The Possibilities and Impossibilities of Transformative Leadership: An Autoethnographic Study of Demographic Data Policy Enactment in Ontario

Abstract

Policy discourses of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) have influenced Ontario’s K-12 education system for decades. Recently, EDI education policies have mandated that district school boards collect demographic data from students and staff. The purpose of this research is to examine the enactment of demographic data collection policies in one Ontario school district through an exploration of the policy enactment activities of the research leader who was responsible for demographic data collection projects. Drawing on theories of policy enactment and transformative leadership, this research interrogates how provincially mandated demographic data collection policies are translated in local contexts and shape policy responses and practices. This research employs an autoethnographic methodology to illuminate the diverse policy positions and policy work of the research leader. The narrative of policy enactment is one that includes complexity and contradiction in terms of the enactment and outcomes of demographic data collection policy. Ultimately, conflicting organizational cultures, hierarchies, and limited material resources all served to constrain the enactment of demographic data collection projects in ways that would support transformative, anti-racist outcomes.

1. Introduction

Policy discourses of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) have influenced public education for decades. Situated in Ontario, Canada, this research examines a recent and significant shift in EDI education policies towards the collection and reporting of demographic data, specifically race-based metrics. As Canada’s most populous and diverse province, Ontario is the first province to enact anti-racism legislation that requires school districts to collect, interpret, and publicly report on voluntarily collected demographic data. Various organizations (People for Education, 2023), academic researchers (Brown et al., 2020; Doan et al., 2020; Robson, 2021; Shah et al., 2022a), and educational practitioners (Segeren et al., 2025) have pointed to demographic data collection as a tool for identifying and dismantling systemic barriers for equity-deserving students and communities. In a pan-Canadian scan of anti-racism polices in education, People for Education (2023) conclude that the implementation of demographic data collection policies across Ontario is highly inconsistent due to varying degrees of institutional history, research expertise, and inadequate resourcing. To date, there is no existing literature that explores if and how demographic data collection policies are being enacted in Ontario or other Canadian provinces.

The purpose of this article is to examine the enactment of demographic data collection policies in one Ontario school district through an exploration of the policy enactment activities and leadership practices of the research leader. The overarching research question is as follows: How did the research leader interpret and translate demographic data collection policies within a school board context? A sub-question of the research is as follows: What policy positions and forms of policy work did the research leader take up while enacting demographic data collection projects?

Situated within the field of critical policy analysis (Young & Diem, 2017), this research draws on theories of policy enactment (Ball et al., 2012) that seek to move beyond simplistic and reductionist notions of policy implementation. Policy texts often represent “the best of all possible schools, schools that only exist in the fevered imaginations of politicians, civil servants and advisers” (p. 3). Therefore, policy texts rarely tell individuals what to do or how to do it. Instead, policies have to be “put ‘into’ practice—in relation to history and to context, with the resources available” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 3). Policy enactment involves the two inter-related processes of interpretation (an initial reading and making sense of the policy) and translation (putting texts into practice). Traditional implementation studies have tended to focus on the goals and intentions of policymakers at the expense of the perspectives and experiences of educational leaders and teachers who are often the subject of policies (Ball et al., 2011; Wert & Brewer, 2015). To understand how and why policy texts are enacted requires attention to be paid to the values, beliefs, attitudes, positionings, and experiences of policy actors within schools and districts (Wert & Brewer, 2015; Ball et al., 2012).

Recent policy enactment scholarship has emphasized the pivotal role of middle leaders as key policy actors in schools and districts (Skerritt et al., 2023a, 2023b; Shah et al., 2022a, 2023). These mid-level leaders are responsible for enacting policy in complex institutional contexts, and yet they remain an overlooked group in education policy research (Lipscombe et al., 2021). This study contributes to this nascent but growing field by focusing on research leaders—also referred to as research managers or data specialists—who occupy mid-level leadership positions in Ontario school districts. In response to increasing demands for data-driven decision-making and performative accountability, many school districts across Ontario have come to retain and rely on data and research professionals to lead the collection, analysis, and reporting of data and research to inform strategic planning, policy development, and educational programming (Doan et al., 2020). Despite their growing importance, a small amount of empirical research has explored the roles, responsibilities, and lived experiences of research leaders in education policy enactment.

This study examines how research leaders, often positioned as mid-level or middle leaders, interpret and translate demographic data policy within school districts. This research makes three important contributions to policy enactment: (1) it provides an empirical account of how demographic data policies are enacted amid anti-EDI backlash; (2) it contributes an empirical account of the policy enactment work of middle leaders in school districts; and (3) it extends existent policy enactment theory and policy actor typologies through a focus on single-actor enactment and the multiple and conflicting subjectivities that emerge.

2. The Research Context

This section reviews the academic literature to contextualize the enactment of demographic data policies, focusing on the following: (1) the historical and political development of equity education policy in Ontario, (2) policy enactment and reform within district school boards, and (3) the rise in datafication and the use of demographic data to advance educational equity.

