ABSTRACT
In institutional ethnographic research, how teachers spend their time is important, as it forms the basis of their embodied experience. This chapter provides an institutional circuit nested within a school assessment calendar instituted at Chelsea Primary, which was central to the organisation of teachers’ days and years. It aims to explore how a locally produced document known as the Data Differentiation Placemat was activated and with what effect at Swinton High. The chapter provides Nola’s account of her work collecting Informal Prose Inventory data and demonstrates the institutional circuit at work, and the significant amount of time that is reorganised by ruling texts that are oriented towards improving National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy data. In 2014, Swinton High regional office introduced an initiative to provide regional support to schools deemed to be “successful”. The chapter concludes by examining the work required at both schools to collect spelling data using a proprietary spelling program known as Words Their Way.
