In contemporary educational policy and leadership motivation seems to be staged as the problem as well as the solution. In that sense motivation is not only a question for theories of learning, but a key problem for educational leadership. To motivate means to move and lead through the inner forces of someone. But as motivation cannot be taken for granted it seems to be important to mobilize and modulate it (Staunæs, Nissen & Raffnsøe 2015). To make this happen, motivational technologies are invented in order to produce modes of being, where the attunement of motivation becomes pivotal and thereby make students themselves engage intensively in learning (Bjerg & Staunæs 2016).

This paper explores how educational policy with a focus on improved learning outcomes for ‘all’ children is brought into the lived life of schooling through the invention and increased use of data visualisations. Different forms of visualisation techniques such as for instance visible learning(Hattie, 2009; Nottingham, 2013) and more locally designed concepts (as True North e.g.) are enacted to enhance learning and performance. The immanent hope is to make students move their energy and engagement, and thus themselves in the direction of learning. The assumption is that motivation will appear if the state of learning and the direction of progress are rendered visible and if it is possible to watch and follow their own learning progression/regression. Students’ reflections upon visualisations (in the form of e.g. graphs of learning or ladders of motivation) are expected to energize and move students towards better performance.

In this paper, our aim is not to test or judge whether these technologies work or not. Rather our curiosity is directed at exploring the interchange between different techniques making learning visible (such as poster, graphs, pictures, computer-programs e.g.) and motivation. Thus, our research questions are: How is motivation articulated as target for motivational technologies based on visualisations; How do those kinds of technologies co-produce motivation and for whom? How do these visualisation techniques differ from former visualisations, and how does the enactment of motivational technologies implicate new challenges of governance?

Based on critical research on learning-centred governance/leadership  (Bjerg & Staunæs 2011; 2016; Juelskjær & Staunæs 2016) and policy focused upon numbers and data (Grek, 2009; Juelskjær, 2016 in press; Massumi, 2010; Ozga, 2009; Rose, 1991; Ruppert, 2012; Sellar, 2014) our assumption is that  within the general claim of ‘leading through learning outcomes, these motivational technologies represents a rationalistic framework, however manipulating through suggestive dynamics and tools. Vari Visualisations are expected to mobilize and modulate motivation, as the drive that inwardly stimulates people to act in certain ways (Staunæs, Nissen & Raffnsøe 2015). In that sense, conceptualising visualisations of learning outcome, learning process and learning progress as motivational technologies is an affective specification of what is known as the technologies of the self (Foucault, 2010)