2.1. Education Policy in Ontario, Canada

Education in Canada follows a decentralized, multi-level governance system where there is no federal or national ministry of education. Instead, education is governed at a provincial or territorial level. This means that each of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories have their own ministries of education that are responsible for developing and implementing policies, priorities, and programming. Below provincial ministries exist regional district school boards who oversee the operation of elementary and secondary schools. Even within this decentralized structure, there is a degree of policy convergence across the provinces and territories in areas such as standardized assessment, inclusive education, Indigenous education and reconciliation, equity and anti-racism initiatives, early childhood education, and digital learning. Specific to this research, the last five years have seen anti-racism policies become more widespread in Canada due, in part, to the Government of Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy launched in 2019. In 2017, Ontario became the first province in Canada to adopt provincial anti-racism legislation, the Ontario Anti-Racism Act.

Public education in Ontario, and the corresponding policy landscape, has long identified equity as a core priority for public education. For over three decades, the Ontario Ministry of Education (OME) has institutionalized and legislated their commitment to equity in various policy directives (OME, 1993, 2009, 2013, 2017). The history of equity education policy in Ontario has witnessed extreme fluctuations and re-articulations, moving from systemic anti-racist discourses in the early 1990s to non-performative equity commitments undermined by budget cuts and political retrenchment (Campbell, 2020; Rezai-Rashti et al., 2017; Shewchuk & Cooper, 2018). Existing scholarship focussing on the enactment of equity education policies in Ontario highlights both the intentions behind these policies and their limitations, including critiques of their failure to produce meaningful structural change in practice despite progressive language (Segeren, 2016; Rezai-Rashti et al., 2021).

Most recently, Ontario’s Anti-Racism Act (2017) legislated the collection of race-based data in areas such as education, justice, and child welfare (Government of Ontario, 2017). This legislation was operationalized in the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Eduation Equity Action Plan (2017), which mandated that school boards collect, interpret, and publicly report on voluntarily collected identity-based data to identify and address systemic barriers. Demographic data includes, but is not limited to, the following identities: race, ethnicity, religion, spoken languages, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and class-based indicators such as educational attainment and employment status. All school boards were expected to follow the requirements for collecting, analyzing, storing, and reporting on identity-based data as outlined in Ontario’s Anti-Racism Act (2017). By linking demographic data with other metrics such as attendance, credits granted, educational program, academic streaming, graduation rates, suspensions, expulsions, and special education services, school districts could “eliminate discriminatory biases in order to support equity and student achievement and well-being through training and targeted programs and supports” (OME, 2017, p. 19).

The enactment of demographic data collection policies is highly varied and uneven across Ontario (People for Education, 2023). Ontario’s 72 school boards have varied histories and experiences with collecting identity-based data. For example, the Toronto District School Board has a long history and vast data infrastructure for collecting, analyzing, and publicly reporting identity-based data (Brown et al., 2020; Parekh et al., 2018; Robson, 2021). According to People for Education (2023), a lack of resources from the OME and within school boards themselves contributed to implementation challenges. Factors such as the number of research staff, their academic and professional qualifications, and past institutional experiences with collecting demographic data are factors that mediate the ways in which demographic data projects are visioned and executed.

At present, Ontario is led by Conservative Premier, Doug Ford, who was first elected in 2018. Under his leadership, an anti-EDI populist backlash is gaining momentum (Maharaj et al., 2024), evidenced by protests against LGBTQ2S+ rights outside of school district offices (Khandaker, 2023), calls to ban critical race theory in schools (Haskell, 2022), cash transfer payments to parents, and a Parent Bill of Rights (Luccisano & Maurutto, 2023). Former Minister of Education Stephen Lecce has commented that these populist efforts “send a clear signal to Ontario’s school boards we’ve listened to the priorities of parents, putting common sense at the center of our education system” (Toronto Star, 2023). This populist agenda is also impacting data and researchers professionals within school districts. According to Doan et al., (2020) school board researchers have adopted critical research methods to advance anti-racismbut in doing so, they face significant internal and external backlash.

2.2. District-Level Policy Enactment and the Role of Research Leaders

From a governance perspective, the regional school district is a key site of policy enactment and public accountability. In Ontario, education funding and strategic direction is highly centralized at the provincial level; however, district school boards are responsible for implementing provincial priorities and are held accountable to the local communities they serve through elected trustees (Shah, 2016). Senior leaders in school districts, such as directors and superintendents, hold responsibilities for translating provincial mandates into district goals, enacting district-wide programs, allocating system resources, and overseeing schools and principals (Shah et al., 2022a). School districts are not passive conduits of national or provincial policies, but are active mediators of policy enactment processes (Spillane, 2004). District leaders interpret, adapt, and sometimes reshape policies before and as they reach schools and classrooms (Burch & Spillane, 2004; Honig et al., 2010; Trujillo, 2012, 2013). This mediation can both support and hinder the intended outcomes of educational reforms.

Burch and Spillane (2004)’s research on “leading from the middle” was one of the first studies to examine the policy and reform work of mid-level district staff. Mid-level district leaders are “brokers of resources, knowledge and ideas both within and across the district, and performed roles such as tool designers, data managers, trainers, support providers, and network builders” (Shah et al., 2022a, p. 458). Vidya Shah and colleagues have provided significant insights into how mid-level leaders (2022) enact anti-racist leadership, noting that mid-level leaders play a key role in “adopting, resisting, and adapting central initiatives to their local contexts” (Shah et al., 2022a, p. 458). In their research on the enactment of school evaluation policies in Ireland, Skerritt et al. (2023a) focussed on the essential policy translation work that middle leaders do as they “organize, manage, lead, plan, produce, inspire, persuade, and appease, and in doing so they translate policy into practice and make it a collective effort” (p. 580). Their research also highlighted the demands that middle leaders face, noting that they often feel “overloaded and inundated” (p. 578). While a nascent body of literature has begun to explore the role of middle leaders in policy enactment, further research is needed. In their systematic review, Lipscombe et al. (2021) emphasize the need for a larger empirical base on middle leadership in school districts. In the Ontario context, Shah et al. (2022b) similarly note the limited research documenting how school districts enact anti-racist reforms.

