Governing Through Data in Under-Resourced Schooling Contexts: A Critical Systematic Review of Datafication, Algorithmic Governance, and Power Relations in Global South Public Education

Abstract

Background: The datafication of public education (the conversion of institutional and pedagogical practice into digital data for algorithmic processing) is reconfiguring how schools are governed, how teachers are evaluated, and how students are understood as institutional subjects. Although this transformation is most advanced in Global North contexts, it is accelerating rapidly in resource-constrained Global South public schooling systems that differ fundamentally from those in which extant governance frameworks were conceived. Objectives: This critical systematic review synthesises empirical and theoretical literature published between 2015 and 2025 to examine how datafied and algorithmic governance infrastructures reshape power relations in under-resourced Global South public education systems, and to identify the mechanisms by which colonial knowledge logics are reproduced through educational datafication. Methods: Following a PRISMA-guided integrative systematic review protocol, 1,847 records across five databases (Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, PsycINFO, Google Scholar) have been screened, applying pre-registered eligibility criteria to arrive at a final corpus of 42 sources. Thematic synthesis was conducted using Thomas and Harden's (2008) three-stage procedure. Results: Four analytical themes are identified: (1) the reproduction of colonial epistemic logics through data governance technology transfer; (2) algorithmic managerialism and the structural erosion of teacher professional autonomy; (3) the datafication of student subjectivity from pedagogical agent to governable object; and (4) the structural misalignment between internationally circulating AI governance frameworks and the institutional realities of under-resourced schooling. Contribution: We propose Datafied Coloniality in Education (DCE) as an original conceptual framework integrating Foucauldian governmentality, postcolonial education theory, and sociotechnical systems perspectives. DCE specifies three mechanisms, epistemic appropriation, structural amplification, and subject formation, through which global data governance logics enact colonial relations in under-resourced public schooling. A five-point research agenda is advanced for future empirical work.