Squeezing Care for Humans into the Datafication of Learners

This chapter critiques the increasingly instrumental framing of education in Australia, where reforms, reflecting global trends, prioritise school effectiveness and student performance at the expense of broader educational purposes. Standardised policies and performativity discourses shape school practices, positioning students as performative learners whose growth is measured and benchmarked. When young people are thus understood, the care practices of school staff are co-opted to align with the instrumental agendas of student achievement and school performance. We understand this framing of education as a neoliberal form of care that displaces the complex humanity of students. Through this chapter we employ and extend the theory of practice architectures (TPA), as we consider how educators in Victorian schools resist these constraints through practices that prioritise care for students as whole humans. Despite pressure to adhere to reforms like explicit instruction, high impact teaching strategies, and standardised curricula, some educators enact counter-conduct, fostering relational approaches that challenge prevailing instrumental logics. Our evidence highlights how relational practices build practice landscapes for relational care in schools. We argue that centring relational care in educational practice enables a more humane, transformative praxis that affirms the full humanity of young people, resisting the narrow constraints of contemporary schooling reforms.