Lecture: Governing Education: the rise of data

Jenny Ozga, Professor of Sociology of Education, University of Oxford

Salle de Conférence, MISHA
5, allée du Général Rouvillois, Strasbourg

Data have become the lifeblood of education governance. At the international level, organisations like the OECD steer education systems through their programmes of assessment and the European Commission’s project of creating the most successful knowledge economy in the world is driven by data collection, analysis and comparison. At the national level, policy-makers increasingly depend on data to show them where they are positioned, in relation to their competitors, and draw on data to justify policy directions. Within systems, schools and teachers have become proficient in data use, and interpret their priorities with reference to data.

In this lecture, Professor Jenny Ozga will consider the processes surrounding the encoding of evidence in interaction between performance data and other (embodied, enacted) sources of professional  judgement and to highlight the role and influence of commercial companies in data provision in governing education. In exploring these issues, the concern is with the interaction between people (e.g. inspectors, school headteachers) and data in the forming of judgements. Among other things, this leads to changes in the authority claims of personnel, who traditionally operated through elite social networks and knowledges, and it leads to the rise of data, especially in their new interactive forms. Professor Ozga will illustrate how the demands and logics of data production and use influence the performance of authority in education.

Poster 

Registration

Lecture slides
 

Programme

18:00   Introduction, by Romuald Normand (SAGE) and Rifka Weehuizen (USIAS), University of Strasbourg

18:15   Lecture Governing Education: the rise of data, by Jenny Ozga University of Oxford

19:00   Questions and discussion, with Jay Rowell, SAGE, University of Strasbourg

19:15   Drinks

For more information, please contact professor Romuald Normand.

Organised together with SAGE