This book develops a theoretically rich analysis of quantification and subjectivity, tracing new linkages between educational policy and everyday life in schools, diving deeper into 'ordinary' schools as they encounter and navigate quantified forms of recognition. With a focus on Chile as a critical case of neoliberal experimentation, this book investigates whether intense exposure to quantified forms of meaning and sense-making in school settings could develop into metrics-driven dispositions or attachments. Contemporary demands on schools for calculation, prediction, and comparison by the use of accountability tools like high-stakes testing, league tables, consequential inspection ratings and 'progress' measures evidence the relentless presence of quantification in teaching and learning. This book argues the importance of bridging political, sociological and anthropological literatures together with affect and subjectivity theories to understand the complex ways in which standardisation, optimisation, automation, and surveillance crystallise into quantification-based forms of intelligibility.
"This thoughtful, provocative, and shocking book demonstrates and documents the insidious insertion of neoliberal practices of government into the everyday life of schools and the thinking of teachers. Using case study materials as illustration it shows us how numbers of various kinds work to reshape the student experience and teachers' pedagogies and the very meaning of education. The book interweaves theory with qualitative data in exemplary fashion. A powerful and penetrating book that demands a wide readership."
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Stephen J. Ball FBA, Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Education, Institute of Education, University College London, UK
"Numbers surround us, trail us, and constitute us. In this fascinating book, Santori shows the profound impact of an intensified metric governance on school everyday practices. The power of quantification has permeated school rationales and subjectivities, yet in dissimilar and miscellaneous ways. This book offers a nuanced understanding of power, one that conceives the school as an 'active agent' that is, nonetheless, constrained and enabled by the material, symbolic and semiotic dimensions of its context.
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Dr. Alejandra Falabella, Associate Professor, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile
"In The Quantified School, Diego Santori provides a theoretically sophisticated, insightful, critical and original analysis of the effects of an assemblage of school performance metrics on the formulation of subjectivities inside schools in the highly marketised Chilean school system. While the focus is schooling in Chile, the book is important reading for education policy scholars and policymakers for understanding, challenging and moving beyond such a regressive policy regime."
-Bob Lingard, Professorial Fellow, Australian Catholic University and Emeritus Professor, The University of Queensland,Australia
This book develops a theoretically rich analysis of quantification and subjectivity, tracing new linkages between educational policy and everyday life in schools, diving deeper into 'ordinary' schools as they encounter and navigate quantified forms of recognition. With a focus on Chile as a critical case of neoliberal experimentation, this book investigates whether intense exposure to quantified forms of meaning and sense-making in school settings could develop into metrics-driven dispositions or attachments. Contemporary demands on schools for calculation, prediction, and comparison by the use of accountability tools like high-stakes testing, league tables, consequential inspection ratings and 'progress' measures evidence the relentless presence of quantification in teaching and learning. This book argues the importance of bridging political, sociological and anthropological literatures together with affect and subjectivity theories to understand the complex ways in which standardisation, optimisation, automation, and surveillance crystallise into quantification-based forms of intelligibility.
Diego Santori is Senior Lecturer in education and society at King's College London, UK. His research interests include the relationships between education policy, economics and subjectivity and the ways in which their interpenetration produce new cultural forms and practices.
