Data Culture and the Organisation of Teachers' Work

An Institutional Ethnography

Nerida Spina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367173258
• eBook ISBN: 9780429556982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Data Culture and the Organisation of Teachers' Work provides an in-depth look at how the political and media scrutiny of teachers, pupils and schools now organises teaching and learning. Spina also examines how educational data is used in schools, and where it fails to take account of the everyday experiences of school leaders, teachers and students.

Drawing on primary research, and discussing practice in relation to the National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), this book discusses the strengths and weaknesses of a data-driven approach, the restrictions this can impose and how to navigate them as a teacher.

Ideal for scholars and postgraduate students of education, this book provides a comprehensive institutional, ethnographic look into the daily lived experiences of teachers, and the effects of standardised testing.

1 Boom! And it’s all about data

Well my first comment is that data is the new, dirty four-letter word. You know, it was just like, BOOM! And it’s all about data.

(Rosa, primary school teacher)

I guess my life revolves around data these days. It has to because it is everything.

(Jennifer, primary school teacher and head of curriculum)

I cannot continue to do a job that requires me to do what is fundamentally against my philosophy of how it should be done. I love my students and they love me. I know how to engage children in learning and how to make it fun. It’s what I do best … So why am I writing this? I’m writing this because teachers need to speak up but we are often afraid of retribution. We need to claim back our profession but we are powerless. Teachers teach because we love children and are passionate about education. Our young teaching graduates enter the profession bright eyed and bushy tailed, energetic and enthusiastic, ready to make a difference. So why I ask are they only staying for an average of 5 years? Of course that question is rhetorical. I know the answer. They are burnt out and disillusioned. Older teachers like me have seen better days in the classroom so in a way it’s harder for us to see all the joy slowly being sucked out of learning. But we also have a wealth of experience to draw from and we know which hoops you don’t necessarily need to jump through. We occasionally speak out. We are not as easy to “control”. But we are tired and also burning out with disillusionment.

I write this in the hope that we can spark a public discussion. We need the support of parents, who I know agree with us. I write this because I love children and I can’t bear to see what we are doing to them. Last year, as I apologised once again to my class for pushing them so hard and for the constant barrage of assessment, one child asked me “if you don’t like the things you have to do then why are you still a teacher?” That question got me to thinking long and hard. I had no answer except that I truly loved kids and it was with a heavy heart that I realised that wasn’t enough anymore.

(Kathy Margolis, former teacher)

Jennifer and Rosa are two teachers working in vastly different schools. The similarity of their experiences points to one of the most significant changes to educators’ work in recent times – the use of data and numbers to drive education policy and practice. Rosa, a primary¹ school teacher with more than 30 years’ experience, said that she was accustomed to “things coming and going” in education, and that during her career she had experienced a steady ebb and flow of policy change. Although she was used to seeing different approaches to curriculum and pedagogy come and go, it had become apparent to Rosa and her colleagues that although data was a “new ‘thing’ in the cycle of ‘things’”, something about this change was markedly different. By “data”, Jennifer and Rosa were referring to the use of large sets of numbers such as student achievement on standardised assessment. Unlike curricula or pedagogic fads, data was underpinning a larger, more permanent paradigmatic shift in education. According to Rosa, a new data culture had emerged as the one “thing” that would not go away. “No way,” she said.

The other account is a Facebook post written by former classroom teacher Kathy Margolis (2016) explaining her decision to leave teaching after some three decades. This post was much like that of another former primary school teacher Gabbie Stroud who also announced on Facebook that she had resigned from teaching, with a passionate discussion about how standardised assessment and data had transformed the job she had once loved, leaving her exhausted and dispirited (McKnight, 2015). During the same period that Margolis and Stroud began to voice their concerns about a culture that valued assessment and data so highly, many government and mainstream media reports continued to position standardised assessment and data as a necessary tool for understanding the inner workings of schools. Rather than listening to teachers’ embodied experiences of working under such regimes, teachers’ attempts to contest this approach were often dismissed by media pundits.

