Governance Through Digital Formations – The Case of ‘What Works’ in a Norwegian Education Context

Abstract

The Norwegian education system has experienced a shift from originally being strongly rooted in social democracy, equity and the welfare state, to being characterized by a focus on digitized data-work where the ‘what works’ agenda has become a pivotal matter. Digital technologies are now providers of evidence, and important to identify what best practice is and what it should be. This chapter reports on a sociomaterial analysis of in total four policy documents related to an upcoming national school reform in Norway. We treat the policy documents as ‘windows’ into the policy of digitization in Norwegian schools. The findings show an assemblage of heterogeneous actors that are to partake in digital practices in schools. By tracing their relations, we find that digital formations are potentially important actors in steering the governance of Norwegian schools. Findings also show that relations may be forged at school level. The authors discuss how the coming together of heterogeneous actors generate governable forms of digitization. In particular, the analysis of the assemblage shows that the relations provoke a governance agenda of quality assessment. The findings suggest further empirical research in schools to map school actors’ knowledge of and practice with digital formations and its functions in governance.