Embodied with data: Early childhood education and care centre director's stories about living with datafication

Abstract

This article presents autoethnographic short stories that describe an early childhood education and care (ECEC) centre director's work for one year in a municipality in Finland. The purpose of this article is to provide a glimpse into what it is like to enter into an ECEC director position and live everyday ECEC life with economic data that are produced by frequently fluctuating child–staff ratios. This study contributes to a better understanding of the transformational implications of datafication by providing insight into affective interrelations held together by economic aspirations. It shows that datafication is a powerful tool to affect and to be affected in the female-dominated care work of ECEC. The study highlights the possibilities of using an autoethnographic analysis to recognise how data affect the body in data dominated ECEC and how to utilise this very recognition as resistance.

Keywords

autoethnography datafication economisation early childhood education and care centre director

Introduction

In an era dominated by technological advancements, lots of hope has been placed in data-driven public administration. Data and automated decision-making are expected to provide more efficient service delivery and increase economic efficiency (Reutter, 2022). This kind of techno-solutionism is offered as an answer to intractable societal problems such as climate change (Selwyn, 2023) and economic projects (Ruckenstein, 2023: 5). Earlier research has shown that early childhood education and care (ECEC) is not outside of these developments (Bradbury, 2019; Roberts-Holmes and Bradbury, 2016). Datafication (i.e., modifying different aspects of life in a measurable form for storage as numbers, datasets, or statistics to assist governance (Mejias and Couldry, 2019; van Dijck, 2014)), can be identified as being part of contemporary ECEC practices.

The research on datafication in ECEC has mainly focused on performance data which are produced on children/students’ learning results and standardised testing (Bradbury, 2019; Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes, 2018). However, datafication's manifestations multiply and transform (Morales and Reilly, 2023). Thus, in this article I will focus on one aspect of datafication in Finnish ECEC: namely, child–staff ratios. I will show how child–staff ratio data become mediated through my body as the ratios formulate statistics of the utilisation efficiency of the ECEC service. Thus, I will illustrate how economisation is promoted by the affects which are produced by datafication. More precisely, how data are affecting my body's capacity to act (Massumi, 1987). To do so I use autoethnographic stories about my work as an ECEC centre director and what is it like to live with data.

A growing field of educational research has examined the interplay between datafication and affect and different methodologies concerning affective approaches (see e.g., Staunæs, 2016). For example, researchers have explored how data and affect govern researchers towards effectiveness (Piattoeva and Saari, 2022; Staunæs and Børgger, 2020). Others have demonstrated that the international student assessment PISA, launched by the Organisation for economic cooperation and development (OECD), generates data shocks when the assessment results are released to the public (Sellar, 2015), how data optimism gives hope for a better future through affective affirmation among school staff (Cone, 2023), and how teacher accountability amplifies through data and affect (Hardy, 2022). In addition, teacher accountability and the emotional labour involved in performance-based policies tied to datafication have been richly explored (Camphuijsen et al., 2022). However, research on how datafication sticks to embodied and visceral experiences of individuals in educational settings is still lacking. Thus, this study aims to contribute to this area of research.

Earlier research addresses how powerful data are in governing people's actions and desires. In this study, I build on and contribute to this body of research by utilising autoethnography to find a nuanced way to understand how and why data play such a crucial role in ECEC settings, although the shortcomings of data-driven policies are well identified (see e.g., Neumann, 2021; Roberts-Holmes and Bradbury, 2016; Rudolph et al., 2019). This autoethnographic text brings into view the marginalised voices of professionals who work in everyday ECEC settings (e.g., Osgood, 2012). The study examines ECEC work as emotional labour which manifests through affective interrelations through workers’ bodies (e.g., Fairchild and Mikuska, 2021). As the boundaries between ECEC workers private and working lives blur because of digital device utilisation in ECEC (see e.g., Albin-Clark, 2023), the significance of studying data practices becomes even more vital.

