@inbook{6b7cae788132436789b4c65917a13872,
title = "Playing God: Education data visualizations and the art of world-making",
abstract = "The chapter explores visualizations as instruments of the expansion of metrics in the transnational governance of education. It investigates the strategies that visualization experts adopt in the measurement of education, focusing on interactive visual rankings produced by major international organizations. Building on visual and discourse analysis, the study details how the politically sensitive nature of the global governance space, and the increasing pressures for “decolonizing” education, influence how data are visualized. The study makes two contributions to the study of education data visuals. First, it details the move away from league table formats toward multivocal interactive layouts that seek to mitigate the competitive and potentially dysfunctional pressures of the display of “winners and losers.” Second, it theorizes data visuals in global governance as governing tools that entice country buy-in in performance measurement exercises and seek (by avoiding antagonizing lower performers) to align actors around common global education agendas.",
keywords = "education, education data, global governance, visualization, world-making",
author = "Sotiria Grek",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Oxford University Press 2023. All rights reserved.",
year = "2024",
month = jan,
day = "18",
doi = "10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197570685.013.23",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780197570685",
series = "Oxford Handbooks",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
pages = "518--536",
editor = "Paola Mattei and Xavier Dumay and Eric Mangez and Jacqueline Behrend",
booktitle = "The Oxford Handbook of Education and Globalization",
address = "United States",
}