Digital technologies, management, and big data: A way to a “living” or a “dead” (school) life?

In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities and difficulties that come with digitalization and big data and how we, in a liberal-democratic way, can respond to these phenomena within and beyond the educational field by discussing the following questions: What promises are attached to digitalization and big data? How do digital management technologies and big data regulate and structure our society in general and the work with democracy and Bildung in schools in particular? What does it mean to be identified and understood by means of digital technologies? What underlying knowledge regime(s) supports big data, and with what consequences does it do so for democratic and Bildung processes in school? To deal with these questions, we develop three perspectives on big data, inviting the reader into a pluralistic dialogue.