As I will portray, data are not just neutral information; they produce categories, hierarchies and subjectivities which redefine the self (Bradbury and Roberts-Holmes, 2018), though in many fields, including education, numbers and data are presented as standardised and unproblematic reflections of reality (Spina, 2020). Data can subjectivise adults and children alike. Subjectivation is mediated through datafication by referring to discourses of so-called truth. An ideal learner subject is created through datafication to fit into a neoliberal conception of an active and entrepreneur-like child who is willing to actively learn and develop his/her skills (Bradbury, 2019). Governing tools which make data visible in education subjectivise teachers for competition and continuous performance data gathering (Charteris, 2022; Hardy, 2022). The data are like new clothes on a person, offering new identities, whether one wants it or not (Strauss, 2015).

All in all, as Ruckenstein, 2023 ascertains, perhaps too much credit is given to data technologies and far too little to human agencies, and knowledge about how ordinary people envision, experience and live with algorithms is still limited. In this research, I turn away from looking at subjectivity and data. Instead, I will show how economisation is promoted by affect produced by datafication. Economisation refers to a mode of operation where economic logics are applied to different spheres of life which are typically seen as non-economic (Çalişkan and Callon, 2009). That is, capitalism benefits people's capacities to affect and to be affected (Karppi et al., 2016), and every aspect of human life can be reduced into data for economic value production (Sadowski, 2019). This study examines how datafication and economisation intersect in everyday life of ECEC. More precisely, how child–staff ratio data affect me as a director and govern me to promote the economic aspirations of my employer.

My aim is to systematically analyse my personal experiences as a director and their connectedness to institutional and organisational realities of ECEC by utilising autoethnographic method (Adams et al., 2015; Ellis et al., 2011). The term autoethnography can be divided into three parts illustrating the method's unique features. First, the ‘auto’ refers to researchers’ self-reflection to scrutinise the ‘ethno’, that is other people in their natural environments, and to write an I-centred story (i.e., ‘graph’) about researchers’ own experiences (Denzin, 2018: 14).

In autoethnographic research, a critical stance has been taken towards, for example, universal access implementation in ECEC to illustrate accountability enforced by data and numbers from an ECEC centre director's perspective (Millei et al., 2017). Critical voices have also been raised through autoethnography to examine social policy imperatives in ECEC and what they feel like in the emotionally constraining work of an ECEC teacher (Henderson, 2019). Emotional labour has also been a concern in autoethnographic research, where Warren (2021) reflected on his emotions as an ECEC teacher when contemplating a child's right to participate and express oneself in an ECEC setting to support the child's well-being. In addition, as an ECEC teacher instructor, Aubrey (2019) observed through autoethnography how the conception of leadership has changed and developed during her career.

To add to earlier autoethnographic research, I will build on the knowledge that in autoethnographic studies, self-reflection includes experiences that are not only heard or seen but also felt by the body (Spry, 2001; see e.g., Hokkanen, 2017). I will utilise this sensibility in my writing. My narrative tells of everyday life events in ECEC and how those moments served as turning points for self-reflection and embodiment felt by data (Deleuze, 1990). The stories are presented in a single narrative, but they form a continuum with each other. These stories indicate how data begin to consume my body's capacity to act by redefining the self as a director (Massumi, 1987).

A transition from a worker to a member of administration

I worked as an ECEC teacher for 15 years in a small municipality in Finland. In 2020, I accepted a substitute position as a centre director in an ECEC centre which had six child groups, including a round-the-clock daycare. I guess there were two reasons why I aimed for a director's position. First, I was tired of working in a child group because of the ever-increasing workload and continuous running from child group to another to substitute the absent staff. This was done to fulfil economic agendas of my employer, which gave me no peace to do the work as well as I wanted to. For example, if some of my co-workers were absent, one adult from our group would need to lend a hand to the others. In other words, if the child–staff ratio in the ECEC centre was too low, extra help was not hired; instead, staff were moved around as substitutes.