Throughout the last decade, our theoretical and empirical understandings of policy enactment in schools have grown tremendously as a variety of researchers have sought to build on the theoretical foundations established by Stephen Ball and his colleagues in How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools (Ball et al., 2012). The school, as a key site of enactment and unit of analysis in research, has been the predominate focus during this period. Policy enactment research has explored broad policy areas such as school evaluation (Skerritt et al., 2023a, 2023b), classroom management and discipline (Maguire et al., 2010), assessment and evaluation (Hardy & Melville, 2019), and curriculum (Golding, 2017; Lambert & O’Connor, 2018). A second generation of policy enactment research has expanded the typology of policy actors introduced by Ball et al. (2012) by examining specific policy roles and practices in greater detail. For instance, Golding (2017) investigated curriculum policy enactment in two secondary mathematics departments, extending understandings of policy critics and introducing the concept of policy survivors. Maguire et al. (2019) revisited the role of union representatives as policy critics, while Maguire and Braun (2019) further developed the notion of policy narration through their study of head teachers in English primary schools. More recently, Skerritt et al. (2023a) have focused on middle leaders—teachers with additional responsibilities—and their role as policy translators in the enactment of school evaluation policy in Ireland.

In this research, the focus is on the policy enactment activities of a research leader in an Ontario school district. The research leader is positioned as a middle leader, reporting directly to the senior leadership team. Increasingly, school districts in Ontario employ in-house full-time data and research professioanls (Doan et al., 2020) who have responsibilities for leading and managing the collection, analysis, mobilization, and reporting of all data and research projects in a school district. These research leaders and data specialists play a significant yet understudied role in strategic planning, district reform, and policy enactment. As Robson et al. (2021) and Doan et al. (2020) note, research leaders are tasked with collecting, analyzing, and communicating demographic data to inform equity initiatives. However, research leaders operate in precarious and politicized environments, where their work is subject to public scrutiny and political pressure (Doan et al., 2020). Moreover, researchers in school districts face the dual challenge of leveraging data for equity while resisting its co-optation into reports and dashboards that may reproduce the very inequities they aim to address (Segeren et al., 2025). While existing research has illuminated the critical role of mid-level leaders in interpreting and enacting educational reforms (Burch & Spillane, 2004; Shah et al., 2022b; Skerritt et al., 2023a, 2023b), there remains a notable gap in understanding how research leaders—who function as mid-level policy actors—enact demographic data collection policies within Ontario school districts.

2.3. Datafication in Education

It is impotant to situate the emergence of demographic data collection policies, especially with their equity and justice aims, in the context of the existing literature that conceptulizes the rise in datafication in education (Gulson et al., 2022; Jarke & Breiter, 2019). Gulson et al. (2022) describe datafication as “the process of translating things and events into quantitative data that can be added to massive databases that are growing daily” (p. 3). In education, datafication is rendering the various aspects of schooling, including “education policy, teachers’ work and the life of students” (Lewis et al., 2022, p. 63), into digital data. This process is made possible by the growth of data infrastructures, “an unprecedented number of people (e.g., students, teachers), institutions (e.g., schools, schooling systems) and processes (e.g., learning, pedagogy, improvement)” that collectively inform how education is practiced and governed (Lewis et al., 2022, p. 71). These infrastructures include traditional actors like students (Hardy, 2015; Selwyn et al., 2021), teachers (Lewis & Holloway, 2019; Hardy, 2021; Holloway, 2020), and school leaders (Hardy et al., 2025; Hartong, 2018; Hartong & Förschler, 2019), but also “shadow professionals” such as data scientists and technicians who are involved in the construction and use of data infrastructures and who are thus increasingly influencing education policy and data-based forms of governance (Lewis & Hartong, 2021). In addition, data visualizations, dashboards, and platforms are examples of policy technologies that are contributing to what Gorur and Arnold (2021) refer to as “governance by dashboard” that has become “part of the contemporary sociotechnical imaginary of governance” (p. 168). A key element of dashboard governance is the mobilization of demographic data—such as race, social class, and gender—to disaggregate ‘big data’ sets into meaningful and actionable insights for school and system leaders (Gorur & Arnold, 2021; Segeren et al., 2025).

Criticisms of datafication (Gulson & Sellar, 2019; Ozga, 2016; Williamson, 2016) point to the role of power and politics at the intersection of datafication. As Lewis et al. (2022) succinctly summarize, “there is also the possibility that educational problems identified by datafication will become the focus of policy to the neglect of other important matters that remain outside the purview of the data/digital gaze” (p. 73). Ball (2015) describes a technocratic logic that underpins performative accountability systems. As such, it is necessary to consider the ways that demographic data can be used to surveil, categorize, and pathologize equity-deserving students and communities. This research seeks to problematize the collection and use of data in education, specifically what data are used, how they are used, and what the consequences for educational equity are.

