Teacher data agency and the mediation of new ways of knowing in schools: A socio-cultural perspective of professional learning, relationships and educational change

This research considers the growing significance of data in educational systems. While data use in schools is not a new phenomenon, the collective emphasis on evidence-based decision-making in education draws attention to the purposes and effects of data use and the impact of new ways of knowing in schools. This thesis seeks to understand the conditions that drive these evolving data use policies and interventions and the tensions that emerge from a dual focus on data for school improvement and accountability policies as enacted in schools. The research explores the complex relationships between structure, culture and agency in the context of reform and organisational change in an Australian state-based education system.Drawing on a critical realist philosophical position which underpins the subsequent social realist research, this thesis is concerned with making the connection between social ontology and practical social theorising to consider the ontological and epistemological status of data in education and the impact of the rise of data in schools. Margaret Archerrs explanatory methodology, the morphogenetic approach, supports an analytic separation of structure, culture, and agency, which reveals the complex interplay between social practices that accompany data use in each setting.The research involves a qualitative multiple-site case study of four state primary schools located in the south-east corner of Queensland, Australia at a time of continuing educational reform. The schools, two from the state capital city and two from the lbushr (rural sites) were subject to the same policies and procedures and funding arrangements as implemented and overseen by the state governing body, Education Queensland. An initial analysis revealed co-occurring yet contested structural and cultural conditions driving data use in schools. Agent interaction with and within these contexts was likely to generate alternative emergent structural conditions than otherwise anticipated.Working retroductively, the research developed a broader perspective of the research phenomenon that commenced at an infrastructural system level and finished at an individual agent level. This stratified representation sought to explain/expose the accumulated sense of constraints and enablements, structural and cultural that are imposed on differently situated agents and actors across contextual strata by the rise of data in education systems. The final cross-case comparison revealed a set of generative mechanisms occurring in the context of principal/teacher professionalism that operated to either enable or constrain teacher data agency. Consequently, the research contributes to the mounting debate that surrounds the effects of intensified data use in schools. More specifically, it examines the emerging social relations in terms of their relations of power and control and their potential to alter conditions of performance and teacher agency. Furthermore, the study traces the causal pathways between the contested knowledge bases of school improvement and accountability and the resultant individual and collective emergent agent action.This macro, meso and micro analysis of emergent effects of data use in schools presents opportunities to contribute on several educational fronts, foremost as a granular analysis that identifies the generative mechanisms that shape the outcomes of school improvement and accountability policies. In addition, the research provides insights into school reform efforts through its attention to external and internal forms of school improvement and accountability and the resultant agential action. The analysis outcomes consider the necessary social relations between administration, leadership teams and teachers required to afford an extended form of data professionalism and improved teacher data capacity. In short, teacher data agency might be possible in circumstances that trigger professionalism and a sense of professional identity through transparent data interactions and respectful relationships that value teacher insight and knowledge. Teacher agency is less likely when these data-driven interactions are characterised by target-setting and surveillance practices that re-shape the teacher in their role as a professional and can shift the teaching and learning focus away from other critical educative practices.Finally, this research, with its focus on critical realism underlabouring and Archerrs social realist theorising contributes to the current debates informing data use in schools in at least two ways. Critical realism offers alternative ways to lseer and lknowr the world within a stratified reality, in turn affording the opportunity to examine the rise of data use in novel and interesting ways. In addition, the morphogenetic approach with its concern for understanding the possibilities of change over time through socio-cultural interaction provides a research strategy that links social theory with practical research outcomes. Noted also within the research are the challenges and limitations of a critical realist approach. Lastly, the research suggests that a critical realist vehicle supports the interdisciplinary approach currently being called for to further examine data use in educational systems.n