This paper explores and analyzes the impact that the development and use of digital platforms is currently having in educational contexts, especially with regard to the intersections and relationships between technology and gender, data science and feminism. In the first part, a brief theoretical journey is made in which the main milestones linked to digital governance in education and technological accelerationism are presented, the role they play in the processes of educational reform at a global level and the appropriation made by the agents of the educational community of the phenomena linked to platformization in education, to finally arrive at the need to rethink all these issues in terms of equity and equality in the light of the framework offered by technofeminism and data feminism. 

Sociotechnical imaginaries about digital transformation and artificial intelligence designed to shape and project the future of education are materializing in educational institutions through software and hardware that accelerate a new digital governance of education (Perrota, Williamson, Gulson & Witzenberger, 2021). This research argues that the pandemic acceleration of new software and hardware in educational institutions is originating pedagogical and organizational changes of particular relevance that modify governance within the centers. These changes are supported by imaginaries that incorporate principles of automatic behaviorism, behavioral psychology and algorithmic coding systems that are increasingly quantifiable, efficient and effective in determining school governance. The digital platforms of Google for Education and Microsoft 365 are the main materializations in schools that are articulating the most relevant changes of the digital transformation of this governance in education. These digital platforms are generating the main modifications of teaching and learning processes (Decuypere, Grimaldi & Landri, 2021), based on “anticipatory logic” and new automation processes in education, while expanding new processes of increasingly techno-solutionist teacher training. This digital governance is also affected by new practices of managerialism and digital marketing as a result of the penetration of digital platforms based on artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms that modify school choice or school choice algorithms (Swist & Gulson, 2023). 

If we now turn to analyze the context of digital governance from this technofeminist approach, the movement linked to data feminism has emerged strongly in the scientific literature as a way of thinking about data, both in its uses and its limits, based on direct experience, commitment to action and intersectional feminist thinking (D'ignazio and Klein, 2023). This strategy emphasizes a two-way relationship of mutual contribution: data analysis has helped women's struggles around the world just as women have made great strides in the field. By showing that power is not equally distributed around the world, data feminism highlights how data science reinforces social inequalities, and data science itself is the instrument of choice to reverse the situation.

The research has focused on a case study carried out in the community of Castilla y León regarding how digital governance processes affect Secondary Education. In order to carry out this study, a series of interviews were conducted with teachers and policymakers, adopting the methodology of Discourse Analysis for the coding and categorization of data in relation to digital governance in schools, the formation of differentiated socio-technical imaginaries in relation to educational platforms and their differential impact in terms of gender, democracy and social justice. Finally, a series of results, conclusions and proposals are offered along the lines of the integration of the gender perspective in relation to digital governance, the accessibility and democratization of data in the use of platforms, the incorporation of transdisciplinary tools that articulate post-humanist and techno-feminist approaches and the promotion of social justice through data feminism.

The study is based on a biographical-narrative research (Chase, 2015; Denzin and Lincoln, 2015; Rivas Flores, 2014) carried out in Castilla y León, since the focus of attention is centered on the analysis of narrative productions through which participants shape ways of acting and configure meanings in the environment of digital platforms and their use in secondary schools. In this research framework, the use of the digital ecosystem research strategy known as Technography, which allows us an analytical approach in which elements of ethnographic analysis and elements proper to technological analysis (Bucher, 2018) are hybridized to understand the effects of digital platforms in education on the new forms of digital governance in educational centers. This strategy will be useful to examine the effects of coding, algorithms, and datification found in each Application Programming Interfaces (API) of Microsoft's digital platforms for education. The API is understood as the “black box” of a coded language that sets the “rules of the game” (Perrota, Williamson, Gulson & Witzenberger, 2022). The instruments and data sources used to carry out the research respond to the complexities of digital ethnography (Ardévol, Estalella and Domínguez, 2008): - Each API is analyzed to understand how other software operates in an interconnected way and to determine the possible processes of gender segregation and discrimination that can alter social justice and democracy in schools. - Ten semi-structured interviews are conducted (ensuring gender parity) as a dialogic research process (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2014), to understand how teachers in Castilla y León interact with digital platforms in the new forms of governance in Microsoft educational centers. - Six more semi-structured interviews are also implemented, two policymakers, two international experts and two national experts, in all of them maintaining gender parity. For the codification and categorization of data in relation to digital governance in educational centers, the conformation of differentiated socio-technical imaginaries in relation to educational platforms and their differential impact in terms of gender, democracy and social justice, the methodology of Discourse Analysis is adopted. To analyze all these digital practices and representations materialized in discourses, procedures of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are hybridized to examine and interpret the agendas of political actors (Fairclough & Fairclough, 2011) and Political Discourse Analysis (PDA) to examine and interpret the programmatic agendas of governments (Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer, 2004). The “Atlas.ti 23” software is used through an open coding of information, selective coding and inductive delimitations.

The case study conducted leads us to consider again the digital gender gap, in this case putting the focus of study regarding how data capitalism and algorithmic digital governance affects women. The research conducted allows us to analyze descriptively the use that the educational community makes of the pre-established designs in the ecosystem of digital platforms and the role played by data within the structures of educational capitalism. The analysis carried out points to the possibilities of using algorithmic technologies with higher levels of civic awareness, social justice and systemic sensitivity. In light of what has been raised throughout the research, it is concluded that one of the most urgent issues is to take steps towards creating a framework of educational digital sovereignty in the context of Spanish schools, which is oriented towards the establishment of transformation guidelines based on a feminist, redistributive and inclusive ethic that reduces gender inequalities, promotes greater integration and social diversity, and also seeks greater development of the professional autonomy of professionals working in schools. The research carried out shows the need to rethink issues such as the use of digital technology in schools, the role played by the platforms, as well as the data from which they are fed, forcing us to incorporate the gender perspective in such analysis. Several proposals are drawn from this study: from the aforementioned integration of gender perspective in technological and data issues, the accessibility and democratization of data through the use of platforms, the use of transdisciplinary tools that articulate between post-humanist and techno-feminist approaches for a better understanding of data and reality thanks to the democratization of data and, finally, the promotion of social justice through data feminism.

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