This is the website of the joint project DATAFIED (DATA For and In EDucation), carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institut (GEI), the Helmut Schmidt Universität Hamburg (HSU), the Institute for Information Management Bremen (ifib), and the Leibniz Institute for Human Development and Educational Information (DIPF). The project started on 01.12.2018 and was successfully completed on 31.05.2022. In the project, the effects of the advancing digitalization and the accompanying datafication in the school education system were investigated. Datafication here means that data is collected on all processes in the school system that simultaneously influence decision-making and opinion-forming processes of various school stakeholders (such as education policy, school supervision, school boards, teachers or parents). The joint project described these processes of change from four different, interwoven perspectives and analyzed them on the basis of its own empirical studies at four interfaces of the school education system: school supervision and school (subproject 1), school information systems and school management (subproject 2), learning software and teaching (subproject 3) as well as Teachers …

Das Forschungsprojekt DATAFIED nähert sich seinem Abschluss und wir wollten die Gelegenheit ergreifen unseren Praxispartnern etwas zurückzugeben. Im Rahmen eines virtuellen Workshops konnten wir letzte Woche 13 Teilnehmer aus Schulen und Kultusministerien begrüßen, mit denen wir im Rahmen der Datenerhebung gesprochen haben.Das leitende Thema des Treffens war: „Schulverwaltungssoftware und ihre Versprechen – Lösungsorientierte Unterstützung für die “gute” Schule?“ Neben der Vorstellung unserer Forschungsergebnisse gab es viel Raum zur Diskussion und zum Austausch untereinander. Irina Zakharova und Juliane Jarke präsentierten verschiedene Perspektiven auf „gute Schule“ und welche Rolle Schulverwaltungssoftware bei deren Konstitution spielt. Während in der schulinternen Perspektive eine Arbeit mit, durch, gegen und für die digitalen Daten beschrieben werden kann, zeigt die schulexterne Perspektive ein Spannungsfeld zwischen Be- und Entlastung sowie Standardisierung und Eigenverantwortung. In Kleingruppen wurde rege über den Sinn und die Zielsetzung verschiedener Datenerhebungen in Schule diskutiert. Insbesondere die unterschiedliche Detaillierung und Häufigkeit der Erfassung sowie Weiterleitung von Daten durch die Schulen in den verschiedenen Bundesländern, wie bspw. zum Unterrichtsausfall, war für die Teilnehmenden interessant. Das Abwägen notwendiger Arbeit mit Daten wurde mit …

Last week, the entire DATAFIED project team met again for a joint meeting. Due to the pandemic situation, the meeting had to take place virtually again, but by now we are all well practiced in this. The central topic of the meeting was the work on the joint book publication with which our results will be made accessible to a broad public. The individual chapters, in which mostly two subprojects interweave their results, are taking more and more shape and we are looking forward to be able to report more details on this here soon. In addition to the book, we spent some time discussing various ways to provide feedback to our practice partners. Fortunately, we were able to convince the funding body to extend the project by 6 months, so we still have time to put this into practice.

For the first time since the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, the entire DATAFIED team was able to meet again in presence thanks to the hygiene concept. This took place on 11.11. and 12.11.2021 in the “Haus der Wissenschaft” (House of Science) in Bremen.Besides the upcoming project extension, the publication of the DATAFIED book was still in the main focus. The chapters of the individual SPs were presented and extensively discussed. Furthermore, other exciting publications inside of the project framework were discussed.The next meeting in January is planned in Frankfurt a.M. currently still in presence.

This year, the EdTech Research Forum 2021 of the BMBF meta project “Digitization in Education” again took place digitally. The goal was to create spaces for exchange and networking across educational sectors. The individual events were made available both in classic Zoom meetings and via a walk-in virtual meeting environment in Gather.Town.The joint research project DATAFIED was represented by Angelina Lange and Tjark Raabe in a virtual poster session. Here the other participants of the forum could discuss, ask questions and learn more about the work of datafication research in the school system first hand.   Alngelina Lange and Tjark Raabe present the project poster for DATAFIED in Gather.Town.