A possible antidote to ‘policy by numbers’ and ‘dashboard governance’ is QuantCrit—a critical data framework that brings together critical race theory and quantitative research. Gillborn et al. (2018) argue that numbers and statistics are not neutral or objective, but are embedded within historical and structural relations of power. QuantCrit demands critical reflexivity on the part of researchers and practitioners who must consider how data is collected, analyzed, communicated, and utilized in ways that obscure and depoliticize systemic racism or illuminate and challenge it. Castillo and Babb (2024) argue that QuantCrit offers a transformative methodology for academic and applied researchers to engage in demographic data collection. District school boards, using the work of data and research professionals, are employing critical data methods (Parekh et al., 2018; Robson et al., 2021; Segeren et al., 2025). Further research to document the diverse ways in which research leaders in school districts are seeking to engage with the principles of QuantCrit to inform the enactment of demographic data collection policies is needed.

3. Conceptual Framework

3.1. Critical Policy Analysis

This research is situated in the field of critical policy studies in education (Young & Diem, 2017). While traditional approaches to policy analysis emphasize policymaking as a rational, logical exercise, where policies flow linearly from one stage to the next, critical policy analysis in education considers the role of power and politics in policy processes. Policy processes and analyses of them are never value-neutral activities (Ozga, 1987; Prunty, 1985; Ball, 1994). Further, policy processes—how texts are constructed and enacted—are fundamentally political insofar as they maintain or challenge existing relations of power that advantage some groups while disadvantaging others (Horsford et al., 2019). Critical policy research has coalesced around five overarching concerns, including the following: (1) the difference between policy rhetoric and policy reality; (2) the historical development and trajectories of policy; (3) the distribution of resources and production of policy ‘winners’ and ‘losers’; (4) the broad effects a policy has on inequities and privileges; and (5) the possibilities for resistance to policy (Diem et al., 2014). This research focusses on the “difference between policy rhetoric and practiced reality” in terms of the “space between policy development and implementation” (Diem et al., 2014, p. 1072). Below, theories of policy enactment and transformative leadership are presented as specific theoretical tools for framing the study and as lenses to guide the analysis of data.

3.2. Policy Enactment Theory

Traditional policy implementation studies conceptualize policy processes as linear, with policies flowing from one stage to another through the actions of rational policy actors. In contrast, Ball et al. (2012) use the concept of enactment to capture the complex ways that policies are “interpreted and translated and reconstructed and remade in different but similar settings” (p. 6). The words interpretation and translation are carefully selected to indicate that “policy writers cannot control the meanings of their texts. Parts of texts will be rejected, selected out, ignored, deliberately misunderstood” (Bowe et al., 1992, p. 22). Interpretation is an initial reading and making-sense of policy texts as policy actors consider the following: What does this text mean for us, what does this text require us to do? Translation is the process of putting texts into action within districts and schools. Translation activities require that policy actors plan and perform policy through various tactics, meetings, and events.

Understanding how and why policy texts are enacted requires studying the values, beliefs, attitudes, and experiences of policy actors. Policy enactment theory pays meticulous analytic attention to the actions of policy actors who are at once the enactors of policy texts and subject to the disciplinary techniques of policy. Education policies produce and position subjects: “we speak policy and at the same time policy speaks us; it creates positions from which we are able to act and think” (Ball, 2015, p. 467). The diverse identities, values, aspiration, experiences, responsibilities, and competencies of policy actors inform how they relate and respond to policy ranging from enthusiasm and activism to indifference and avoidance. As such, policy actors occupy varied positionalities within the policy landscape and engage with policy in differentiated and contextually contingent ways.

To analyze the different types of policy positions and policy work that characterized the research leader’s enactment of demographic data policy, this research utilizes the typology of policy actors developed by Ball et al. (2012). Based on large-scale fieldwork across secondary schools in England, the typology identifies eight policy positions: narrators, entrepreneurs, outsiders, transactors, enthusiasts, translators, critics, and receivers. Policy positions are not aligned with specific roles, are nor are they attached to specific individuals. Rather, policy actors take up and move between multiple roles (Ball et al., 2011). This typology is used as a heuristic device to make sense of and structure the detailed descriptions of policy enactment work performed by the research leader. Following Lambert and O’Connor (2018), this framework is used “from the inside out” (p. 172) to analyze the researcher’s own policy positions and policy work. Since much of the existing research on policy enactment has used the school as the unit of analysis (Ball et al., 2011, 2012; Maguire et al., 2010), this research aims to expand upon the initial typology by centering the policy work of a single actor located within a district school board. The research seeks to highlight how a single policy actor moved between and took up varied and conflicting responses to policy, sometimes advocating for and championing demographic data collection policies and at other times subject to disciplinary and hierarchical constrains as a policy receiver and critic.

