Teachers Thinking Through the Datafied School: Examining Educator Sensemaking in Data and Platform Ecosystems

• In Event: Educators’ Identities and Perceptions Across Tech Platforms, AI, and Multimodal Literacies

Abstract

EdTech platforms have taken a leading role in pedagogy and assessment these days, but is their presence damaging the way teachers do their job, care for their students, and think about education more broadly? This qualitative case study examines how teachers make sense of the data and platforms around them. Findings suggest that teachers remain agentic through shrewd navigation of an environment suffused with data that acts as social capital; teachers in the study report being able to engage in negotiations of which numbers matter and when. Findings also show that as EdTech companies entice teachers with easier jobs through their platforms teachers wrestle with whether easier work leads to better outcomes.

Author

• Aaron Adan Aguilar, University of Wisconsin - Madison