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Abstract
This study is situated within three social, political, and historical influences in education: the consequences of NCLB, the philosophy of neoliberalism, and the movement toward the quantified self. The goal of this study was to understand how children conceptualized their own data in a 3rd grade classroom. Three research questions emerged from a review of the literature in the areas of children, data, and discourse. The three research questions which framed this study were (a) how, when, and why is the materiality of data enacted in a 3rd grade classroom? (b) what are the discursive practices creating the materiality of data in a 3rd grade classroom? and (c) how do children orient to data that is generated with respect to their class performances? This ethnographically inspired study relied on the collection of various types of data during field work in a 3rd grade classroom to examine the materialization of data, discourses surrounding data, and childrens experiences with their own data. To accomplish this, interviews, field observations, and work samples were collected. Two differing frameworks, agential realism and ethnomethodology offered unique perspectives to understand how children experience their own data. The data was analyzed using two different methods, diffraction and applied conversation analysis. A review of the findings from this study showed that for children, data is experienced as an entanglement. Through this metaphor, children, data and discourse intra-act in a performative manner. The instructional influences of classroom teachers, interactions withlearning materials, and student-teacher conferences develop childrens understanding of their data. Data defines student behaviors, instructional practices, and shapes moral accountability. Discursive practices surrounding data revel a three-folded talk including data discourse, student behaviors, and evaluative statements. This study provides evidence that the use of data in classrooms has real life implications for how children feel about themselves and points us towards an ethical responsibility for educators in the classroom as well as policy makers and politicians.