3.3. Transformative Leadership

To further theorize the policy enactment work of the research leader at the center of this article—including the overarching goals of policy enactment and the leadership approaches used to enact these goals—this research uses Carolyn Shields’ theory of transformative leadership (TLT) (Shields, 2014, 2019). In this article, TLT conceptualizes the research leader’s commitment to and embodiment of transformative leadership as central to enacting demographic data collection policies with the possibility for transformative outcomes. Transformative leadership, also referred to as critical transformative leadership, is a theoretical project associated with the work of Carolyn Shields, who defines transformative leadership as rooted in critical theory and as committed to identifying and dismantling education inequities with an explicit orientation toward the values of equity and social justice. According to Shields (2019), TLT is used to “provide a standard for evaluating the present state of an organization and implying a clear direction for action” (p. 29). The practice of transformative leadership is oriented towards systemic change, requiring educational leaders to critically reflect on the extent to which they are satisfied with and complicit in the maintenance of the status quo. According to Shields (2014), transformative leaders must ask themselves “whether the schools in which they work are actually meeting the needs of all students, whether they are writing off certain groups of students who come from historically less dominant socioeconomic, religious, or ethnic groups or whether all students are actually achieving to similarly high levels” (p. 324). TLT provides a framework for conceptualizing the values, beliefs, and commitments of the research leader as they seek to enact demographic data collection policies using critical research methods for collecting, analyzing, and reporting demographic data. The methodological design of the study is detailed in the following section. A statement of the researcher-participant’s positionality is presented below that further elaborates on the research leader’s commitment to and embodiment of transformative leadership.

Taken together, theories of policy enactment and transformative leadership are used to critically examine the enactment of demographic data collection projects, and the extent to which these projects support or constrain anti-oppressive and anti-racist practices and outcomes in a school district.

4. Materials and Methods

4.1. Autoethnography

This research project used an autoethnographic design to explore the enactment of demographic data collection policy in one district school board. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that blends autobiographical storytelling with ethnographic analysis to examine social phenomena (Ellis et al., 2010). Ellis and Bochner (2000) explain that autoethnography is used to systematically describe and analyze (graphy) personal experiences (auto) to understand sociocultural phenomena (ethno). As Adams et al. (2015) explain, “when we do autoethnography, we look inward into our identities, thoughts, feelings and experiences—and outward into our relationships, communities and cultures” (p. 46). To offer insights into policy enactment processes, this article focuses on interpretive and analytical approaches to autoethnography (Chang, 2008). Chang (2008) articulates that “the stories of autoethnographers are to be reflected upon, analyzed, and interpreted within their broader sociocultural context” (p. 46). Theories of policy enactment and transformative leadership are used to interpret the beliefs, practices, and experiences that emerged from the data and to construct the narratives of policy enactment detailed below.

4.2. Positionality and Reflexivity

Acknowledging who we are in relation to what we research is ethically and methodologically necessary, especially in autoethnographic research (Adams, 2006). I am positioned in this research as both participant and researcher. I move through academic and professional spaces as a white, cisgender, able-bodied woman with the various forms of privilege those identities make possible. My professional identity—including roles as a K-12 educator, university researcher, lecturer, and, at the heart of this research project, a full-time research leader in a district school board in Ontario—is characterized by precarity. As a participant in the research, my leadership approach is informed by visions of transformative leadership inspired by the work of Carolyn Shields. As a transformative leader, I am committed to systemic changes for equity-deserving students, staff, and communities. I acknowledge the history and continued existence of harmful data and research practices that construct and reinforce deficit, pathologized, individualized, and depoliticized views of marginalized students and communities.

As the only data or research professional in the board, I functioned as a department of one with responsibilities for leading all data and research projects to support district-wide strategies, policies, and programming. The district school board office was an unfamiliar professional context to me. I was positioned as an outsider with no previous professional experiences, relationships, or institutional knowledge of how this school board functioned. The formal title of ‘leader’ felt strange to me: who was I supposed to lead and how? Initial enthusiasm and optimism waned as imposter syndrome and disillusionment set in: was the school district really a site where transformative leadership could be enacted? In 2023, I ended my employment with the school district. Only after I left was it possible to tell this story.

It is necessary to emphasize that the interpretations offered here are those of the participant-researcher. The stories of leadership, compromise, and criticism arise from my positioning and experience. There are, of course, other people and other stories. As such, the knowledges constructed here are necessarily subjective and partial. A significant limitation of this study is its lack of generalizability due to the autoethnographic methodology that centers the subjective experiences of a single policy actor. As such, it does not account for the perspectives of other policy actors who also shaped the enactment of demographic data policies in important ways.

4.3. Data Collection and Analysis

By integrating multiple sources of data, autoethnographers can “enhance the content accuracy and validity of the autoethnographic writing” (Chang, 2008, p. 55). Three sources of data were collected as part of the research process. First, institutional documents were collected, including policies and memorandums from the Ontario Ministry of Education, school board policies and procedures, and reports and presentations authored by the participant-researcher. Second, personal documents written by the participant-researcher were collected, including personal worklogs, emails, and meeting notes. Finally, retrospective journalling offered insights into the intellectual and emotional challenges that were confronted during policy enactment. The first two datasets were collected from two demographic data collection projects involving students and staff undertaken at the school board between 2021 and 2023. Retrospective journalling was completed in the latter half of 2023 after the demographic data projects had been completed and the participant-researcher was no longer employed at the district school board. A theoretically informed approach to data analysis, grounded within the conceptual framework and the relevant literature, was used to mitigate complete subjectivity and ensure broader interpretive power (Chang, 2008; Emilsson, 2024). The three datasets were reflexively and thematically analyzed (Braun & Clarke, 2006) using codes from Ball et al.’s (2012) typology of policy actors and Shields’ (2014, 2019) theory of transformative leadership.

