The mundane governance of education through time: the case of national testing in Norway

Abstract

This article explores national testing in Norway by analyzing technical and bureaucratic documents steering the process of data production. By examining documents through sociological perspectives on time, as well as attuning to the form and genre of the documents, we identify bureaucratic, sociotechnical, and genre-specific ways in which data production is structured to ensure a smooth process of testing. We find that national tests govern (through) time and by ordering time: their time rules produce simultaneity and synchronicity that in turn gently nudge schools and municipalities into alignment. Thus, time rules and routines enable forms of mundane governance that mirror how contemporary education policy happens through short but more prescriptive (and increasingly digital) policy texts. This is how national authorities may make themselves less detectable, but ever more present and productive of national unity. While recent conversations on time and temporality focus on the emergence of complex, non-linear (e.g. networked) time enabled by the digital transformation of society and education, our article attests to the persistence and significance of linear temporalities in and for education governance, and shows how quantification, assessment, bureaucracy and the affordances of digital technologies together play pivotal roles in upholding a linear time order.