The DATAFIED project we will be represented with several contributions at the #ECER2021 (European Conference on Educational Research ) between the 6th and the 10th of september. We are looking forward to active exchange and exciting discussions! September 06 2021 Seeing through Data: The normalizing Politics of Datafication and its Impact on Teacher and Student Subjectivities​Sigrid Hartong, Annina Förschler, Vito Dabisch, Jamie Manolev, Alice Bradbury, Sieglinde Jornitz & Anna Sullivan​Session: 23 SES 10 A | 09:00-10:30 | Room: n/a | Chair: Sigrid Hartong​ Learning Platform on the Rise – Itslearning’s Corporate Expansion Strategy and its Ambivalent Effects on Schooling in GermanyVito Dabisch, Annina Förschler & Sigrid Hartong​Session: 23 SES 01 A | 09:00-10:30 | Room: n/a | Chair: Sigrid Hartong September 07 2021 Enacting Accountability in Education and Its Effects on the Teacher Profession 2​ Guri Skedsmo, Silje Kristin Gloppen, N N, Sigrid Hartong & James Spillane​Session: 23 SES 08 B | 16:00-17:30 | Room: n/a | Chair: Guri Skedsmo​ Manifestations of Rising Datafication in German School Supervision and Consultancy: ​Ambivalent Transformations of a Low-Accountability …

There was much to do before the DATAFIED-Team could take off into summer break. The production of the joint book is proceeding well, so that we were able to discuss the first chapters in detail at our collaborative meeting. We are already looking forward to discuss exciting insights and critical question from others interested in data and datafication!

Data dashboards do not only visualise facts, they also produce compelling narratives. In a new paper, the two DATAFIED-researchers Felicitas Macgilchrist (SP3) and Juliane Jarke (SP2) trace the stories told by dashboards of AI-powered learning analytics and discuss the implications for educational futures and edtech. With narrative we do not only mean fiction. Narrative refers to a mode of presentation in which a sequence of actions or events unfold over time, involving one or more characters, often involving change. We analysed one of the leading learning management systems which offers adaptive learning tools and predictive analytics for premium clients. The system integrates far more real-time data than early warning systems in education have ever done. We identified 3 stories: In the first, teachers are managers who oversee, design interventions, check the effects of their interventions, improve efficiency and effectiveness. The multiple further roles of teachers are rendered invisible and thus irrelevant to this particular understanding of education. The second story is about risk. In the materials, we see red colours flagging a student in trouble. …

On May 20 and 21, 2021, the international conference “Nordic Science and Technology Studies Conference” (NOSTS) was held at Copenhagen Business School in a virtual format. Despite the virtual format, the organizers managed to create a warm, friendly atmosphere at the conference and plenty of space for exchange and discussion. The DATAFIED project and ifib were represented at the conference by a presentation of Dr. Juliane Jarke and Irina Zakharova entitled “Educational technologies as matters of care”. We discussed the roles of educational technologies in schools from the perspective of feminist ethics of care. Our focus was on understanding what role educational technologies and data have in practices of caregiving in schools. By caregiving, building on the approaches of Joan Tronto (1993, 2013, 2016) and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2011, 2017), we mean practices and activities that are oriented toward shaping and sustaining the world so that it is as good for life as possible. Using our research from the DATAFIED project, technologies and data can take on the role of addressees of caregiving …

On April 23, the DATAFIED project team met with Jo Bates and Itzelle Medina Perea from the University of Sheffield to discuss Data Journeys together. During the workshop, we exchanged ideas on how Data Journeys can be used as a concept and tool in research on datafication. Possibilities for the creation, as well as the presentation of Data Journeys were discussed. However, the use for further analysis was also thematically addressed. Based on the presentation of the previous work of Jo Bates and Itzelle Perea in the areas of climate and health as well as the first interim results of the DATAFIED project in the area of education, it was discussed, for example, how a good starting point for a data journey can be found. We are happy about the lively exchange and plan to use Data Journeys both for the analysis of the data flows investigated in DATAFIED and for the visualization of results. Literature: Bates, J., Goodale, P., Lin, Y., & Andrews, P. (2019). Assembling an infrastructure for historic climate data recovery: Data …