The ambitions to strengthen European collaborations in the field of education have been closely bound to the production, analysis, and distribution of data (Souto-Otero and Beneito-Montagut, 2016; Lawn and Grek, 2012). Since the 1960s, student data has been at the center of the efforts to ‘affirm a common space’ (Lawn and Grek, 2012) across Europe. The function of data in Europe has since increased and shifted, and with the turn of the millennium, data moved to the center of European education governance across all education levels. Intrinsic to the fast-pace collection and distribution of student data is the development of digital technologies. Today, the European data deluge can be found on websites, platforms and other publicly available databases. For nearly two decades, such representations of data analysis have been characterized by statistical methods and the development of benchmarks. In later years, however, the introduction of knowledge-based regulation tools such as self-evaluations has been integral to the European education governance, targeting in-house responsibility in schools (Ozga and Grek, 2012; Ozga, 2009).

Digital technologies are also inherent to practices within schools; one-to-one devices are being introduced to an abundant number of schools across Europe, and teachers and school leaders are encouraged to make use of digital technologies to confront challenging issues of curriculum, assessment and evaluation (Ottesen, 2018). In 2018, the European Commission launched the Self-reflection on Effective Learning by Fostering the use of Innovative Educational Technologies (SELFIE) platform – a platform designed to give schools insight into ‘what’s working well, where improvement is needed and what the priorities should be’ (European Commission, 2019, paragraph 1) in relation to their own use of digital technologies. In this paper, we analyze the SELFIE platform to shed light on how co-constructed, (digital) self-evaluation tools may indicate a change in how data works in the governance of European education. We ask

(i)    What are the digital formations within the SELFIE platform? (inward relations)

(ii)  What questions for governance emerge from the constitution of digital formations in the SELFIE platform? (outward relations)

The SELFIE platform allows schools across primary, secondary and vocational levels to take a ‘SELFIE’ free of charge. The SELFIE serves as a tool ‘to help support schools in their use of digital technologies for teaching and learning’ (European Commission, 2018, p.2) by offering a picture, or an illustration, of their present, future and desired position in their exploitation of digital technologies. A key part of the SELFIE platform is the platforms’ emphasis on internal, rather than external, comparability (Kampylis, 2019). Thus, SELFIE seems to depart from any assumptions of best practice or purported benchmarks: its main goal is not to provide schools with comparative benchmarks, but with an internal, individual basis for self-reflection and improvement.

In this analysis, we draw from sociomateriality to understand the digital formations within the SELFIE platform and the relations between them. An important tenet to sociomaterial approaches is that things are performative (Fenwick, Edwards and Sawchuk, 2011). In this sense, digital formations and the way they ‘make data work’ becomes a question of tracing relations among components such as numbers, colors and shapes; the relations between such components are important to understand how numbers (data) may work as governance mechanisms. Human intention is decentered in our analysis, as it is based on an exploration of how digital formations such as data and visualizations may, or may not, carry authority. The sociomaterial analysis is used as a stepping-stone to discuss the implications of self-evaluation tools for European education governance.

The main data of this analysis is comprised by the three phases in the SELFIE platform; a pre-test, test, and post-test. This followed a logic of setting up the test, to answering questions based on a likert scale, which lastly resulted in an interactive report. Other accessible data on the platform, including guidebooks and certificates have not been included in this analysis as we confine ourselves to the digital formations that arise from the main steps of the SELFIE process. This paper focuses on the capacities of the SELFIE platform within the three phases, by drawing from Landri’s (2017) use of semiotic analysis. In semiotic analysis’, digital systems are understood as ‘configurations, that is a mode of ordering things’ (Landri, 2017, p.12). We understand configurations as modes of heterogeneous networks. By using semiotic analysis in this sense, our analysis has denaturalized digital systems and its data infrastructures by examining the relations that take form within the three different phases of the SELFIE platform. We use the notion of internal and outward relations as points for the semiotic analysis. We understand internal relations as the relations that form between entities that shape the configurations ‘stability and closure’ (Landri, 2017, p.12), such as the plastic qualities (shapes, colors) of the platform, its corporeal relations (inclusion/exclusion criteria), and its figurative sphere (its nameable and recognizable aspects). The inward relations of the SELFIE platform were operationalized by taking screenshots of the platform and analyzing what is displayed; from the Likert scale to the possible meanings of colors in the post-test. Outward relations refers to understanding the platform as a digital artifact with scripts and programs for action. We use the notion of internal relations as a mean to understand SELFIE’s potential to create outward relations, for instance by enacting a form of authority that may spark desire (Sellar, 2015). That said, we stress that our analysis lies on the level of the platform, meaning that whether the platform itself triggers a desire for actual change in schools is a question for further empirical investigation. The inward and outward relations of SELFIE are thus treated as the platforms potential to perform authority, but not as actual representations of practice.

Initial analysis show that SELFIE displays a wide range of internal relations. For instance, within the test-phase, a sequence of statements about the schools’ use of digital technology is displayed by using a Likert scale from 1-5. The Likert scale is represented by clickable buttons that increase in number and size (one to five, small to large), with accompanying features such as a space for additional, qualitative information that the respondents themselves can fill in. The questions identify matters of concern; often associated with students’ needs. Moreover, in the post-test report, a report is created based on the answers gathered during the test. The respondent is here confronted with a static document with all the responses. The responses are color-coded, but we do not find the colors to have any further meaning. However, in the case of sorting the scores, the low scores are associated with the color red and high scores with the color green, indicating which areas the school scores satisfactory and where it can improve. These inward relations of plastic qualities (sorting colors), its figurative sphere (the Likert scale), and its corporeal relations (defining matters of concern), give meaning to the respondent schools of desired areas for action by asking them to assess to which degree this particular reality exists. In other words, the respondent school does not, yet, fully match with the school in the imagined picture of the SELFIE test. Through our on-going analysis, we will highlight how the inward relations in the SELFIE platform form outward relations as a wide range of actors are expected to take responsibility. This presentation of governance, we argue, invites for a discussion of how European governance seeks to steer education in a time where a growing body of western states are debating to opt-out from large-scale multinational assessments.

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