Autoethnography has ethical implications and real consequences for others who are implicated in our storytelling (Adams, 2006). To protect the privacy of others, I have altered identifying characteristics and included minimal identifying details in the narratives presented below. For example, the names and timelines of data collection projects, the titles of internal reports, and the titles of departments or roles have been altered or intentionally unnamed. A critical re-reading of the narratives was completed to ensure that the use of these protective devices did not lead to distortion or misrepresentation of the findings.

5. Results

This section presents the findings of the research through the lens of Ball’s typology of policy actors, interweaving theoretical insights, personal narratives, and thematic connections to the existing literature to enhance the explanatory depth of the autoethnographic data (Chang, 2008). Consistent with Ball et al.’s (2012) policy actor typology, the data illustrated that the research leader moved between and fulfilled multiple roles, some more prominent than others. The roles of narrator, translator, and entprerenuer were most prominent in the data and are located at the “active” end of the typology (Lambert & O’Connor, 2018). In contrast, the roles of transactor, receiver, and critic were peripheral in the data. Rather than positioning these different roles in a binary of active versus passive or prominent versus peripheral, all roles can be understood as being significant for their ability to support or constrain the transformative outcomes of demographic data collection projects. Finally, given the focus on a single actor located within the school district, it is not surprising that the data did not reveal instances of a policy outsider.

5.1. Narrator

One of the key early stages of policy enactment involves the deciphering of policy texts and deciding on courses of action. Policy narration, often the purview of senior leaders, involves “deciding and then announcing what must be done, what can be done, and what cannot” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 50). Effective policy narration involves constructing an institutional narrative—a coherent and convincing story about what the school district does and how it works.

The first and foundational step in the policy enactment process was constructing an institutional narrative to articulate what demographic data collection was and why the school board was collecting it. The narrative for the demographic data projects was two-fold: first, to document the demographic composition of the organization; and second, to use demographic indicators to identify gaps and barriers for equity-deserving groups (students and staff). The institutional narrative also included specific goals for demographic data collection projects: (1) the creation of a survey tool that reflected all identities, (2) broad participation in demographic data collection projects evidenced by high response rates, and (3) data representations and visualizations that centered diverse identities. An effective institutional narrative can be one of continuity and longevity (Skerritt et al., 2023b). The narrative also included references to Ontario’s Anti-Racism Act and the school board’s equity action plan to position demographic data collection projects as both a requirement and an extension of existing equity commitments.

As a transformative leader, I was deeply committed to embedding the principles of QuantCrit in demographic data collection projects. As a narrator, I experienced autonomy to determine the purpose and objectives of the demographic data collection projects. These projects were not hollow exercises in counting and classifying people. The narrative vision for demographic data policy enactment had transformative potential insofar as it made explicit commitments to identifying and dismantling educational inequities.

5.2. Translator

During policy translation, abstract policy texts are translated into actions; as Ball et al. (2011) explain, “they are made meaningful and doable” (p. 631). Policy translation can be seen as the heavy lifting of policy enactment work, where translators “organize, manage, lead, plan, produce, inspire, persuade, and appease” (Skerritt et al., 2023a, p. 567). The data revealed that translation work was a prominent aspect of policy enactment.

An important part of the research leader’s translation work was “the planning and production of events, processes and texts” (Skerritt et al., 2023a, p. 576). The creation of the survey tool, communication materials, and reports and infographics are examples of translation activities. First, the survey tool aimed to affirm rather than denigrate the diverse identities of respondents. To this end, the survey tool included multiple response categories. The use of ‘other’ as a response was not included; rather, respondents could select ‘an identity not listed above’ and then enter their own response. Second, communication plans and materials were shared with different employee groups so that relevant and timely information would support broad engagement with demographic data collection projects. Communication resources supported system and school leaders in sharing consistent messaging with their own teams and audiences, including teachers, support staff, students, and caregivers. Third, final reports and data visualizations were created to report the findings from the demographic data collection projects. Reflective of the principles of QuantCrit, data reports and visualizations centered racial, Indigenous, and queer identities rather than relegating them invisible, in the ‘less than 1%’ category, or as a tiny sliver in a pie chart.

The way we represent numbers and statistics tells a story; transformative leaders critically reflect on what story they are telling and whose identities they are narrating. It was imperative that the data reports and visualizations did not reinforce existing narratives about the racial, cultural, religious, and linguistic homogeneity or gender normativity of the school district. While data reports and visualizations pushed the equity agenda forward, they could also be seen as non-performative commitments to equity—graphics, posters, or reports that do not result in the realization of systemic educational equity.

5.3. Entrepreneur

Policy entrepreneurs “represent and champion particular policies” and are “charismatic people” and “persuasive personalities” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 53). While policy entrepreneurship has been theorized (Ball et al., 2012) and observed (Skerritt et al., 2023b) as being uncommon or infrequent, it emerged from the data as a prominent and significant policy role.

One of the key strategies that policy entrepreneurs use to enact policies is “recruit[ing] others to their cause to build a critical mass for change” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 53). A central example of how entrepreneur work manifested in the data was through consultation processes that were used to build shared understanding and generate buy-in from staff across the school district. Consultations were conducted with the special education advisory committee, the Indigenous education advisory committee, the equity committee, and various labor and union groups. The endorsement and support of demographic data collection projects from stakeholder groups was essential to broad participation.

