The global infrastructuring of research data and its risks for (particularly qualitative and critical) education scholarship

Publication date
2023-12
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
URI
Publisher
University of Zurich, Institute of Education
Series or journal
On Education : Journal for Research and Debate
ISSN
Periodical volume
6
Periodical issue
18
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Keyword
Data Infrastructures
Infrastructuring
Open Science
Politics
Qualitative and critical education research
Research data management
Abstract
This essay problematizes the so-far absence of broader critical debate on the governing dynamics around research data infrastructuring (not only) in education scholarship. More specifically, it refers to the growing role of large-scale data infrastructures as well as complexes of Research Data Management (RDM) that seek to foster ‘open’, reusable, and increasingly machine-readable (education) science. While research data infrastructuring in general, and RDM in particular, have so far been predominantly discussed from solutionist-positivist perspectives, this essay discusses the underestimated risks that lie in the governance dynamics of research data infrastructuring, including: (1) the gradual narrowing of what kind of education, but also what kind of education research become visible in and through data infrastructures (namely those that build on already dominant hierarchies in the field); (2) a gradual shift from doing research towards ‘doing data’, including a shift of political attention and research funding, as well as (3) effects of normalization, also triggered through extensive dataveillance, shareveillance, and ‘ethical monitoring’ of researchers. This particularly endangers genuinely qualitative and critical research in education.
Description
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Version
Published version
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