The Datafication of Learning: Data Technologies as Reflection Issue in the System of Education

Like other parts of the social system, education is becoming an information-driven venture: data technologies pervade all levels of the system. This datafication of education seems to take place alongside a general turn to learning that Gert Biesta has called learnification: a progressively singular focus on the manipulable features of individual learning in education. Given rapidly rising levels of datafication, it seems timely to take up Luhmann and Schorr’s contention that education entails a technology deficit and discuss datafication as reflection issue in the system of education. Against their argument that human learning is not amenable to a technology, I develop the counter-argument that data technologies are replacing human learning outright with data at the level of organisation. Data thus present a concretely digital form of what Raf Vanderstraeten has called education as an ersatz order. In a data-driven form of organising education, human dimensions of learning become secondary to a systemic dimension: making learning visible as data and so susceptible to databased manipulation. The text treats school-wide positive behaviour support interventions as an evidence-based exemplar of this trend towards datafication in the system of education.     

Effect of attention control on sustained attention during induced anxiety

Anxiety has wide-reaching and complex effects on cognitive performance. Although it can intrude on cognition and interfere with performance, it can also facilitate information processing and behavioural responses. In a previous study, we showed that anxiety induced by threat of shock facilitates performance on the Sustained Attention to Response Task, a vigilance test, which probes response inhibition to infrequent nogo stimuli. The present study sought to identify factors that may have contributed to such improved performance, including on- and off-task thinking (assessed with thought probes) and individual differences in attention control, as measured with the Attention Control Scale. Replicating our prior finding, we showed that shock threat significantly reduced errors of commission on the nogo trials. However, we extended this finding in demonstrating that this effect was driven by subjects with low attention control. We therefore confirm that anxiety increases inhibitory control of prepotent responses—a mechanism which is adaptive under threat—and show that this effect is greater in those who rely more upon such prepotent responding, i.e., those with low attentional control.     

Factors of style and personality

In an attempt to find relationships between psychological and linguistic variables, style samples of short stories, 300 words each, were analyzed according to formal criteria and the results were correlated with scores on personality tests. The number of significant correlations supported the hypothesis that style is related to personality. A factor analysis, using the principal component solution and Varimax rotation (Harman, 1967), of the correlation matrix resulted in six identifiable factors of style, three factors of psychological tests, and a large number of small factors, each represented only by two to five experimental variables with significant loadings. A significant loading for interpretation purposes was defined in agreement with Guilford (1956) as 0.30 or greater, positive or negative. A close examination of style factors led to the tentative differentiation of a basic language factor as resulting from grammatical constraint, and several factors of subjective style of individuals. Some of these later factors had enough loadings on personality variables to permit cautious psychological interpretation.     

Processes and products of imitation: Additional evidence that imitation is progressive

The spontaneous verbal interactions of two children and their babysitter were recorded over the period of half a year. The children were males, from middle-class backgrounds, and 2 years old at the beginning of the observation period. Imitated utterances were found to surpass quantitatively spontaneous ones on the dimensions of grammatical and semantic complexity. With few exceptions, new structures appeared first in imitative utterances and only later in spontaneous ones. Both the higher complexity and the prior appearance of new constructions in imitative utterances suggest that imitation fulfilled a progressive function for the observed children.     

Information search and attribution: Cognitive processes mediating the effect of false autonomic feedback

All published experiments using false autonomic feedback are reviewed and four sets of necessary conditions mediating its effects are proposed. These conditions convern (a) search for an explanation of the feedback, (b) availability of potentially explanatory context features, (c) causal attribution of the feedback, and (d) salience of the perceived causes. Conflicting results, including outcomes of cognitive desensitization, are explicable by reference to these conditions. Evidence supports the attributional theory of emotional behaviour and the assumed equivalence of actual and fictitious arousal although the boundary conditions of the latter postulate need still be explored.     

Untersuchungen über Zusammenhänge zwischen drei Leistungsfaktoren und Antworten auf Fragebogenitems

Zusammenfassung 90 Oberschüler beantworteten 214 Fragebogenitems und bearbeiteten 41 Leistungsaufgaben, die zusammen drei in einer faktorenanalytischen Untersuchung von Jäger gefundene Faktoren repräsentieren. Die Zusammenhänge zwischen Fragen- und Aufgabengruppen wurden korrelations- und faktorenanalytisch untersucht. Die Leistungen in den den Faktor Anschauungsgebundenes Denken repräsentierenden Aufgaben korrelierten positiv mit durch Fragebogenitems definierten Verhaltensdimensionen Hinwendung zum Konkreten und Wohlbefinden-Emotionale Stabilität-Leistungszuversicht. Die Leistungen in Einfallsreichtum und Produktivität korrelierten positiv mit Überlegenheitsgefühl-Leistungszuversicht-Emotionale Stabilität-Wohlbefinden, sowie mit Spontaneität, Selbständigkeit und Flexibilität. Die Leistungen in einem dritten Faktor, der Tempo-Motivation bei einfach strukturierten Aufgaben benannt werden könnte, korrelierten positiv mit Soziale Zuwendung-Extraversion und scheint darüberhinaus mit einem Merkmal kompensatorischer Leistungsehrgeiz in Beziehung zu stehen. Die Ergebnisse werden diskutiert und Hypothesen zur Überprüfung und Ausweitung der Befunde formuliert.

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Summary 90 subjects answered 214 questionnaire and 41 ability test items, tbe latter representing three factors found by Jäger in an extensive factor analytic investigation. The relations between all the variables were analyzed by correlational and factor analytic methods. It was found that the ability called vision-related thinking is positively correlated with questionnaire-defined behavioral dimensions called reality orientation and well-being-emotional stability-achievement confidence. The ability fluency and productivity is positively correlated with superiority feeling-achievement confidence-emotional stability-well-being, with spontaneity, independence, and flexibility. Speed-motivation in simple tasks is positively correlated with social participation-extraversion and seems to be related to a trait called compensatory achievement orientation. The findings are discussed and hypotheses for subsequent test and extension formulated.

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Wir danken Herrn Dr. A. O. Jäger für die freundliche Erlaubnis, Aufgaben und Ergebnisse aus seiner Forschungsarbeit vor deren Veröffentlichung zu verwerten. Herrn Dipl.-Math. P. Schnell vom Deutschen Rechenzentrum in Darmstadt für die Durchführung der Berechnungen, unseren Kollegen, den Dipl.-Psychologen K. Althoff, Ch. Balzert, K. D. Stoll und P. Wolff für freundliche Mithilfe, nicht zuletzt unseren Vpn für ihren Einsatz und den Herrn Oberstudiendirektoren Jung, Hadamar, Dr. Keller, Montabaur, und Sauer, Limburg, für die Erlaubnis zur Durchführung der Untersuchungen an ihren Schulen.