Datafication discourses in education regularly present themselves as radical game changers in education policy and research arenas. Fueled by advances in digital technologies, a more differentiated, personalized and widespread acquisition of data, its accumulation, storage, analysis and distribution seems imminent. As datafication is widely understood as a topical phenomenon (see for example Jarke & Breiter, 2019: 1), studies of datafication mostly focus on developments since the turn of the millennium, rarely covering the history of datafication. Using Finnish educational research and governance as a case example, I explore the under-studied data futures past in educational research and governance. I ask how educational research and governance in the 20th century have become organized around notion of quantitative, statistical data and future promises of increasing personalization, prediction and control of learning. As methodology, the paper employs Foucauldian archaeology of knowledge. It involves studying research and policy texts as discourses; series of statements organizing objects, subjects, and modes of reasoning (Foucault, 2002). The data consists of a) Finnish academic texts (articles, monographs) characterizing the nature and future development of educational research and its practicality; and b) policy texts characterizing the nature and governmental uses of scientific, statistical knowledge. The timeline for data is 1900–1980 which covers the early emergence of Finnish educational research and its subsequent stabilization and key role in the government of the national education system. The analysis focuses on three interrelated discursive strategies (Foucault 2002), i.e., continuing ways of assigning and legitimating the future role of educational research and scientific data in education policy: a) For the first time in history capturing the true reality of education, which enables b) treating pupils according to their developmental stage and individual traits, which then c) makes teaching and governing education effective. As an outcome, the paper argues that the shared history of educational research and data driven education policy involves repetitive gestures of promissory futures. Time and time again, detaches from the past of and promises future personalization and prediction, which is also prominent in contemporary datafication discourses. However, the prevailing focus on developments from the current millennium inhibits from seeing such repetition.

Foucault, M. (2002). Archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge. Jarke, J., & Breiter, A. (2019). Editorial: the datafication of education. Learning, Media and Technology, 44(1), 1-6. doi:10.1080/17439884.2019.1573833