My School? Critiquing the abstraction and quantification of Education

Abstract

Abstract This paper draws upon and critiques the Australian federal government's website My School as an archetypal example of the current tendency to abstract and quantify educational practice. Arguing in favour of a moral philosophical account of educational practice, the paper reveals how the My School website reduces complex educational practices to simple, supposedly objective, measures of student attainment, reflecting the broader ‘audit’ society/culture within which it is located. By revealing just how extensively the My School website reduces educational practices to numbers, the paper argues that we are in danger of losing sight of the ‘internal’ goods of Education which cannot be readily and simply codified, and that the teacher learning encouraged by the site marginalises more active and collective approaches. While having the potential to serve some beneficial diagnostic purposes, the My School website reinforces a view of teachers as passive consumers of information generated beyond their everyday practice. Keywords: audit cultureeducational philosophyMy Schoolteacher accountabilityteacher learning Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Richard Smith, Monash University, for his very helpful feedback and insights on an earlier version of this manuscript. The authors wish to acknowledge comments provided by the two anonymous reviewers. Ian Hardy would also like to thank Wilfred Carr for many interesting conversations, particularly during a sabbatical visit to Sheffield in 2009, which influenced the development of the ideas presented in this paper. The paper is also informed by continuing conversations about the nature of professional practice with Stephen Kemmis and colleagues from the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education, Charles Sturt University, and research into the quantification of Education by Bob Lingard and colleagues at the University of Queensland. Any errors remain the responsibility of the authors alone.