Beside and beyond: recognising and extending Stenhouse’s legacy in a datafied, digital era

This article is a reflective essay which draws upon empirical research to outline key principles that have informed our research at school and system levels in an increasingly datafied, digital era. We believe these principles help to inform the work of other researchers, including about how to engage more substantively and productively with educators at these levels. At the same time, we also discuss how these principles mirror and extend Stenhouse’s work and understandings in a very different time and context, particularly in relation to new technologies. The article is organised according to these key principles which relate to: the ‘wonderings’ that animate research; the relevance of practice to theory in a heavily technologically mediated world; the politics of practice that characterise case study within and across contexts; the ‘practice’ of education through a socio-material storying approach; the influence of datafication and digitalisation of the public as part of boundary spanning in action, including involving principals as boundary spanners, and; ‘educators-as-researchers’ as a deliberative, intra-active extended endeavour. To give texture to these principles, we elaborate our research into data practices in schools in four national contexts – Australia, England, Singapore and Bangladesh – as well as drawing on a more extended exploration of our engagement with the work of a principalFootnote1 in the Australian (Queensland) context. In these ways, we seek to not simply ‘stand beside’ Stenhouse’s work, but also to simultaneously ‘move beyond’ his insights, extending understandings that animated his work.