As a policy entrepreneur, I was “committed to and associated with” demographic data collection projects and I sought to “bring about change and engage others” in this work (Skerritt et al., 2023b, p. 704). By virtue of my institutional positioning as the research leader, I came to represent the demographic data collection projects. I created resources, gave presentations, and mentored team and school leaders in collecting and using demographic data in equitable and transformative ways. Some of these resources and presentations became visible and prominent symbols of demographic data collection projects. I began to receive invites and requests from team and school leaders to provide advice and direction on how to use data to support equitable experiences and outcomes for their departments or schools.

In my work as a policy entrepreneur, there were opportunities for transformative leadership. As an entrepreneur, I actioned my commitment to QuantCrit by providing district and school leaders with the knowledge and skills to use data critically to identify and dismantle inequities in their own contexts. In these moments I felt most authentic, empowered, and transformative as an educational leader.

5.4. Transactor

In an era of performative accountability and low-trust policy environments, Ball et al. (2012) explain that “policy must be seen to be done, that is, reported as done and accounted for” (p. 56). While senior leaders are often positioned as transactors, the data demonstrated that middle leaders, especially those with responsibilities for data and research, also face significant transactional work. Transactional policy work manifested through pressures towards compliance and expediency that emanated from within and beyond the school district. I was responsible for submitting interim and final reports to the Ontario Ministry of Education to demonstrate the school board’s compliance with provincial and ministerial mandates. Pressures towards compliance and expediency also came from senior leaders within the school district. As a transactor, I experienced pressure to plan and complete multiple demographic data collection projects simultaneously, expedite ‘lengthy’ consultation processes, and release preliminary results and final reports as quickly as possible.

A significant gap existed between the anti-racist commitments that were narrated during the initial stages of policy enactment and the production of final reports that did little to challenge bias, discrimination, and oppression. There was hesitancy and refusal to engage with data and findings that revealed racism, classism, homophobia, or transphobia. My personal commitments to transformative leadership clashed with organizational priorities and the pressures exerted by performative accountability systems.

5.5. Receiver

Policy receivers are seen to have less positional authority, and, hence, are often obedient or acquiescent to policy or its imposition by senior leaders (Ball et al., 2012). Policy receivers are “expected, pressurized, instructed, dictated to, hammered” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 64). Policy receivers are often characterized as less experienced, new or novice in an organization, and distant to the realm of policy (Ball et al., 2012; Skerritt et al., 2023b). However, the data revealed significant and novel understandings of policy receivership. As a policy receiver, I was often expected and pressured to acquiesce to the visions of senior leaders. There were multiple instances when my expertise was ignored, my judgements were overruled, and I was required to engage in data collection and analysis activities that I viewed as unreliable or unethical. There was a lack of trust and value in my research expertise and the approaches I used to enact demographic data collection projects. As a result, I experienced invisibility and silencing. I came to understand that getting the policies and projects done was more important than getting it right.

Transformative leadership practices felt impossible as a policy receiver. My commitments to transformative leadership clashed frequently and directly with the hierarchy and culture of the school board and the Ministry of Education. Through retrospective reflection, I see how my inaction meant that I was also complicit in a narrowed vision of demographic data collection that failed to offer transformative outcomes.

5.6. Critic

The data reveled differing degrees of criticism during the enactment of demographic data collection policies, ranging from “mundane criticisms that are part of everyday life in almost all organizations” to “principled and political critiques” (Ball et al., 2012, p. 61). Consistent with existing empirical research on policy enactment, the role of policy critics was marginal (Skerritt et al., 2023b). Criticism was not leveled against the values or ideas within provincial policy texts. For example, I was not critical of the mandates within the Government of Ontario’s Anti-Racism Act (2017) or the OME’s Education Equity Action Plan (2017). Rather, inadequate material resources provided by the OME and the school board that hindered the robust enactment of demographic data collection projects was the primary point of criticism. Finally, criticisms were most often expressed in conversations with close allies and mentors, some of whom also worked as data and research professionals in school districts and some of whom worked in the school district. I am eternally grateful for the support and guidance that these colleagues provided.

6. Discussion

This research has sought to illuminate the complex and contested nature of policy enactment through an autoethnographic account of the experiences of a research leader during the enactment of demographic data collection policies within a district school board. The research makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to policy enactment (Ball et al., 2011, 2012) and critical data practices (Gillborn et al., 2018). While the findings are not generalizable, the implications are significant for understanding the nature of policy enactment work in school districts, especially as it relates to datafication and equity.

6.1. Policy Enactment

The findings of this research support and extend the policy enactment framework advanced by Ball et al. (2012), which emphasizes the complex and distributed nature of policy work within schools and districts. By examining the enactment of demographic data policy from the perspective of a single policy actor within one Ontario school district, this study provides a novel empirical context through which to affirm and extend theoretical understandings of policy enactment. Research leaders in school districts confront similar demands, constraints, and emotional labor as teachers and principals engaged in policy enactment. They are “creative and sophisticated”, but also “tired and overloaded” (Ball et al., 2011, p. 625). They are committed to and capable of transformative leadership, and yet are continually subjugated to the pressures of compliance and performance. And yet, research leaders, by virtue of their role at the district level, are also distinct from teachers and school leaders as policy actors. This research positions research leaders not as “shadow professionals” (Lewis & Hartong, 2021), but as actors who have diverse expertise and competence and bring with them a deep understanding of the ethics and politics involved in how demographic data are collected and used.

