Constructing Deficit Data-Doppelgängers: The Impact of Datafication on Children with English as an Additional Language

In this paper, an evaluation of the English early childhood education context reveals children constructed as data. The complex, chaotic and unpredictable nature of the child is reconstituted in numerical form; a form which can be measured, compared and manipulated. Children are reconceptualised as data-doppelgängers (Williamson, 2014), ghostly apparitions which emulate the actual embodied child. The focus of early childhood education and care thus moves from child-centred to data-centred education. I specifically focus on the impact of this aspect of the performative regime on children who have English as an additional language, an under-researched area in the field. Foucault’s work on governmentality is used as a theoretical lens through which to understand the process of datafication. I use a composite child, generated from a number of children from my experience as a teacher as a starting point for discussion. This reveals children as disadvantaged, as their home languages are no longer used to assess communication skills. Their data-doppelgängers are not useful to the teacher as they are unable to demonstrate a “good level of development”: a key measure of school readiness in English policy. I argue that in post Brexit vote Britain, subtle changes to early childhood education increase disadvantage, promoting white, British culture and thus marginalising those from other cultures.

https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/journal/contempor...