Acting with Attainment Technologies in Deaf Education: Reinventing Monitoring as an Intervention Collaboratory

In this article I consider that attainment research is a knowledge-producing practice that co-creates the realities it studies. Studies aimed at monitoring pupils’ educational progress tend to collect those data that are needed to develop research claims, thereby producing an expert catalogue of understanding that is variable and has limited potential for integrating with educational practice. I propose that monitoring could alternatively be reinvented as an interventionist collaboratory, one that engages new technologies for the purpose of merging understanding with doing. Central to that effort should be a broad conception of (e-)literacy as a key social and cultural competence.