Secondly, I felt that being a director would give me an opportunity to stand up for the workers. The will to defend workers may come from my background as a child in a working-class family. Being a member of the working class is not so clear-cut in a welfare state like Finland. For example, in my case it simply meant that my parents did manual work, but we lived among middle-class families, and most of my friends had middle-class backgrounds. I guess obtaining an academic qualification for ECEC teaching made me a member of the middle class too (see e.g., Schick, 2000). Yet my academic education did not wipe out the fact that working as an ECEC teacher is manual work, because depending on the age of the children, there is a lot of basic care involved during the day. So, being an ECEC teacher in Finland could be considered manual labour, which is not a characteristic of middle-class work.

Although I was pleased to get out of the teacher position, I felt like I betrayed my former colleagues. I still wanted to be considered as one of them because of my identity as a teacher and a hard worker. I was afraid that somebody would think that I would get an easy way out while the educators continued their hard work. Certainly, I did not want to be in my own ivory tower and forget my roots. I knew that as a new director, my staff would assess my leadership qualities, and the word would spread in a small municipality like raging fire. I could almost hear everybody whispering, ‘Who does she think she is? She's not qualified for the position. She's not up for this.’ I adopted a typical way of thinking for a working-class woman: that I am an imposter (Wilkinson, 2020). I felt like entering a director's position was just good luck, and my insufficient abilities would soon be exposed. I knew I was qualified, because I have a master's degree in education, and I also had many years of experience in the field. Something just did not feel right. There was a huge cloud of insecurity hanging over me. I was worried about whether I knew how to speak, how to dress and how to be (e.g., Gillaspy et al., 2023).

Story 1. How it all began: Entry to the economised ECEC

When my employment as a director began, I had a two-week introduction period with the former director of the ECEC centre, and after that I was thrown into ‘the deep end’.

I begin my story by going back to a meeting in which I am officially a director for the first time.

It is one of those mornings in the beginning of September when it is still quite warm outside, and I am not wearing socks inside my shoes. I am sitting in a conference room in the office of the ECEC administration. The room is full of light, and the smell of newly fitted carpet fills the air. I try to turn from side to side in my chair, but my short feet barely touch the floor. The chair is lifted too high, and as a short and light person, I cannot lower it. I feel like a child who has been dropped into the adults’ world. Even my body feels like wrong size for this room. As Thiel (2016) expresses, I need to find my ‘muchness’ to fit in – to grow to be large enough for the chair I am sitting on. But how am I going to do that, as something in my body seems to resist? I feel my tightened muscles and butterflies in my stomach trying to tell me that I am not up to this (Jones, 2013).

The theme in the meeting is the annual budget of the ECEC services, and the directors are expected to create some cutbacks to balance the budget. My superior, the head of the ECEC, will introduce the budget to the education board in the municipality this week, and she will personally contact those directors who have not succeeded in squeezing their units’ budgets to fit in the overall budget. As my unit's budget was already done by the former director before I began my position, I think I have nothing to worry about. However, I feel sorry for one of my colleagues, because her unit exceeded the budget concerning substitute workers’ wages. She explains that there is no use in making the budget frame so tight, because it would be exceeded anyway.

I have no idea what kind of numbers are in my budget and what kind of sums we are talking about. I am embarrassed for not knowing how much money I will need to hire extra staff. I am the director, who should know these kinds of things. My sockless feet begin to sweat in canvas shoes which have rubber soles. I sit quietly, hoping that I will not be asked anything. I would like to take my shoes off, but I am afraid that the smell of my sweaty feet will capture people's attention. I want to disappear.

The budget under reparation feels like a material object which separates me like a curtain from the worker status and creates a strong sense of otherness in my body. This resembles what Thiel (2016) explains as doors which, depending on the environment and the material they are made of, create belonging or otherness. The budget is my transition to the other side, to another world which was beyond the reach of an ECEC teacher with a working-class background. The signs given by my body resist this transition unless my conscious mind has knowingly wanted this. I completed my master's degree to take up the role of director. I expressed my intent to my superior, and she offered me this position. Why do I have these doubts? It seems that I must reorganise my identity to be a competent director in the eyes of my colleagues and superior. Neoliberal governing, self-fashioning to become and to look entrepreneurial, extends its arms even in the little conference room in a small municipality. It does its trick by initiating this affective labour and producing anxiety in me (see e.g., Morley and Lund, 2021).

