Data for Accountability in Education: The Trajectories and Translations of a Global Script

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

This co-authored book explores a set of urgent and complex questions: When did data-for-accountability emerge as a governing tool in education? How has it evolved over time and across regions? Who benefits from the datafication of education—and who loses out? The book traces the rise of student testing, performance-based evaluation, governance by numbers, and the rise of policies related to data and accountability. Drawing on a variety of methods, theories, and disciplines, the authors demonstrate how these instruments have taken root globally, why they persist, and how their meanings and effects vary across policy contexts.

Data on, for, and in education has been accumulated rapidly since the turn of the millennium. By now, over 2,500 internationally comparable indicators on education exist. In 2024, the UNESCO Institute for Statistics expanded the Sustainable Development Goal 4 indicators and added 30,041 new data points on other policy-relevant indicators. Intergovernmental organizations are not the only ones prioritizing data gathering in their daily operations. Data collection by groups advocating for more, better, or more equitable education has also surged. Advocacy groups also rely on different types of quantitative data to argue for counting the uncounted (e.g., internally displaced persons) when planning to improve access to education. Finally, data in education includes extracting information on students, schools, districts, provinces, countries, regions, and the world. The growing demand for data aims to transform education into a measurable, calculable, and seemingly predictable setting.

This book advocates for a multidisciplinary investigation into how data has been utilized for accountability purposes over time, across various institutional settings, and at different levels of governance. It illustrates how different methods of inquiry and thematic foci collectively amplify our understanding of these trends. While some of the chapters focus on the global trajectory of datafication, capturing the semantic shifts that have occurred over the past fifty years and beyond, others focus on the power dynamics and path dependencies that clarify why data for accountability was either embraced or rejected in different local contexts. The combination of macro-, meso-, and micro-level analyses enhances our understanding of the political, economic, and pedagogical uses and misuses of data.

Sub Unit

• Book Launches and Workshops / Book Launch

Chair

• Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Columbia University Teachers College & NORRAG

Book Launch Presenters

• Patricia Bromley, Stanford University

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Non Presenters

• Rie Kijima, University of Toronto

• Kerstin Martens

Discussants

• Justin J.W. Powell, University of Luxembourg

• melanie Ehren, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam