ABSTRACT
Stephen Ball’s performativity framework has provided a useful lens for illustrating the effects (and side-effects) of contemporary teacher accountability, especially in how teachers’ subjectivities have been (re)shaped in the image of the market and managerialism. While metrics, data and dis/incentivism have been central features of performative systems, new techniques that change the relationship between data, the teacher subject and the site of intervention require new analytical tools for making sense of current conditions. Some scholars have looked to ‘datafication’ as a lens for understanding how digital platforms, big data and data surveillance are producing new conditions and possibilities within education. Of relevance to this chapter is the new ‘datafied’ teacher, whose practice, disposition and discretion are rendered as data and acted upon in similar, yet different, ways as the ‘performative’ teacher. In this chapter, we track the emergence and evolution of datafication techniques, while showing how performativity and datafication operate as complementary technologies of governance, but in ways that produce unique possibilities. Specifically, we use common practices associated with PBA (e.g., performance-based pay, value-added modelling) to illustrate the shift from the performative to the datafied teacher subject. We pay particular attention to teacher expertise, authority, and professional identity.
