The shift from analogue to digital learning materials in Danish primary and lower secondary schools introduces new technologies to teachers’ work lives and experiences. This paper pays attention to data visualizations in digital learning materials. They provide teachers with instant overviews about student performance or learning. Data visualizations are graphic representations often categorizing learners through colors like red, green, and yellow or comparing learners in classrooms, across municipalities, nationwide, or to previous performance scores through progression curves. Data visualizations are mostly used as part of teachers’ assessments practices. I conceptualize data as more-than-human phenomena invested with diverse forms of vitalities (Lupton, 2020), and they thus have worldmaking abilities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at two Danish primary and lower secondary schools, I explore the entanglement of multiple temporalities present when teachers (dis)engage with data visualizations. Drawing on feminist philosopher Karen Barad’s concept of spacetimemattering (2007) and feminist scholar Sarah Sharma’s notion of the politics of time (2014), the aim of the article is to pay attention to how multiple temporalities entangle, differentiate, contrast, and compete (Plotnikof & Mumby, 2023). Examining the influence of data visualizations in teachers’ work, I ask: What particular time constructs entangle and compete when teachers meet data visualizations? What are the different logics entailed in the multiple temporalities? And how does the entanglement of temporalities reconfigure teachers’ practices? Through empirical material generated through participant observations, I explore three different temporalities and examine how they differ, contrast, compete, and how they reconfigure and organize teachers’ work practices. The first temporality is present in the data visualizations and has characteristics of instantaneity and immediacy. The second temporality is present in teachers’ assessment practices, which are based on careful consideration, deliberation, and hesitation. I argue that while the temporalities embedded in digital data visualizations are characterized by speed, they do not necessarily speedup teachers’ assessment practices. However, teachers’ work experiences are affected by different temporal orders. This is evident in the third temporality, which unfolds through digital learning materials automating the teachers’ task of assessment through data visualizations. The digital learning materials promises teachers to ‘save time’ on the “unimportant” and “boring” task of assessing and correcting (some) student material. Not having the bodily experience of spending time assessing student material affects teachers’ in various ways.

Barad, K. M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press. Lupton, D. (2020). Data selves: More-than-human perspectives. Polity. Plotnikof, M., & Mumby, D. K. (2023). Temporal multimodality and performativity: Exploring politics of time in the discursive, communicative constitution of organization. Organization, 13505084221145648. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084221145649 Sharma, S. (2014). In the meantime: Temporality and cultural politics. Duke University Press.