The affective intensities of teacher data relations: problematising data visualisation surfaces

Abstract

In this paper, we problematise the functioning of (straight) lines in student assessment data visualisations to foreground the affective intensities of teachers’ encounters with data. Reading with Ingold’s anthropological research on lines, we propose that straight lines rupture data visualisations surface to materialise a (re)presentation of students’ assessment results. The ruptured surface classifies and segregates students, and consequently, the data visualisations and plotted (re)presentations of students’ knowledge affect teacher data relationality. We draw on Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, and Massumi’s theorisation of affect to explore the complex relationality of teacher/ data visualisation encounters. We discuss the affective intensities and capacities of teacher data interactions, particularly between teachers and their students plotted (as dots) on a ruptured data visualisation surface. Amidst emerging datafied norms and pressures being placed on teachers, this contribution focuses on the force of affect in data encounters to foreground the complex ‘sensory labour’ of teachers’ work.