My body's attempt to resist can be seen through the lens of the affective dimension of the economy. The seductive ‘rationality’ of economic logic tries to grab me by envisioning the possibility of uncertainty in failing to produce a tight enough budget (Massumi, 2015: 2). In my story, affects are a pre-personal intensity, a gut feeling, sweat, anxiety, in which using the brain does not seem to be very helpful. This pre-personal intensity affects my body's capacity to act by augmenting or diminishing it (Massumi, 1987: xvi; Massumi, 2002). However, a producer of an affect is not necessarily external (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988: 256). The insecurities that I felt due to my worker background evoked embodied memories which were mixed with those of the present (see e.g., Jones, 2013). In a continuation of my story, I will show how these two dimensions of an affect intersect in the everyday life of an ECEC director.

Story 2. Feeling of missing out: An attempt to resist

I slowly begin to learn new skills as a director and gain some confidence to manage my daily duties in the ECEC centre. After a calm period, the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies, and contacts between people are minimised. Those who can work from home leave their offices, but ECEC centres keep their doors open. I want to stay by my staff's side. We are advised to wear masks, and there are contact restrictions concerning staff meetings and meetings with parents. November in Finland is dark and rainy, but the pandemic gives the gloominess an extra kick.

It is one of those rainy and foggy mornings, and I am preparing to head to work at 7 a.m. As usual, I have left my work phone downstairs on the kitchen table for the night. I feel that I must be in reach of the staff. No one obligates me to do this, but this helps me to feel in control over my work. Yet this is quite opposite from what Cohen and her colleagues (2009) have experienced about balancing their work and homelife: namely, they felt that they could build a sense of control by strictly separating work and the private sphere (Cohen et al., 2009). This is understandable, especially in the era where technological devices such as company mobile phones invade workers’ homes and free time, producing technostress (Saim et al., 2021). For me, anxiety from not knowing is worse than the risk of getting stressed. Imagine if a member of my staff gets sick in the evening, and I am not aware of it until the next morning? It is almost impossible to hire a substitute on such short notice. To prove my competence as a director, I wanted to avoid at any cost a situation in which we would be short of staff. I acted like a stereotypical female leader by nurturing my personnel (e.g., Morley and Lund, 2021) to the extent that my work would invade my private life through digital devices.

I was able to monitor the number of the children and staff at home because the municipality utilised a mobile app to keep track of the presence of children and adults in ECEC centres. Parents tagged a child into/out of the mobile app with a plastic tag when the child arrived at or left the ECEC centre. Likewise, ECEC personnel checked themselves in or out from work. The numbers showing children and personnel attendance formulated the child–staff ratio to be followed by the director as real-time data. I was able to follow the numbers on the tablet or computer program, the moment-to-moment data compiled as statistics, such as utilisation rates for the ECEC service. Thus, I was keeping track of the number of children as a safety and quality of education issue but also to monitor the efficacy of the service (e.g., Paananen, 2020).

Excitement captures me as I am walking downstairs: Has somebody already sent me a message, or is there going to be one soon? The centre directors and the executive team have a message group in a commercial message application, which was for communicating about urgent issues. Usually, the message involves information about absences in some ECEC centre, with the directors asking if other centres have an educator who could come to help cover an absence. For now, no message of any kind. My body relaxes, and I start to make breakfast.

