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Education is undergoing various transformations due to new data-driven educational technologies and the management of educational data through data infrastructures. These technologies are frequently promoted to parents and the profession as being ‘revolutionary’ because they represent a new generation of learning. While computer adaptive tests may arguably improve various efficiencies, the argument that they will revolutionise education requires evaluation. In this paper we draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to theorise (a) the desire for data amongst policymakers and (b) the effects of data infrastructures as systems that coordinate educational thought. We argue that, rather than revolutionising learning as promised, datafication in computer-based modes merely offers more intense expressions of longstanding possibilities for learning. We describe three types of events—breaks, cracks and ruptures—and argue that data-events translate cracks (imperceptible changes that constitute learning) into breaks (information), but either cannot generate rupture (difference) or represent rupture as error. However, the intensification of learning through datafication may, we suggest, rupture educational thought more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the emergence of aspiration as a keyword linked to higher education equity policy in England and Australia since 1997. Aspiration serves multiple purposes when constructed as a problematic site in which policy must intervene. For example, it can be understood as a vector for new technologies of governance that operate through the production of entrepreneurial dispositions; as a signifier for groups that have experienced upward social mobility; and as a personality trait that correlates with future earnings and thus can be defined as a dimension of human capital. It has also provided a rallying point for equity work in higher education. Focusing on English and Australian policy contexts, as well as the recent education work of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), we examine the different perspectives of a range of stake-holders on the strategy of 'raising aspiration' for higher education and how these have changed over time; the partnership work undertaken in the HE systems of both countries under the aegis of aspiration-raising policies; and recent policy developments in both contexts. In particular, we consider how aspiration-focused policies have affective effects on policy actors and seek to control affects directly by modulating feelings about capacities for action in the future. Two data sets provide the empirical basis for the paper: (a) document analysis of major equity policies in England since 1997 and in Australia since 2008, as well as a review of relevant OECD policy documents; and (b) analysis of nine interviews with equity practitioners and policy personnel in England, Australia, and located within the OECD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a policy sociology reflection on Bernard Barker's book, The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform. The book represents Barker's attempt to intervene in education policy during the lead-up to the 2010 UK general election and is framed by what he imagined might be possible under a new Conservative government. Barker draws inspiration from the Red Tory communitarian position articulated by Phillip Blond. In hindsight, we are less sanguine about these possibilities in the context of the Coalition government and its ongoing response to the ongoing financial crises. Indeed, what has emerged is a rearticulated neo-liberalism in the guise of ‘Big Society’ rhetoric. We agree with Barker's critical deconstruction of the five illusions underpinning New Labour schooling policy, but argue for a broader agenda of redistribution, both in social policy and with respect to schools. Policy needs to recognise and support teachers and good pedagogies, and we also see a pressing need to rethink richer forms of educational accountability. All of this must be located within a politics that pursues a new social imaginary. Nonetheless, we commend Barker's contribution towards post neo-liberal thinking in respect of school policy, specifically in England, but with relevance to other locations and systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]