ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the media and policy makers make use of data as an objective form of knowledge about students, schools and teachers. The discursive construction of National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data creates common-sense truths about teachers and their work. The production of NAPLAN data can be understood as being part of a cycle of diagnosis and remediation. Beginning from the point of diagnosis, the first work that teachers encounter is the administration of NAPLAN testing. Tests such as NAPLAN are a technique of power because they “transform the economy of invisibility into the exercise of power”. Exploring how NAPLAN data is assembled and translated into knowledge allows us to understand how students, teachers and schools are inscribed in translations. Once the NAPLAN test period ends, student assessments are sent to various state curriculum authorities for marking.