A beeping sound on my work phone interrupts me eating. A rush of hot blood fills my body, and a wave of uncertainty emerges. Who is it? Is it a staff member who has sent a message to inform me they are ill? I sense the pressure to look at the phone. My workday has not yet started, but I cannot help myself. I should have known; one my colleagues needs a substitute worker in her unit to fill in for a staff member who has become sick. My fingers tingle with irritation. Why am I doing this? It is 7 a.m., and I should know whether I have extra staff according to the child–staff ratios, even though I am officially off duty. I decide to ignore the message by not answering. My irritation evaporates, and I finish my breakfast in peace. I am pleased with myself because I could resist the demand on me.

With the work phone by my side loaded with numbers and child–staff ratios, I constantly allow my body to be exposed to the affective labour produced. The beeping sound signals for my body to be in use as a vehicle of economisation. I am conditioned by the beep to become alert and act as economically beneficial to my employer. I want the phone to help me to be in, stay in and regain control, but it begins to control me. This feels as if my brain is out of order, while the beep signal does its trick in my body. This reminds me of Massumi's (2002) explanation of affect, how the skin, for example, responds to a sound or picture before the brain processes it (Massumi, 2002). This also resembles what Colebrook (2011) wrote about technology's ability to activate cognition by offering the brain more and more intensive affects. That is, experiencing a subject and external object no longer exist, but the source of an affect and a body become embedded in each other (Colebrook, 2011). The way bodies, data and digital devices merge is a perverse process where a human body is no longer a subject but an object of data practices. The alliance between humans and machines has created a pseudo-reality where human beings are made to believe that they could not live without the data and the devices collecting the data (Johanssen, 2021).

My good mood disappears in my office when I open my computer. There is an email:

According to the child-staff ratio average the utilisation rate of the ECEC service has been 78,3 percent which falls below the target of 88 percent. According to these numbers, you [meaning the directors] must explain the situation to the staff, who think with their common sense, that we have too many children in the groups. We all have a responsibility for quality, but the ECEC service needs to be efficient too.

The directors are told to check the ‘real’ situation from the mobile app which measures the child–staff ratio as real-time data. We are also reminded that the child–staff ratio should be met on a centre level, not in every child group. Of course, safety must come first, my superior states in conclusion.

Something warm flows through my body and makes my leg flabby. Weakness turns into a squeezing sensation in my stomach. These sensations I cannot turn off. My body connects the email to the event which took place in the morning when I was leaving for work. My body implies that I have not taken seriously enough my colleague's message asking for help. By ignoring the message in the morning, I have been selfish. Is this what the embodied experience trying to tell me? My body does not know that the message and the email probably have nothing to do with each other. The embodied experience works out of reach of common sense, so this must be my conscience (Massumi, 2002).

I have been satisfied with the child–staff ratios in my unit until now. For example, I know that the utilisation rate of my unit was almost 90% in September. That was real to me until now. My real is wrong, and the mobile application is right. The meaning of real has changed through the forceful embodiment of numbers and different devices such as a mobile phone and emails. This kind of elasticity of numbers and its interplay with digital devices and discourses act as a technology of government (Piattoeva, 2015). The assembly of data practices benefit from my capacity to affect and increase its performative power (e.g., Brøgger, 2018; Piattoeva and Saari, 2022). I am trapped.

Story 3. A competent director

After getting over the shocking email sent by my superior, my day at work proceeds as usual. Another beeping sound captures my attention. It is from the message group. My superior thanks the directors who sent workers for help. The text is emphasised with an emoji of biceps. The events in the morning begin to bother me again. I am confused, and I can sense irritation in my body again. First, I reason that it would be against COVID-19 guidelines to mix up staff and risk them getting sick. And second, even if the child–staff ratio is fulfilled as the law orders, it still means that some child group inside the ECEC centre can be short of staff in my unit. According to the numbers, I could have sent at least one worker as a substitute, but because I know this would disturb pedagogical activities and be stressful for both the worker and children, I deliberately decided to resist the request. The agitation in my body is caused by a double bind (Hawes, 2004), which communicates that COVID regulations should be followed until the point that they do not bother the functions of economy.

