Algorithms of Education: Data and its role in education policy

How do educational policy studies need to shift to remain adequate to the emergence of powerful forms of technology? In ALGORITHMS OF EDUCATION, Kalervo N. Gulson, Sam Sellar, and P. Taylor Webb explore how, for policy makers, big data creates the illusion of greater control over educational futures. They propose that schools and governments are increasingly turning to “synthetic governance”—where what is human and what is machine becomes less clear—as a strategy for optimizing education. In this episode, Gulson and Sellar discuss new strategies for, and a new politics of, education.

Kalervo N. Gulson is professor in education policy at the University of Sydney. He is author of Education Policy, Space, and the City: Markets and the (In)visibility of Race and coauthor of Education Policy and Racial Biopolitics in Multicultural Cities. 

Sam Sellar is professor in education policy at the University of South Australia. Most recently he coedited the World Yearbook of Education 2019: Comparative Methodology in the Era of Big Data and Global Networks.

References:

N. Katherine Hayles

Luciana Parisi

Gilles Deleuze

Félix Guattari

Bernard Stiegler

Pierre Bourdieu

Michel Foucault

Isabelle Stengers

Keller Easterling (Extrastatecraft)

AlphaGo (and 2017 documentary of it)

Shoshana Zuboff