Conference Agenda

The digitalisation of education and its governance is transforming how education systems are coordinated, regulated, and evaluated (e.g., Clutterbuck, 2021; Decuypere, 2016; Ozga, 2016; Williamson, 2015), as well as how teachers work (Sowa et al., 2025). Digital platforms, data infrastructures, and algorithmic systems are increasingly framed as technical solutions capable of producing more evidence-based, efficient, and equitable forms of policy intervention. At the same time, these developments are reshaping the conditions under which educational research informs policy, as digital systems increasingly define what counts as legitimate evidence, actionable knowledge, and accountable practice.

While existing research on the digital governance of education has examined the practice and impact of datafication, accountability, and platformisation, less attention has been paid to how political context shapes the enactment of educational digitalisation. In particular, the micro-political processes through which digital policy instruments are contested, negotiated, or stabilised remain under-examined. This limits our understanding of why similar digital reforms generate divergent outcomes, even within the same national system, a gap that this presentation seeks to address.

The authors analyse two cases of digital governance of education (DGE) through the lens of policy technologies, drawing on Ball’s (2003) concept of the policy technologies of reform (p. 216). Ball uses the term policy technologies to refer to the calculative, technical, and administrative mechanisms through which policy intentions are rendered operable, reorganising power, responsibility, and professional conduct. Building on this conceptualisation, the study treats digital infrastructures not as neutral tools but as policy technologies that actively mediate how governance is enacted. The study is guided by two research questions:

1. How do political context and stakeholder participation shape the enactment of digital education policy?

2. What governance tensions and policy consequences emerge when digital systems operate as policy technologies in education?

Policy enactment theory (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012) informed this study, which conceptualises policy as a situated and contingent process shaped through interactions among policy texts, institutional contexts, and policy actors. This framework is particularly useful for analysing digitally governed systems because digital infrastructures simultaneously function as policy instruments, enactment environments, and objects of political negotiation.

Empirically, the paper examines two policy cases in South Korea: the introduction of AI-assisted Digital Textbooks (AIDT) and the integration of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) through unified digital governance systems. Although both reforms were framed around equity and inclusion, they unfolded within significantly different political contexts. The rapidly introduced AIDT initiative emerged amid executive–legislative conflict and heightened political attention, generating intense contestation and eventual policy reversal. In contrast, the ECEC integration formed part of a longer-term reform agenda framed primarily as an administrative coordination effort with tangible practical benefits. This framing helped secure sufficient political support to sustain gradual policy progression despite ongoing implementation tensions.

Drawing on a forthcoming publication (Choi & Cho, forthcoming), this paper offers insights that are highly relevant to European debates on educational digitalisation, particularly as governments across Europe expand data infrastructures, AI-based educational technologies, and digitally coordinated governance systems under conditions of political uncertainty and administrative reform.

The increasing use of AI-based decision support systems in educational planning has transformed how schools classify student risk, allocate resources, and justify institutional decisions. Predictive dashboards, algorithmic risk scores, and performance monitoring systems are increasingly presented as objective and evidence-based inputs guiding institutional decision-making (Williamson, 2017; Selwyn, 2019; Beer, 2017). Existing international research demonstrates that such systems often reproduce structural inequalities embedded in historical data and institutional practices rather than correcting them (Eubanks, 2018 Noble, 2018). However, current scholarship has largely focused on identifying algorithmic bias or improving fairness metrics at the technical level, leaving underexamined how algorithmic outputs reshape the meaning of equity once they enter decision making processes (Benjamin, 2019).

This study addresses this gap by advancing the argument that AI supported decision tools function not only as technical instruments but as epistemic authorities in educational planning. Epistemic authority refers to the perceived legitimacy of algorithmic outputs to define what counts as reasonable, fair, and unavoidable in institutional decision making (Beer, 2017). Rather than treating equity as an external normative benchmark against which algorithms are evaluated, this study examines how algorithmic systems participate in redefining fair allocation, reasonable exclusion, and acceptable prioritisation after algorithmic outputs are mobilised.

The study is grounded in three strands of literature. Algorithmic justice scholarship demonstrates that data driven systems produce differentiated outcomes through assumptions embedded in data, models, and optimisation goals (Benjamin, 2019 Noble, 2018). Social justice theory in education conceptualises equity through redistribution, recognition, and representation, allowing analysis of how algorithmic classifications intersect with structural inequalities (Fraser, 2008 Gewirtz, 2006). Policy enactment theory conceptualises educational leaders as active agents who interpret and translate policy instruments rather than passively implementing them (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012). While each strand is well developed, they are rarely integrated to examine how algorithmic systems redefine equity in everyday planning practices.

Empirically, the study is situated in Türkiye, a highly centralised education system characterised by strong performance monitoring and limited institutional discretion (Gümüş & Bellibaş, 2020). High levels of centralisation are expected to amplify algorithmic authority by narrowing spaces for professional judgment, making the political effects of AI more visible. This context is analytically significant rather than merely illustrative, as similar governance conditions exist across many European systems.

The study addresses three research questions. How do AI supported decision tools shape student risk classification and resource prioritization practices in schools. How do educational leaders interpret and justify algorithmic outputs in equity sensitive decisions. Under what institutional conditions can professional judgment disrupt algorithmic logic.

Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative multi-site research design. Data collection consists of semi structured interviews with school principals, vice principals, and institutional planning staff who engage with AI generated dashboards, risk classification reports, and performance monitoring tools used in student tracking and resource allocation. These include early warning systems, predictive achievement indicators, and institutional performance reports. Document analysis will examine AI generated outputs alongside official decision rationales and policy documents. Access will be negotiated through participating institutions.

A key analytical move is the separation of algorithmic output from decision justification. Interview protocols are designed to surface divergences between algorithmic recommendations and decision narratives, enabling analysis of how equity is constructed after the fact. Data will be analysed using thematic analysis informed by critical policy analysis.

By shifting attention from whether algorithms are biased to how they redefine fairness, this study contributes to European debates on algorithmic governance, educational leadership, and social justice. It argues that algorithmic justice in education requires institutional and political scrutiny beyond technical fixes.

Performance-based accountability has been described as a key lever in a global movement, reforming education systems in line with neoliberal values. Accountability regimes rely on national and international assessments as tools that provide the vital metrics through which to measure educational performance in comparable ways. This paper examines qualification reform as a key feature of these developments, where countries reform their national qualifications in support of these metrics, and use qualification re-design as a lever to influence the teaching and learning that goes on in the classroom. This paper explores the qualification itself as a powerful agent of change, and the uses governments make of them. It examines qualification reform as a policy instrument, seeking to understand the processes through which change is effected, and the implications of this approach on classroom practice.

The reform of national qualifications is a high stakes strategy for governments, and there have been high-profile failures which attract attention and criticism. It is notoriously difficult to get right. However, it appears to be a policy approach that more and more policymakers are drawn to as part of the movement to reform, particularly in highly marketised education systems where introducing a new qualification is seen as akin to bringing a new ‘product’ to market. Examples of qualification-driven reform programmes can be seen in Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Scotland, South Africa and Wales.

This paper focuses on vocational and academic qualification reform programmes undertaken in England, where the education system is made up of a series of quasi-markets, and where qualification reform has been used increasingly as a tool of government to shape the education system over the last forty years. Objectives for reform have included increasing participation in education post-16, and have primarily been driven by economic goals, specifically increasing skills to support progression into jobs, with qualifications assumed to play a direct role in economic growth.

The paper uses a multi-case analysis of qualification reform programmes in England over time, from the 1990s onwards, with cases focused on qualifications taken by the 16-19 age group. Cases were developed using documentary and archival evidence, supported by elite interviews with senior policymakers and participating stakeholders, selected because of their ability to take a long view over multiple programmes. The paper seeks to understand the strategic use of qualification reform as a policy instrument to effect change within the education system, specifically how it is being used, why, and its implications. In doing so it aims to shed light on how education policy is brought into effect in England more broadly, the rationalities and technologies that underpin it, and the problems and benefits associated with this approach.

The analysis draws on Lascoumes and Le Galès conceptualisation of policy instruments as both technical and social apparatuses which are not neutral, and which carry their own values. Qualification reform is considered as a policy instrument by looking at the processes involved, the interests of key actors, and the discourse it produces. Each case of qualification reform considered has been subject individually to intense debate and public scrutiny. The fact that there are multiple qualification reform programmes occurring within a particular timeframe, at a particular point in history, with related goals, might be observed as a phenomenon in and of itself. Situating them together and enabling them to be compared through temporal and cross-case analysis, provides new perspectives on the issues, and insight into an additional facet of the global education reform movement that has perhaps previously been less considered.

Over the past five years, the Greek education system has experienced an expansion of digital platforms. What began as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic with the nationwide digital teaching platform (2019-2020) soon evolved into a broader digital transformation agenda. Since then, digital platforms have been introduced to support school self-evaluation (2020), teacher training and certification (2021), the submission of teacher CVs and evaluation documents (2021-2023), and, most recently, the platform for the prevention and management of school violence and bullying (2024). These digital infrastructures now mediate key aspects of educational administration, teacher assessment, professional development and, in general, the management of a wide array of issues both within the system and within schools. Their proliferation marks a significant reconfiguration of educational governance in Greece.

Scholarship on the platformization of education has grown rapidly in the past years highlighting how digital platforms shift the commercial involvement in education (Komljenovic, 2021; Kerssens & van Dijck, 2021), reorganize teaching practices (Perrotta et al., 2021; Pangrazio et al., 2022) and reshape data flows (Williamson et al., 2022). Emerging mainly from analyses of decentralized or marketised education systems, present research conceptualizes platformization primarily as a commercial, data-extractive and privatizing process that affects teachers’ professionalization and agency. The Greek case, however, sits uneasily within this dominant analytical frame. Greece has one of the most centralized education systems in Europe, where the Ministry of Education retains direct control over curriculum, staffing, assessment and school governance. The platforms introduced since 2019 are not the result of market forces, venture-capital-backed EdTech innovation, or public-private partnerships; rather, they are developed, mandated and operated by state agencies. Additionally, teaching in schools leans heavily on traditional and analog methods.

Building on critical platform studies (e.g. Decuypere et al., 2021; Nichols & Garcia, 2022) and critical policy research this study aims at exploring the emergence of digital platforms in the Greek education system and broadening theoretical understandings of platformization in education and its transformation in governance structures. More specifically, this paper explores how platforms can act as “digital fixes” that displace systemic problems onto the school level while simultaneously centralizing oversight and intensifying teachers’ administrative workload.