The tingling irritation continues, combined with a squeezing sensation in my stomach. I need to move away from my office temporarily, because I had promised earlier that one of the workers can use my computer to participate in a Teams meeting. I walk to the personnel's break room and decide to use the computer there for answering a survey which has been on my to-do-list for a while. The survey deals with utilisation rates in my ECEC unit before the corona lockdown, during the lockdown and in the current situation. The survey is sent from one of the universities and is not mandatory to answer. However, this might just be a cure for my anxiety, which was caused by everything that has happened today. I want to know whether my sense of real is real according to the numbers which I might find through utilising a computer program.

It takes me a while to learn how I can find a utilisation rate from a computer program which stores the data. I click my mouse and select a certain period to find the information and wait for the results. The squeezing sensation in my stomach intensifies while I am waiting. I do not know what to expect, because I have not been keen to monitor the daily numbers and real-time data from the mobile application. Finally, the numbers show up on the screen. The utilisation rate in my centre in September is 86% when the overall percentage of all the ECEC centres in the municipality is 78.5%.

The squeezing pressure on the top of my stomach is gone. I am pleased and feel competent. Indeed, it feels like I am doing better than many other directors. I have been able to follow the rules – not fully, but better than some other directors. A sudden change in my body's capacity to act relaxes practically every muscle in my body. I feel lighter than before.

Story 4. Suspicion of being monitored

I enter my office in the morning. It is Friday, and the work week is coming to its conclusion. The events of this week made me realise that if I want to be a competent director, I need to follow the child–staff ratio more carefully. I sense the ‘data as a shock in my body’ (Sellar, 2015: 138–140) as a constant reminder of my skills. I want to be better prepared when the shock comes, so that it does not crush me. This morning, my first duty is to look at what the numbers of the day are. Tomorrow, like on many Fridays, there are quite a lot of children sick or having a day off. One group is missing a teacher, so I decide to transfer a child carer from a group which has extra staff according to the ratios.

After a couple of hours, I hear a message signal from my phone. It diverts my attention from my other duties, and I sense my stomach rumble. An extra worker is needed to cover in the afternoon at an ECEC centre nearby. I thought that I had already done my share, because I had transferred two workers inside my own unit. I open a computer program where I can see what the ratio will look like in the afternoon. When I move the cursor, I see a chart beginning to emerge, and it shows me the child–staff ratio and utilisation rate hour by hour. It looks like after 1 p.m., we will still have too many staff according to the utilisation rate objective. It is impossible to keep up with the numbers. The numbers escape out of my control. It is impossible to keep track of what has taken place behind the numbers (Gorur, 2018). Every time I look at the numbers, they seem different than before, because some of the children may leave earlier than planned or a worker may not remember to tag herself out when leaving the ECEC centre. What remains is my accountability to use numbers as a tool for economisation. In the morning, the numbers looked different, but some of the children have not come to the ECEC centre, which is why the child–staff ratio is so low.

I have no idea what I am going to do. Uneasiness in my body begins to rise again. It is not like what I had sensed in my body earlier this week. I guess that exhaustion is the only embodied feeling that I can sense right now. I just want to call it off for the day and stop messing with numbers. I want to let my staff do their work without constantly changing their pedagogical plans because some staff member must cover somewhere else. Where the administration sees numbers and money, I see cancelled visits to a library or art activities. The fluctuation of the child–staff ratios has also been recognised by previous research. The numbers are bent to fit the situation at hand and to use personnel resources effectively, such as shifting into ‘a survival mode’ by working with less personnel in a child group and calling off pedagogical activities (Paananen, 2020).

As on Tuesday, I decide to wait and see if some of my colleagues will answer the request. While waiting, one my colleagues come to see me because she needs an extra part for a child's bed in her unit. I get the board for her from storage near the dining room, where one of the child groups is beginning to have lunch. I stand quietly by the dining room with her and look at the children eating. Suddenly she says, ‘It is awfully quiet in here. Where are all the children?’ It feels like the colour red begins to rise to my cheeks. I explain something about sick children and sudden days off. It is like she has come to keep an eye on if we have become too cosy, considering that there is a shortage of staff somewhere else. My common sense tries to convince me that this is not the case, but my gut tells me something else. I remember my superior's appealing message: ‘There must be less children because of the Friday.’