Much of the early media reporting in Australia following the inception of a national standardised testing program² positioned teachers as lacking skills in the use of data to inform their teaching practice. For example, Ferrari (2011), writing in The Australian newspaper, described teachers as data “phobic”, and as needing to be “dragged reluctantly” into debates about measuring student achievement because they were largely ambivalent about the value of measuring and analysing student test results. Similar media articles such as “NAPLAN tests too hard for teachers” (Morton, 2013) argued that an Australian Senate Committee report (2014, s.2.28) that recommended teachers be provided with training in data analysis and interpretation “represents a stinging rebuke of teachers who have mounted campaigns against the tests as being costly, inefficient and unhelpful” (Morton, 2013).

Despite being labelled anti-improvement, teachers continue to speak out and describe the effects of working in a culture that prizes data so highly. Both Margolis and Stroud have continued to discuss their views, and to advocate for teachers’ beliefs about their work with children and young people. For example, Stroud’s post provided her with a platform for television and radio appearances (e.g., Fidler, 2017; McEvoy, 2018), a journal paper (2016), and a book (2019) recounting her burnout and ultimate decision to leave the teaching profession. In a 2019 blog post on Mamamia.com³ entitled “‘It’s a waste of time’: 11 teachers and parents share what they really think of NAPLAN”, comments such as this were posted:

I’m both a teacher and parent. I despise it. It’s one snapshot, on one day, which gives an indication of progress – not a definitive and overall view of ability. It helps schools to gauge how they are going, plan and reflect, but now government; parents; society; media place such a huge emphasis on it, it has changed meaning. My son will do it for the first time next year, and I’m thinking of taking a well-timed holiday.

These kinds of stories resonate with my own experiences of classroom teaching, education research and teaching in initial-teacher education programs. Talking with teachers and pre-service teachers from across Australia, I have noticed in the remarkable similarity of stories a culture that is dominated by data-collection and use. Many of these same teachers and school leaders have also talked about how they value the many advantages that are to be had from using data and evidence to inform their practice. I am often struck by the enormous dedication and capacity of teachers and pre-service teachers as they use data to refine and improve their practice. I note that the teachers who took part in this research were aware of the value of making evidence-based decisions.

However, as the above stories reveal, there is a divergence between the taken-for-granted discourses that politicians, the media and the public hold about teachers, teaching and data; and the embodied experiences of teachers and school leaders. Educators are often cast as part of a problem of declining standards (e.g., Mockler, 2019); with data proposed as the logical mechanism to monitor and ensure quality, and the justification for ever more education reform (e.g., Hunter, 2019). Their nuanced understandings about the benefits and perverse effects of working in a data culture are often missing from media and political discussions.

Teacher attrition and burnout are increasingly recognised as an international policy problem (e.g., Dworkin & Tobe, 2014) that is related to the rise of standards and evidence-based accountability. While there has been some increase in the attention given to the embodied experiences of teachers (for example, through social media posts, and the tragic circumstances of educators such as school principal Trish Antulov who passed away at her desk at work (Mourad, 2018)), less attention has been paid to the disjuncture between official accounts of teachers’ work as enshrined in education policy, and the everyday work of teachers. This book therefore begins with three questions: What are teachers’ experiences of data in their everyday/night work? How is this work organised? And what are the effects of a datafied education system on teachers’ work?

This book presents the findings from an institutional ethnographic investigation of the experiences of teachers and school leaders in Australian schools. Institutional ethnography is a research method of inquiry developed by Canadian sociologist Dorothy E. Smith who describes it as an “alternative sociology” that is not driven by pre-theorisation and the application of strict methodological processes (Smith, 1999). Rather, the research begins by inquiring into the actualities of the subject of inquiry; examining their everyday worlds. This research was designed to uncover what it really means to be a teacher working in a data culture. Smith’s early work (e.g., 1974, 1987) highlighted how women’s experiences and knowledge were often missing from official accounts. The research method grew Smith’s investigations into how ordinary, often-invisible domestic chores that women undertook allowed men to live in a world where “their work lives [were] untrammelled by responsibility for managing their mundane daily needs” (Campbell, 2003, p. 7). Everyday tasks such as cleaning babies’ vomit, grocery shopping and preparing food are not glamorous, but are important to the functioning of family life.

