In this article, we reveal the nature and effects of data infrastructures on the authorisation of data that represent students and educational practitioners, including how such data can misrepresent and govern educational policy and practices in sometimes problematic ways. To better understand the governance capacities of data infrastructures, we…

This paper explores how trust in teacher professional judgment has been reconstituted through the globalised trends of performative accountability and reductive data-driven logics. The article draws upon empirical research from interviews with teachers and school leaders as well as observations of teacher preparation days, classroom and staff…

This article draws on a framework based on Bernstein's three-message systems of schooling and Ball's notion of policy cycle to examine how the human capital development goal incorporated into the Bangladesh secondary English curriculum has been translated into pedagogy and assessment practices. Data were collected from classroom observations and…

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers' work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers' work and learning were constituted through…

This paper analyses reflections upon the nature of recent educational policymaking in Singapore. Drawing upon the authors' individual and collective autoethnographic analyses of a series of reflective notes jotted down after discussions with educators from private and public schools in Singapore, the Academy of Singapore Teachers, and FutureSkills…

This paper reveals the significant historical traces which informed the learning practices of teachers at one particular school site in a rural and regional educational district in Australia. Drawing upon recent theorising into professional practice, the paper argues that teacher learning practices are intrinsically "ecologically"…

This paper reveals the array of practices arising from strong policy pressure for improved student results in national literacy and numeracy tests in Australia: the National Assessment Programme in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The paper provides an account of a policy context characterised by significant pressure upon teachers and principals to…

This article provides insights into teachers' and school administrators' responses to the current "fetishisation" of school performance data in Australian schooling. Specifically, the research investigates the accountability practices that emerged in a Queensland metropolitan primary school in response to this broader focus upon…

The importance of leadership for improving educational outcomes in schools has been widely promoted. However, the nature of leadership practices, in context, has received less attention in the educational leadership literature. In this article, we present a case study of the specific leadership practices that developed in one school site serving…

This paper provides insights into non-Indigenous teachers' efforts to engage proactively and productively with students to enhance their learning in a predominantly Indigenous community in northern Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon notions of "funds of knowledge", forms of capital as part of community cultural wealth, Critical Race…

This paper employs sociological literature on risk and the commodification of education to explain current schooling practices in a context of increased concerns about students' behaviour and results on standardised tests of achievement. Drawing upon teacher and student learning practices in three school sites in south-east Queensland, Australia,…

In this article we present a case study of a school community engaging in what we describe as educational praxis--a form of committed learning to meet the needs of poor and refugee students in a disadvantaged community in Australia. The school, part of the Catholic systemic school sector in Australia, shares its site with the local Catholic…

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students' results on national literacy and numeracy tests -- the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) -- in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers' learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN…

This paper provides insights into teacher and school-based administrators' responses to policy demands for improved outcomes on high-stakes, standardised literacy and numeracy tests in Australia. Specifically, the research reveals the effects of the National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and associated policies, in the state…

This paper draws upon and critiques the Australian federal government's website "My School" as an archetypal example of the current tendency to abstract and quantify educational practice. Arguing in favour of a moral philosophical account of educational practice, the paper reveals how the "My School" website reduces complex…