My colleague leaves with the board, and I walk into my office. Then I type a message that I will arrange for somebody to substitute to the ECEC centre nearby. I hear beeping sounds of thankful messages and explanations about why the other directors cannot help this time. I am disappointed in myself. I have let my staff down.

Story 5. Getting hooked

It is the end of January, and the constant data shocks in my body are consuming me. I sit in front of my computer screen, participating in a monthly online meeting with the directors and the executive board. My superior is not yet pleased with the utilisation rates. She says that monitoring will be intensified, and she will look at the numbers every day from the application. The utilisation must be raised to 88%, which is the objective set by the municipality's board of education. At least now, I get confirmation of my suspicions that the child–staff ratios are monitored from a distance. It was all said out loud. I was not paranoid for thinking so. I wonder why I had even believed it was not so, since it is stated in several contexts that surveillance is one of the most important functions of datafication (Roberts-Holmes and Moss, 2021). Surveillance, or at least a suspicion of it, is supposed to direct human behaviour in desired directions (Czerniewicz and Feldman, 2023), and I begin to look like a showpiece of such activity.

I do not know how many times I have heard the same jargon: hiring substitute workers must be considered extra carefully, and the child–staff ratio does not need to be met on a group level and every moment of the day. And finally, workers must move between centres, and the arrangement concerning this should be communicated in the message application.

Following data and desired consequences give a simplified view on the world. However, everyday life is far more complicated, and numbers are frequently interpreted in conflicting ways to fabricate reality (Ozga et al., 2011). One of the most extreme examples of fabrication of reality through datafication is that the data generated from a child begin to reshape contours of the child, figuring a double image. The image can be totally different than a real child, but she or he is treated like her/his data double (Pierlejewki, 2020). In the same way, I may hire a worker to substitute for a staff member on sick leave on a previous day but then, during the night, many children get sick and do not come to the ECEC centre on the following day. This means that I have too many workers in relation to the number of children. The director cannot make the children come to the ECEC centre and, on the other hand, it is not possible to cancel a worker's employment contract. The whole situation is completely unfair, because the numbers that are exposed on the following day do not capture the ambiguity of the day before. The data are slipping and sliding, and I cannot get a grip on it. The irritation gets me again.

After the meeting, I decide that I will check the ratios every morning. I will use the computer program connected to the mobile application and look at the graph which predicts how the numbers will progress during the day. Despite the tingling irritation in my body, I am hooked on data in a worse way than before.

Story 6. Finding vulnerable and docile bodies

It is the middle of March, and there are several workers set in a quarantine in an ECEC centre nearby. Every director needs to remove two of their own workers to cover. I have not done this because I consider that we need all our workers here. The meeting with the executive board is about to start, and I feel an unpleasant tension in my body. The tension is caused by uncertainty about not knowing what is about to happen. What do I say if I am criticised for not helping? The meeting begins with scrutinising the utilisation rates. The centres are not itemised directly, but the directors are told that utilisation rates in some centres are as low as 70%. I have not checked today's numbers. I open the computer program, and I panic. It is only 60.9%. How can I be this careless by not considering other directors’ troubles? Maybe I can help after all.

After the meeting, I walk to the break room and begin to study work shift lists hanging on the wall. I desperately look for a worker who has the most suitable work shift and will most likely react positively about going to another centre. A worker I choose is eating with children in the dining room. I approach her and try to be as calm as possible. Still, I feel the excitement in by body, and I want to turn around. I decide to wait until she finishes eating. I return to my office, and soon the worker comes to ask what I had in mind. I tell her that a worker is needed in the ECEC centre nearby and why she is the most suitable for the task. I use her work shift as an excuse for choosing her. I choose her because I know that she will not criticise me for doing so. She looks surprised and concerned. I sense that this is not a pleasant thing to do for her. Then the look on her face becomes brighter and she says, ‘Yes, I can go. I go anywhere that is required.’

