The performative to the datafied teacher subject : Teacher evaluation in Tennessee

[Extract] Globally, performance-based accountability (PBA) has become an education policy solution for excellence and equity (Smith, 2016). PBA is rooted in testing, evaluation and dis/incentivization as a means for steering teacher practice and defining teacher ‘quality’. Advocates suggest such systems will improve teacher agency and student outcomes. Yet scholars have found these policies and practices produce a myriad of undesirable consequences for teachers and education more broadly. This includes diminished autonomy and reduced capacity for teachers to exercise professional discretion (Perryman, 2006, 2009), a narrowing of the curriculum, the stifling of collaboration, and cultures of distrust (Berliner, 2011; Hardy, 2018).

Stephen Ball’s (2003) performativity framework has provided a useful lens for illustrating the impacts of such systems, especially in how teachers’ subjectivities have been (re)shaped in the image of the market and managerialism. While metrics, data and dis/incentivism have been central features of performative systems for many years now, new data and digital techniques that change the relationship between data, the teacher subject and the site of intervention require new analytical tools for making sense of current conditions. Some scholars have looked to ‘datafication’ as a lens for understanding how digital platforms, big data and data surveillance are producing new conditions and possibilities within education (Bradbury, 2019; Selwyn, 2015; Williamson, 2017).