The politics of data visualizations. Introduction to special issue

This special issue investigates the politics of data visualizations in education, examining how visual tools such as dashboards, benchmarks, and progression curves shape educational practices, perceptions, and governance. Far from offering neutral representations of data, visualizations are performative technologies that construct what counts as educational quality and learning. Bringing together contributions from diverse European contexts, the issue explores how data visualizations are produced, negotiated, and consumed across a range of educational settings. It emphasizes the values and power relations embedded in these visual tools, and how they influence decision-making, frame educational realities, and mediate the digitalization and datafication of education. By situating these contributions within broader debates in critical education studies and science and technology studies, the issue foregrounds how data visualizations enact specific understandings of education and how their makers and users relate to them. Together, the articles offer a critical lens on the social, political, and epistemic work that data visualizations perform in contemporary education.