Schools around the world increasingly rely on a range of different modes of evidence of student learning, often described as ‘data’. In keeping with Pangrazio and Sefton-Green’s (2022) call for increased attention to more local, vernacular responses to datafication processes, this paper draws upon perspectives of students, teachers and school-based administrators as they are influenced by global school data trends and seek to be more responsive to engagement with myriad forms of data. We argue there is a need to ensure meaningful aspects of education do not become marginalised. This is always a risk because numbers convey a sense of ‘objectivity’ and ‘authority’ (Desrosières, 1998), and can be difficult to challenge such perceptions, especially in meritocratic contexts in which numbers are focal measures. These pressures to focus upon numeric conceptions of data are central to the quantification of social processes more broadly (Mau, 2019), which are becoming an increasingly constitutive part of social life. However, more dominant, quantified forms are not the only forms of data that exist in school settings and responses to such data are not simply passive.

After more than 20 years of international large-scale assessment (PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS), and national education policies and practices that centre standardised assessment, we seek alternatives. We present from our four-year study which critiques the effects of standardized test data, and associated processes of the quantification of education, on the work and learning of system personnel, teachers and students in schools, and looks for emerging alternative approaches in Australia, Bangladesh, England, and Singapore. Inspired by Collyer, Connell, Maia and Morrell’s (2018) work of creating knowledge beyond ‘northern’ contexts alone, we have deliberately engaged with varied national contexts, including from ostensibly wealthy, ‘northern’/dominant contexts (England), more peripheral ‘northern’ settings (Australia), seemingly ‘successful’ east-Asian settings (Singapore), and ‘southern’ settings (Bangladesh). In this way, we seek to reveal the richness, diversity and plurality of the types of data, and engagement with data that occur in marginalised communities in these settings at a more genuinely ‘global’ scale. Mirroring how high stakes testing at the local, micro-level is then deployed to criticise schools at a more political, macro-level, we focus on students and educators’ stories of critique and engagement at the local level to challenge more reductive accounts that seem to characterize more ‘global’ discourses of data.

Our inquiry seeks to understand:

- the principal forms of qualitative and quantitative data (‘global’, national, local) drawn on in different national and local contexts;

- the multifarious ways in which educators engage with these data and how the current

focus upon data (‘datafication’) impacts on the lived realities of students, teachers and system personnel;

- the role of various modes of data in this work, and how these are mediated by teachers and system educators; and

- how these practices compare with more dominant, ‘global’ perspectives about data use.

We draw upon storying in marginalised settings to make visible how students and educators in schools and systems in varied policy contexts make sense of data at a more genuinely representative ‘global’ scale. We lean into storying, because humans have long ‘read’ the world through stories, and by making visible the experiences of those typically marginalised, it enables accessibility to theorizing beyond the elite and highly educated (Phillips & Bunda, 2018). Storying claims voice in the silenced margins and counters metanarratives, such as “‘monovocal’ stories about the low educational achievement and attainment of students of color” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 27).

We inquire through storying – that is, the act of making and remaking meaning through stories (Phillips & Bunda, 2018) – to reveal the meaning-making that students and educators give to learning in the context of increased use of national and international standardized data for accountability purposes. Through storying methodology we have taken time to build relationships with school leaders, teachers and students at four schools in each nation, so that there is trust to share and cocreate stories, by interweaving past and present archives and experiences, through story-sharing, observing and document analysis. Through such a situated relational methodology, we highlight the human, lived experiences of datafication in schools. The participating schools have been sourced through recommendations from central ministry staff who identified the schools as having a notable approach to data, along with recommendations through personal networks. School leaders have self-selected staff who have significant roles with school data, and students to reflect different age group experiences of data on their learning. At each school we spent one to two days each year to immerse in the culture of the schools and co-produce stories on data in schools through: (a) conversations with students and educators (individually and focus groups) in a variety of roles (teachers, principals, system/regional personnel) to uncover how they make sense of data and student learning; (b) observations of classroom practice and environments to develop better insights into how this data sense-making is practised; (c) immersion in relevant meetings and professional development activities to understand how educators are informed on how engage with school data; (d) review of systemic and school policies, and associated documents, pertaining to student learning and data, mentioned in conversations and identified in observations and students’ work samples, tests and other documents (e.g., bookwork) to further flesh out our understandings school data in action. Our research team of four have endeavoured to all attend each site visit and online interview so that our diverse ways of the reading the world are brought to our inquiry. We co-write reports for each school that are a basis for discussion and storying for subsequent visits. Further, we visually story through mapping global and local viewpoints as features of education ‘datascapes’, a notion suggested by Lingard (2021, 3), as a possible addition/extension to Appadurai’s (2001) theoretical ‘scapes’ to arrive at a greater understanding and appreciation of the global historical cultural flows and complexities situated in education datascapes.

In Australia, we learnt that there is a growing shift away from emphases on national literacy and numeracy testing data (NAPLAN). Data-rich cultures of wondering-with-data for the sake of better outcomes for students were evident through visualizing data in meaningful ways and collaborative data meaning-making for different stakeholders (i.e., school leaders, teachers, students and parents). Bangladeshi education has its own system of standardized testing, introduced during British colonial rule and expanded in the postcolonial era. From stakeholders, we heard the welcomed impact of recently introduced reforms to reduce examination pressure and prevent students from relying on after-hours private tutoring while seeking to enhance their wellbeing. These include a new curriculum which emphasizes experiential learning across the classroom, school, and society. In England, we heard how Ofsted school inspections have increasingly shifted away from predominantly quantitative data measures towards explicit attention to curriculum and how teachers can evidence their students’ learning (Ofsted, 2019). At the same time, schools that are ‘unperforming’/‘inadequate’ against more traditional measures continue to be under pressure to improve and may be allocated to ‘Multi-Academy Trusts’ with which they have little affinity. Singaporean students are globally known as forerunners on International Large Scale Assessments (ILSAs). The current Singaporean education system agenda has recently shifted to “learn for life” with emphases on values, social and emotional competencies, student well-being and flexibility with subject-based banding (MoE, 2023). However, we heard how broader social pressures (e.g., competition for college places; parental expectations; ‘fear of missing out’) continue to challenge these more holistic and educationally-oriented approaches to student learning. Across these four nations, we see a growing trend toward more holistic approaches to data on students learning including advocacy for well-being, experiential learning and lifelong learning. However, the legacy of high stakes school performance data continues to exert influence.

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