make their judgements are constrained and stripped of the situational and relational knowledges that are so important for building inclusive schools, as the ‘knowledge’ becomes the graphs, metrics, predictions and scatter plots that define what can be known about students, and what should be done in response.

Significance
In these data-driven environments, the ‘quality’ of the teacher is narrowly defined by metrics, and ‘improvement’ is defined as increasing these numbers (Perryman, 2009; Taubman, 2010). Theoretically, teachers are trusted to defend against harmful policies and practices impacting their students; yet, professional expertise is losing its moral authority. This puts considerable pressure on teachers in terms of how they understand and enact their professionalism. Such contradictory positioning can be a source of role conflict (Perryman, 2009; Wilkins, 2011), and it can affect teachers’ sense of agency as experts (Bradbury, 2012). It also raises questions about the extent to which teachers and schools can be responsive to the changing and emerging needs of their students and communities.

Authors

• Jessica Holloway, Deakin University

• Tanjin Ashraf, Australian Catholic University