Becoming information centric: The emergence of new cognitive infrastructures in education policy

New cognitive infrastructures are emerging as digital platforms and artificial intelligence enable new forms of automated thinking that shape human decision-making. This paper (a) offers a new theoretical perspective on automated thinking in education policy and (b) illustrates how automated thinking is emerging in one specific policy context. We report on a case study of a policy analysis unit (‘The Centre’) in an Australian state education department that has been implementing a BI strategy since 2013. The Centre is now focused on using BI to support complex decision making and improve learning outcomes, and their strategy describes this focus as becoming ‘information centric’.The theoretical framework for our analysis draws on infrastructure studies and philosophy of technology, particularly Luciana Parisi’s recent work on automated thinking. We analyse technical documentation and semi-structured interview data to describe the enactment of a BI strategy in The Centre, with a focus on how new approaches to data analytics are shaping decision-making. Our analysis shows that The Centre is developing a cognitive infrastructure that is already creating new conditions for education policy making, and we conclude with a call for research designs that enable pragmatic exploration of what these infrastructures can do

Anticipating education: governing habits, memories and policy-futures

The use of data to govern education is increasingly supported by the use of knowledge-based technologies, including algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and tracking technologies (Fenwick, et al., 2014). New forms of datafication and automation enable governments and other powerful stakeholders to draw from the past to construct images of educational futures in order to steer the present (Hartong, 2019). This paper examines the competing conceptions of time and temporality that AI posits for policy and practice when used to anticipate educational futures. We argue that most educational futures are already delineated, and machinic expressions of time are the chronologies, habits, and memories that the educated subject inhabits rather than produces. If resetting educational habits and memories can be an alternative to algorithmic anticipations of education then we believe, paradoxically, that machines may help to reset them by accelerating them

Automated Essay Scoring in Australian Schools: Collective Policymaking - Policy Brief

This policy brief outlines critical issues associated with policy and the use of Automated Essay Scoring (AES) technology in the Australian education system. The brief outlines recommends multi-scalar policy development informed by educators, policymakers, and representatives from educational technology companies engaging in cooperative learning and action

Automated Essay Scoring in Australian Schools: Key Issues and Recommendations White Paper

This white paper outlines critical issues associated with the use of Automated Essay Scoring (AES) technology in the Australian education system. The key insights presented in this paper emerged from a collaborative, multi-stakeholder workshop held in July 2022 that explored an automated essay-scoring trial and generated future possibilities aligned with participant interests and expertise. Drawing on the workshop and our expert understanding of the wider landscape, we propose recommendations that can be adopted by various stakeholders, schools, and educational systems

Emerging data infrastructures and the new topologies of education policy

© The Author(s) 2018. This paper examines how datafication is creating new topologies of education policy. Specifically, we analyse how the creation of data infrastructures that enable the generation, communication and representation of digital data are changing relations of power, including both centralised and dispersed forms, and space in education. The paper uses conceptual resources from cultural topology and infrastructure studies to provide a framework for analysing spatial relations between educational data, discourses, policies and practices in new governance configurations. The paper outlines a case study of an emergent data infrastructure in Australian schooling, the National Schools Interoperability Program, to provide empirical evidence of the movement, connection and enactment of digital data across policy spaces. Key aspects of this case include the ways that data infrastructure is: (i) enabling new private and public connections across policy topologies; (ii) creating a new role for technical standards in education policy and (iii) changing the topological spaces of education governance