Similarly, much of the work teachers do is vitally important to the functioning of education systems. Many of the teachers I talked with were surprised that I was interested in what they considered to be unimportant, mundane tasks that were almost invisible, even to themselves. According to Porter (2012), significant ethnographic research is needed to expose how numbers are both produced and used in modern institutions because its “boringness” means it often escapes examination, controversy or dissent. My hope is that this book will provide some insight into the range of work that teachers undertake, and to provide a space for examining and discussing the use of data in education. If we are to understand the operation of education in a datafied system, it is important to see all forms of teachers’ work, in order to turn it “from its extraordinary invisibility into visibility” (Smith, 2003, p. 63).

Understanding teachers’ work is important, although on its own, it doesn’t explain why teachers in vastly different settings are voicing related concerns about their work in a datafied education system. The research in this book draws on the accounts of school principals and teachers in both primary and secondary settings in Australia; from high and low socio-economic areas; and from metropolitan and regional locations. The excerpts (above) from Rosa and Jennifer illustrate how two teachers at very different schools – one in a well-off metropolitan area and one in a school characterised by families struggling with unemployment and poverty – are working in remarkably similar ways. Examining the work of teachers such as Rosa and Jennifer is instructive, but on its own, does not explain why such similarities exist. Institutional ethnography as a research method is unique in that although it is grounded in the everyday experiences of real people (like teachers) in real places, its ultimate goal is to map the operation of complex, power relations that coordinate what happens in local settings. Without examining these broader structures it is difficult to understand how we have arrived at a situation in which the stories of Rosa, Jennifer and their teaching colleagues (along with the growing chorus of teachers and leaders on social media) bear such striking similarities.

These trends are not unique to Australia. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg (2007) has described the spread of standardisation and large-scale testing as a GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) that has infected education policies worldwide. In this book, I explore how these global and national policy assemblages orchestrate the work and lives of teachers and school leaders, and with what effects.

To disrupt the dominant view in media and policy discourses that data is an obvious and objective way of understanding and managing education, it is worth reflecting on how we arrived at this moment. In this introductory chapter, I therefore provide a history of quantification and the datafication of education. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book.

Data and global education policy

Numbers have not always been used to measure and manage education. Although evidence-based decision making may now seem a logical means of understanding education, the explosion of these practices is a relatively recent phenomenon (Lawn, 2009). For example, in

the 1800s, World Fairs and Expositions used rich descriptions of pedagogy, highly detailed accounts of planning, curriculum, resourcing and even schoolroom layouts. In 1893, author Robert Bancroft described the education exhibits at a World Exposition in Colombia:

Here may be compared the [education] systems of countries many thousands of miles apart … all grouped within a few thousand yards of space, and yet presenting a clearer illustration of methods, appliances and results than could be obtained from an extended tour of the world.

(Bancroft, cited in Sobe & Boven, 2014, p. 5)

Although there were no quantified, standardised measures, these accounts “gave the reader the distinct impression that [a particular system, frequently the American school system] was the best” (Landahl & Landahl, 2009, p. 60). This kind of description was a precursor to the contemporary discourses that are based on similar assumptions about the importance of comparison.

International comparisons of education systems have moved from narrative description to judgements based on standardised, numeric data. Examining media stories across the decades from the late 1800s onwards illuminates the difference in how comparisons between education systems were made, and how these were increasingly quantified in the latter part of the twentieth century. An editorial published in Brisbane’s Telegraph in 1918 begins with a general description of the state of education, much like we might read in co...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Boom! And it’s all about data
• 2. The datafication of education
• 3. The production of data
• 4. Performance management of principals: Data is the only game in town
• 5. Principal responses: Data stories, data conversations and high yield pedagogies
• 6. Teachers’ work: A life revolving around data
• 7. Institutional circuits: Intense and never-ending work
• 8. Implications and possibilities: Data cultures and the organisation of teachers’ work
• Index