Session Information
28 SES 01, Governing by Data and Standards: Normalization, Paradoxes and Resistance
Paper Session
Contribution
Literature and socio-economic research clearly point out the increasing role played by “big data” in a variety of fields: economy, cultural consumption, food, education, finance, wars, and famine. In order to be functional and usable, data provided by these organizations require and involve a large number of human, economic and institutional resources, and produce increasingly detailed information that cannot be ignored, allowing comparative analyses across countries. The result is the implementation of ranking processes for the assessment of countries and local contexts (such as OECD Regions at a Glance). In all fields, databases make it possible to collect, produce and monitor a great deal of information, which seems to construct an objective, natural view of societies. Databases affect public, media and political institutions, which use data as “natural empirical evidence” to legitimize and make decisions.
The effects of databases are also evident in the educational field. The social history of educational databases has recently been characterized by a transition from static to dynamic databases, the latter allowing not only the collection and storage of data, but also the constant and direct acquisition of information, thanks to digital technologies and the Web. The resulting process of “databasization of education” is indeed a relevant, expanding and ever-changing phenomenon (with regard to the typology of data, themes and geographic areas), and represents both a radical discontinuity with the (even recent) past and an innovation for the future, although it is not exempt from critical (ethical, technical and political) issues.
In the last few decades, various types of databases have emerged in the educational field:
- Large-Scale Assessment (LSA) infrastructures (such as PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and PIAAC), maxi-surveys collecting data related to the “competence levels” of students (or adults) and information about families, schools and individuals.
- Indicator systems (such as OECD, IEA, Unesco, Eurostat) based on standard processes for collecting, gathering and processing large sets of data, which are gradually passing from being “static” (namely, “stored” in large, more or less accessible, databases) to “dynamic”. Dynamism is indeed ensured by the possibility to integrate and graphically display them through infographic models or Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
Another interesting aspect is that this process of first- and second-level “infrastructuralization” (respectively, the production of data through LSA and data collection systems or of dynamic, constantly updated and integrated data) ends up producing various data-use practices, ranging from institutional uses following an “evidence-based policy” to “more social” uses, open to a greater interpretative flexibility, also due to the free availability of data. Most of them (such as OECD data) are indeed provided free of charge. In this process, the production of open-access data plays an important role, requiring expert users – as in the cases of OECD (PISA or PIAAC) and IEA (PIRLS and TIMSS) surveys – while also opening up new fields of research and analysis, which may follow less institutional theoretical and/or methodological paths and produce unexpected outcomes.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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