Deferred expertise: The groundless ground of datafication and the shift to recessive technologies

This paper explores how the conditions for leadership are produced in datafied schooling regimes by the data infrastructures developed and utilised in departmental systems of education. Drawing on Hong's (Citation2020) theorisation of recessivity, this paper considers those tools and instruments as recessive technologies: technologies that know for us in quantified ways that are beyond the comprehension available to humans alone. This paper interrogates two specific data platforms used by Australian state departments of education as key examples of recessive technologies: i) the Victorian Department of Education's Panorama, and ii) the New South Wales Department of Education's Scout. Using a Deleuzian-Guattarian framework of assemblage, I provide an analytical discussion that considers, first, the epistemological foundation of datafication on which recessive technologies reside, before, second, attending to the implications this has for how educational leadership can be enacted. Finally, I conclude by arguing the need for further critical research around recessive technologies.