Introduction: time and temporality in the datafied governance of education

Abstract

This special issue offers an exploration of the interaction of datafication and temporality in educational governance and demonstrates the many ways in which this interaction can be framed, theorized, conceptualized, and studied, adopting poststructuralist, sociomaterial, and new materialist frameworks. The special issue defines temporality as manifestations of time in human existance (Hoy in Kitchin, 2023: 4), and touches upon questions of temporality encompassing aspects like time frames, timing, tempo, duration, sequence, and past, presence, and future. In this introduction to the special issue, we first propose various theoretical perspectives on time that we find fruitful for the study of datafication and temporality, emphasizing poststructuralist, sociomaterial, and new materialist theorizations. Next, we outline three overall research questions relating to the interaction between datafication and temporality, and discuss their critical potential, exemplified through the articles included in the special issue as well as other research. Finally, we present a number of methodological considerations relating to time, exemplified by the final paper of the special issue and other research.