Networked Learning in 2021: A Community Definition

Introduction (Networked Learning Editorial Collective): Since the turn of this century, much of the world has undergone a tectonic socio-technological change. Computers have left the isolated basements of research institutes and entered people's homes. Network connectivity has advanced from slow and unreliable modems to high-speed broadband. Devices have evolved: from stationary desktop computers to ever-present, always-connected smartphones. These developments have been accompanied by new digital practices, and changing expectations, not least in education, where enthusiasm for digital technologies has been kindled by quite contrasting sets of values. For example, some critical pedagogues working in the traditions of Freire and Illich have understood computers as novel tools for political and social emancipation, while opportunistic managers in cash-strapped universities have seen new opportunities for saving money and/or growing revenues. Irrespective of their ideological leanings, many of the early attempts at marrying technology and education had some features in common: instrumentalist understanding of human relationships with technologies, with a strong emphasis on practice and 'what works'. It is now clear that, in many countries, managerialist approaches have provided the framing, while local constraints and exigencies have shaped operational details, in fields such as e-learning, Technology Enhanced Learning, and others waving the 'Digital' banner. Too many emancipatory educational movements have ignored technology, burying their heads in the sand, or have wished it away, subscribing toa new form of Luddism, even as they sense themselves moving to the margins. But this situation is not set in stone. Our postdigital reality results from a complex interplay between centres and margins. Furthermore, the concepts of centres and margins 'have morphed into formations that we do not yet understand, and they have created (power) relationships which are still unsettled. The concepts … have not disappeared, but they have become somewhat marginal in their own right.' (Jandrić andHayes 2019) Social justice and emancipation are as important as ever, yet they require new theoretical reconfigurations and practices fit for our socio-technological moment. In the 1990s, networked learning (NL) emerged as a critical response to dominant discourses of the day. NL went against the grain in two main ways. First, it embarked on developing nuanced understandings of relationships between humans and technologies; understandings which reach beyond instrumentalism and various forms of determinism. Second, NL embraced the emancipatory agenda of the critical pedagogy movement and has, in various ways, politically committed to social justice (Beaty et al. 2002; Networked Learning Editorial Collective 2020). Gathered around the biennial Networked Learning Conference,1 the Research in NetworkedLearning book series,2 and a series of related projects and activities, the NL community has left a significant trace in educational transformations over the last few decades. Twenty years ago, founding members of the NL community offered a definition of NL which has strongly influenced the NL community’s theoretical perspectives and research approaches (Goodyear et al. 2004).3 Since then, however, the world has radically changed. With this in mind, the Networked Learning Editorial Collective (NLEC) recently published a paper entitled 'Networked Learning: InvitingRedefinition' (2020). In line with NL's critical agenda, a core goal for the paper was to open up a broad discussion about the current meaning and understandings of NL and directions for its further development. The current collectively authored paper presents the responses to the NLEC's open call. With 40 contributors coming from six continents and working across many fields of education, the paper reflects the breadth and depth of current understandings of NL. The responses have been collated, classified into main themes, and lightly edited for clarity. One of the responders, Sarah Hayes, was asked to write aconclusion. The final draft paper has undergone double open review. The reviewers, Laura Czerniewicz and Jeremy Knox, are acknowledged as authors. Our intention, in taking this approach, has been to further stimulate democratic discussion about NL and to prompt some much-needed community-building.lic

Spatial theories of education : policy and geography matters

The contributors to this book work a spatial dimension into the consideration of educational phenomena and illustrate its explanatory potential in a range of domains: urban renewal, globalization, race, markets and school choice, suburbanization, regional and rural settings, and youth and student culture

Repackaging authority: artificial intelligence, automated governance and education trade shows

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be an important part of education governance. It is already being built into everything from business intelligence platforms to real-time online testing. In this paper, we aim to understand how AI becomes, and forms, a legitimate part of authority in contemporary education governance in what we call the automated education governance assemblage, that incorporates technology companies and AI-supported products used in education. We focus on EduTech Australia–an education technology trade show in Sydney–as a way to look at: (i) how the different aspects of automated governance are connected at EduTech, including the relations between different participants, companies and products; and (ii) how the automated governance assemblage works to legitimise and constitute EduTech as a policy space and site of new authorities in education governance.</p

Faith in education : the politics of state funding and the 'new' Christian schooling in Australia

Fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity is growing in popularity in Australia, concurrent with the ascendancy of the new Christian school. This article examines the historical and policy landscapes that have given rise to this educational phenomenon and draws some links with other education systems, particularly the United States. It is argued that, in Australia, a propitious setting for the rise of new Christian schools has been created through the interplay of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity, Australia's Constitution, and an enabling neoliberal policy environment.19 page(s

Why EdTech is always right: students, data and machines in pre-emptive configurations

Pre-emption describes a system of automated knowledge creation and intervention that steers the present towards a desirable future, by building on knowledge derived from the past. Folding together temporalities makes it impossible to disprove pre-emption. It is increasingly featured within EdTech, introducing new forms of automated governance into education. This paper examines how students and EdTech come together to make pre-emption possible, not as a single event but as a normalised governance instrument. For this, we introduce Lucy Suchman’s idea of configuration to examine pre-emptive EdTech. The paper presents three openings into the configuration of students and pre-emptive EdTech. These include observations from an EdTech trade show; interviews with insiders of technology companies; and analysis of accepted papers to a learning analytics conference. We conclude the data used at the heart of pre-emptive EdTech seeks to exclude students and configures them as absent. Yet, its interventions have material consequences.</p