Proteus as Process: An Analysis of the Development and Failure of a Data Dashboard Project

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 10:50 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transformative Agency: Successes and Failures (Table 11)

Abstract

In this qualitative study, I observe the attempted production of a data dashboard for use across a network of teacher education programs (TEPs). The originators of this project, a technical assistance organization working with several TEPs in the United States, collaborated with a technology consulting firm to build the dashboard and selected one partner TEPs as a pilot. However, the project floundered and failed. Here I use the myth of Proteus as a metaphor through which I examine the partly shared object of the dashboard. Using this mytho-metaphor and the analytical tools of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, I detail one example of how the shifting material object forced changes in how participants envisioned the possibilities of the projective object.

Author

• Maia Goodman Young, University of Washington