I am disappointed in myself. I have never seen my unit's utilisation rate so low. Why did I not notice that there are so many children sick today? I thought that I was doing okay because earlier, the utilisation rate in my centre had been around 90%. My body has become vulnerable to data shocks, and now I am searching for another vulnerable body that I can affect to feel the same shocks. I pick up the employee whom I felt safe to confront. This is in accordance with Ball's (2003) thought on governing through neoliberal ideology needing flexible subjects to secure the efficacy of governance. I feel even more trapped than before by the demands that came from the administration.

Story 7. Letting go

Working as a substitute director has given me an opportunity to see if I wanted to apply for a permanent position as a director. During these months, I have felt powerless in many ways. I am exhausted with the situation constantly consuming my body. It is like riding a roller coaster. When I think I am doing fine, the data portray the situation in a different light. The child–staff ratio and a digital tool are supposed to support ECEC centre directors’ control over their work. For me, the unpredictability of data has weakened my sense of control, because it would have required constant monitoring of children and workers coming and going. It seems that child–staff ratio data has become the most important content in ECEC.

I have begun to think that the child–staff data determine my worth as a director but also as a human being. Just as a child slowly begins to look like a data double (see e.g., Pierlejewski, 2020), my double is being contoured by my child–staff ratio and utilisation rate numbers. I validate the worth of my employees by assessing their capability for being flexible and docile workers. Data as an economic tool have pushed me to do my work in a different way from how I would like. When I commenced the director position, I wanted to show to my workers that even if I was not a teacher anymore, I would represent them. It turned out that data were such a forceful producer of affects that it is hard to resist. The interplay of digital devices, such as my mobile phone, with child–staff ratio data created a working environment which was full of sudden changes and unexpected incidents. The unpredictability and ever-sliding numbers made me feel that I am not in control over my work. It is time to let go.

Summary: Tying the knots

Datafication is often offered as a solution to intractable problems (see e.g., Selwyn, 2023) such as improving economic competitiveness (Ruckenstein, 2023: 5). My autoethnographic stories show that utilising data-based governance in human-oriented work such as ECEC for economic agendas manifests in multiple ways that influence the capacity of bodies to act. Datafication increases the body's capacities to spread to new domains and to be affected, as it is conditioned by data.

According to earlier research (Piattoeva and Saari, 2022; Sellar, 2015; Staunæs and Børgger, 2020), datafication is a powerful tool for manifesting affects. Affect produced by data is also known to evoke optimism about more effective learning outcomes (Cone, 2023) and make teachers accountable for achieving the outcome goals through digital platform surveillance (Hardy, 2022). To add to existing research, my autoethnographic stories highlight the visceral and embodied experiences produced by economic data in ECEC. Autoethnographic description and meaning making helped me bring into view mundane life events that are intensively felt by the body, which would have been otherwise difficult, even impossible, to capture with any other methodological approach.

By retelling my experiences as an ECEC centre director, I brought forward, for example, how working with data obscured my common sense owing to the horror of datafication that is attached to my body (e.g., Colebrook, 2011). The horror of datafication extends outside my office hours and into my home (see e.g., Albin-Clark, 2023), although I am not obligated to work extra hours. I am driven by a desire to fulfil my own and others’ expectations to be and be seen as a competent and economically savvy director. This research suggests that the interplay between emotional labour emerging from datafication, and affect is a powerful tool of governance, especially in the female-dominated work of ECEC. This highlights that the true possibility to resist data supremacy lies in the recognition of bodily experiences and beyond the limits of what is said or done (Spry, 2001; see e.g., Hokkanen, 2017).

Footnotes

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation (grant number 200257).

ORCID iD

Hanna Toivonen

Author biography

Hanna Toivonen is a PhD researcher in education. Her area of research is datafication and economisation in early childhood education and care.

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