Governing software: networks, databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

This article examines the emergence of ‘digital governance’ in public education in England. Drawing on and combining concepts from software studies, policy and political studies, it identifies some specific approaches to digital governance facilitated by network-based communications and database-driven information processing software that are being discursively promoted in education by cross-sectoral intermediary organizations. Such intermediaries, including National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Demos, the Innovation Unit, the Education Foundation and the Nominet Trust, are increasingly seeking to participate in new digitally mediated forms of educational governance. Through their promotion of network-based pedagogies and database-driven analytics software, these organizations are seeking to delegate educational decision-making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that have the capacity to predict, govern and activate learners' capacities and subjectivities.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Learning, Media and Technology

• Publication date

  2015-01-02

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Education, Computer Science, Political Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/17439884.2014.924527
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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