The politics of data visualizations. Introduction to special issue

Bibliographic Data

ID2937079
AuthorsHelene Ratner (0000-0002-0842-4049, Aarhus University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue3
Pages293-306
Publication date2025-05-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0159-6306 • E-ISSN: 1469-3739
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01596306.2025.2500131
OpenAlexW4410134728
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited52

This special issue investigates the politics of data visualizations in education, examining how visual tools such as dashboards, benchmarks, and progression curves shape educational practices, perceptions, and governance. Far from offering neutral representations of data, visualizations are performative technologies that construct what counts as educational quality and learning. Bringing together contributions from diverse European contexts, the issue explores how data visualizations are produced, negotiated, and consumed across a range of educational settings. It emphasizes the values and power relations embedded in these visual tools, and how they influence decision-making, frame educational realities, and mediate the digitalization and datafication of education. By situating these contributions within broader debates in critical education studies and science and technology studies, the issue foregrounds how data visualizations enact specific understandings of education and how their makers and users relate to them. Together, the articles offer a critical lens on the social, political, and epistemic work that data visualizations perform in contemporary education

Media studies · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Data Analysis and Archiving · Law · Participatory Visual Research Methods · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research

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