Contesting the consensus of data interoperability in envisioning schooling

This paper critically interrogates the politics of data interoperability in education, arguing that interoperability is not a neutral technical standard for data exchange between digital systems, but a brittle sociotechnical arrangement that configures educational infrastructures and future visions of schooling. While often presented as a technical necessity, interoperability standards and concepts are not established through consensus but through ongoing negotiations over what educational data should exist, circulate, connect, and become governable across institutional and technical boundaries. Drawing on Swedish policy cases, Jasanoff and Kim’s (2015) concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, and Bacchi’s (2012) approach to problematisation, this article unpacks how interoperability is constituted through technical specifications as well as performative and aspirational aspects that stabilise specific visions of future schooling. Rather than rejecting interoperability, the paper reclaims it as a political site, where educational futures remain open to contestation, disruption, and alternative possibilities.