Performance information and datadriven academic anxiety
Date
2017-04
Authors
Hall, Richard
Journal Title
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DOI
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Peer reviewed
Yes
Abstract
This chapter argues that data is the bleeding edge of educational
innovation. By following the traces and trails of data, it is
possible to uncover where education is being cracked open for
the production, circulation and extraction of surplus value. In
part these processes of cracking are amplified by the on-going
financialisation and marketisation of higher education that
continue to kettle academic practices of teaching and research.
By uncovering the flows of value, it is also possible to
demonstrate the transnational associations of capital that are
profiting as a result of the data-driven re-imagining of higher
education. This uncovers mechanisms grounded in: enforced,
public and open, educational data production; the enclosure and
commodification of open and public data for-profit; the selling
and re-selling of newly-commodified and technology-rich
services back into open and public spaces; the generation of a
rentier higher education economy rooted in high technology; the
use of secondary legislation or policy related to employment and
entrepreneurial activity, alongside primary legislation, to drive
change; the exacerbation of debt and indentured study; and, the
use of technology in performance management of academic
labour. The chapter articulates these processes in the context of
global socio-economic and socio-environmental crises and their
symptoms, and in particular the generation of academic anxiety.
Such anxiety emerges against the on-going precarity described
by students and academic staff through technologically-mediated
performance management. As a result, the chapter
asks: what can be learned from counter-hegemonic projects, in
order to describe alternative uses for educational data?
Description
Open Access book
Keywords
Big Data, Commodification of Education, Academic Labour, Academic Anxiety
Citation
Hall, R. (2017). Performance information and data-driven academic anxiety. In: eds L.A da Silva Rosado and G.M. dos Santos Ferreira, Education and Technology: critical approaches. Rio de Janeiro: University Estácio de Sá Press.
Research Institute
Institute for Research in Criminology, Community, Education and Social Justice
Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)
Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)