This article explores how data visualizations come to matter, and how different types of data visualizations are ascribed different modes of existence. Data and visualizations of data are widespread within education (Decuypere & Landri, 2021; Williamson, 2016; Wyatt-Smith et al., 2021), however different types of data and their visualizations take different forms, meanings and have different journeys. In this article I pay attention to the data visualizations found in digital learning materials in the Danish primary and lower secondary school system. For the oldest students in the Danish primary and lower secondary schools, digital learnings materials have largely replaced analogue learnings materials and books. Some of these digital learning materials offer teachers graphic overviews about student performance during and/or after lessons. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Danish schools and among Danish teachers, I have studied how teachers interact with, make sense of, and how they use these visualizations.
Data visualizations in digital learning materials vary from other types of data visualizations, e.g., from national tests, and international large-scale assessments. They typically do not travel as far as the abovementioned types of data (and their visualizations) but are engaged more intimately by individual teachers. Yet, they are entangled in wider eco-systems or assemblages beyond the teachers that interact with them including both humans and nonhumans (like school leadership, technologies, local municipalities, and policies). In order to explore how the data visualizations come to matter, I build on and draw inspiration from feminist new materialist work (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2022; Haraway, 2008, 2016). I build on the conceptualization of data (and their visualizations) as more-than-human phenomena invested with diverse forms of vitality (Lupton, 2020). Data are performative (Staunæs et al., 2021), they are local and inextricably entangled (Loukissas, 2019).
By paying attention to the situated, local, and embodies experiences of teachers engaging data visualizations (in digital learning materials), I explore how teachers make and enact data (and their visualizations) and how the data make and enact teachers (Lupton, 2020). I argue that data visualizations come to matter in different ways and that they are ascribed different modes of existence. Some visualizations become ‘comatose’ – abandoned and almost dead, while others become ‘vibrant’ – full of life and influence. At the same time, I look at how (some) visualizations also contribute to teacher becomings.
