Truth and Truth-Telling in an Educational Knowledge Management System

Author(s):

Jennifer Leigh Clutterbuck(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Ignite Talk (20 slides in 5 minutes)

Session Information

ERG SES C 08, Pecha Kucha Session

Pecha Kucha Session

Time:

2017-08-21

11:00-12:30

Room:

W3.10

Chair:

Agnieszka Bates

Contribution

This Pecha Kucha presentation explores the universal concept of truth within the context of a 21^st Century online knowledge management system. I will discuss how truth and truth-telling have come to be understood by bureaucrats, technocrats, principals and teachers through their use of a knowledge management system known as OneSchool. The OneSchool system is administered by Education Queensland, the education authority in the Australian State of Queensland. To discuss the perceptions of truth and truth-telling, developed in relation to the corporate and school use of Queensland’s online knowledge management system this presentation invites the viewpoints of two, perhaps unlikely companions, Michel Foucault and William James. OneSchool was developed on a set of eight guiding principles, some with greater priority, including a focus upon what was described as ‘a single point of truth’.

I focus in this presentation on what is understood by this term, and how it came to be recognised within Education Queensland.In 2007 the OneSchool project launched functionality, aimed at enabling the online management of all school business requirements. Three major releases incorporated functions that supported policy enactment related to a range of school tasks, from development of student profiles, academic reporting, curriculum and assessment development, and then timetabling and finance. The OneSchool functionality also gathered a range of data which informed local and corporate policy decisions. I argue that it is the interaction between policy, data and digital infrastructures such as OneSchool that creates a datafied policy space, a place that allows the flow of truth and truth-telling across educational jurisdictions, from central and regional offices to schools. This datafied policy space shapes the realm of policy for school and corporate users, constituting a particular kind of ‘truth’ in the process. OneSchool interacts with policy in multiple ways creating a plurality of policy relationships. Firstly, OneSchool is a policy artefact developed from Queensland’s 2005 ‘Smart Classroom’ strategy. Secondly, as a system that relies on technology, it is governed by a range of policies including those related to the use of IT, information security, privacy and legal requirements. Finally, I argue that OneSchool operates as a digital policy instrument, integral to the policy cycle, providing the ‘truth’ of the policy for school enactment and providing the ‘truth’ of the data by which the creation of policy is informed.

The influence of data on policy formation reminds us of the importance of ‘true’ data. James (1908) suggests that ‘truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events’ (p. 201), and therefore I will discuss the events around the use of data in OneSchool. Selwyn (2014), highlights that while data collection has occurred across the centuries, the shift to digital formats has increased the impact of the ‘three V’s of volume, velocity and variety’ (Selwyn, 2014, p.64). I argue that the digital format also allows for the additional V’s, of verification and validation that James (1908) suggests are events in themselves and by which such information is ‘made true’ (James, 1908). James explains that the importance of the ‘events’ of verification and validation, is in that they enable ‘our ideas [to] ’agree’ with reality’. These concepts of truth from the early 20^th century are relevant to modern school and corporate users of OneSchool. Educational leaders in both corporate and school settings lead verification and validation ‘events’ for data to become true. Functionality to support these ‘events’ is available in OneSchool, allowing analysis and visualisation of data. I warily raise the question of visibility being added to the list of events for truth making.

Method

Understanding the term ‘a single point of truth’ within the context of policies developed for the use of technology and the management of student information is problematic in its complexity. Bacchi’s (2009) process of getting to the heart of a policy’s purpose by questioning what the problem is represented to be (Bacchi, 2009) leads me to question if the problem representation that led to the development of ‘OneSchool’s’ guiding principle of creating a single point of truth, was that there were multiple and nonaligned points of truth, within the schooling system, or that there was a perceived lack of truth within the available information. Does the single point of truth exist because information is stored within ‘OneSchool’, or does it exit within the information itself? One school-based interview respondent explained the relevance of ‘a single point of truth’ to OneSchool as: ‘That’s where if you go if you want to know if something is true or not, you check ‘OneSchool. That’s where the most up to date and accurate information will be’ (2017). The question of how such ‘truths’ come to be constituted needs to be asked. Foucault in his final lectures speaks of the modalities of ‘truth-telling’ and I will consider the discourse of truth-telling in which school and corporate users engage. Foucault speaks of the Socratic principle of “know yourself” in relation to ‘parrhesia’, where a person may openly speak the truth of themselves, conscious of the possibility of personal risk (Foucault, 2011). In the 21st century, a world where I view dataveillance as becoming more prevalent in educational settings, I argue that there is indeed a risk in truth-telling. The risk lies in how the telling or recording of the truth or indeed how the absence of that recording is constituted. One school principal, speaking of behaviour incidents, was reported to say, ‘if it isn’t in OneSchool, it didn’t happen’.

Expected Outcomes

Truth-telling may be seen in the accounts of an individual’s educational journey through the recording of academic engagement, professional judgements regarding assessment, behaviour incidents, the recording of curriculum, support programs and inclusive practices. Such truth-telling may be perceived as presenting a personal or organisational risk. As one survey respondent wrote, ‘I view it as not being a one point of truth but a way of demonstrating how bad a young person can behave’ (2016). In assessing such risks, it needs to be recognised that not recording such information, omitting or delaying truth-telling may also create personal or organisational risk. This presentation will engage the audience to consider the truth and truth-telling discussions of James and Foucault in a virtual world of dataveillance. It will guide critical thinking into the transformative influence of the use of an educational online knowledge management system to provide a ‘single point of truth’.

References

Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy. Pearson Higher Education AU. Foucault, M. (2011). The Courage of the Truth. (F. Gros, F. Ewald, & A. Fontana, Eds.) (pp. 1–372). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. http://doi.org/0.1057/9780230309104 James, W. (1908). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. New York: Longmans, Green and Co. Selwyn, N. (2014). Data entry: towards the critical study of digital data and education. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), 64–82. http://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2014.921628

Author Information

Jennifer Leigh Clutterbuck (presenting / submitting)

The University of Queensland, Australia

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