Consistent with Maguire et al.’s (2015) proposition that “enactments are contingent, fragile social constructions” (p. 487), these research findings reinforce the notion that policy enactment is not linear or uniform. Instead, it is shaped by overlapping, sometimes conflicting, positionalities and actions that move policies in different directions. More specifically, this study confirms the centrality of narration and translation in policy enactment and that these roles are often taken up by middle leaders (Ball et al., 2012; Skerritt et al., 2023a; Maguire & Braun, 2019). This study also confirms that the role of policy critics—those who resist or reframe policy from the margins—was minimal, suggesting that critique may be institutionally constrained or politically marginalized in school districts.

This study extends our theoretical understandings of two key policy positions: receivers and entrepreneurs. First, this study offers a nuanced account of how policy receivers are conceptualized within policy enactment. Policy receivers have been understood as actors who are inexperienced, situated at a distance from policy decision-making, or who are largely passive in their uptake of policy directives. However, the findings from this study complicate this view by revealing how middle leaders—despite their technical expertise and close proximity to policy conversations—can also be positioned as receivers. In this research, policy receivership was not an outcome of the research leaders’ interest, understanding, or capacity. Instead, it emerged from organizational hierarchies and institutional constraints that shaped who had the authority to interpret and act on policy in transformative ways. Middle leaders, even those reporting directly to superintendents, can be constrained in their enactment work by institutional positioning and a lack of enabling conditions from those in positions of greater authority. Middle leaders may be deeply engaged in policy work—as narrators and translators—and yet be simultaneously marginalized from shaping its outcomes. Structural barriers, such as top-down mandates, bureaucratic control, and performative equity commitments, can subject middle leaders to a mode of receivership that is more reflective of political containment than professional incapacity. Second, this study enriches our theoretical understanding of the policy entrepreneur, often framed in the literature as a unique or uncommon role. Instead, entrepreneurship in this study was both prominent and essential to the enactment of demographic data collection projects, particularly in the context of a politically charged and unfamiliar policy terrain such as race-based data collection. Entrepreneurial work in this setting involved advocacy, generating organizational buy-in, and mentoring other policy actors to see themselves reflected in the goals and purposes of demographic data projects. These findings contribute to a broader theoretical understanding of policy entrepreneurship as relational. Rather than being driven solely by charismatic leadership or formal authority (Ball et al., 2012), entrepreneurship in this research was grounded in deep expertise, political acuity, and strong commitments to equity. It was not only about initiating or championing demographic data collection projects, but also about translating equity mandates into locally resonant practices for other policy actors across the organization, especially other middle-level and school leaders.

6.2. Possibilities

Demographic data collection policies and projects, when conducted through a QuantCrit lens, offer important possibilities for engaging in a politics of anti-racist resistance. As Shah et al. (2022b) argue, race-based data can be a tool of anti-racist reform in school districts when used to dismantle inequitable structures. This aligns with Gillborn et al.’s (2018) call for QuantCrit as a methodology to move beyond neutral or technocratic applications of quantitative data and toward practices that make systemic racism visible and contestable. These visions require system leaders “to take an active stance against powerful constituencies and influential players that are intent on perpetuating the status quo” (p. 45). Research leaders occupy a unique position that enables them to influence how data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and communicated. There were moments when the critical and transformative possibilities of demographic data were realized, including during narration and translation activities. However, these moments were always partial, limited, and ultimately constrained by limited positional authority and institutional culture.

6.3. Impossibilities

But research leaders also face resistance and constraints. One of the most significant constraints was the way in which demographic data findings were often ignored, shelved, or inadequately disaggregated. In many instances, demographic data was collected, but was never appropriately disaggregated. This reflects what Gillborn et al. (2018) identify as the “politics of data use”, where data that challenge dominant narratives are rendered invisible. Shah et al. (2022b) similarly describe a “politics of race evasion”, in which colour-blind, meritocratic, and individualist discourses of white supremacy operate to systematically erase racialized students, educators, and leaders. Demographic data projects were completed and reported on only when legally required, and often in ways that avoid naming systemic racism directly. External pressures further compound these challenges. Anti-EDI sentiments and right-wing populist narratives exert chilling effects on district leadership. Other impossibilities stem from deeply ingrained organizational cultures that are resistant to anti-oppressive and anti-racist reform. Demographic data projects were often framed as urgent yet non-essential, subjected to resource constraints and deprioritized amid competing agendas.

Material limitations—such as understaffing, lack of expertise, and inequitable funding—mean that school boards are differently positioned in their capacity to carry out the technical demands of demographic data work, particularly secondary analyses that require data disaggregation and other complex statistical analyses.

6.4. Clashing Cultures

This research reveals tensions between vision and execution, commitment and constraint, as well as autonomy and hierarchy. A critical tension that emerged from this research is the cultural clash between the individual commitments of the research leader, the organizational culture of the school board, and the overarching neoliberal logics governing public education. While the research leader held and embodied a deep, ethical, and political commitment to transformative leadership, they were enacting policy within bureaucratic systems that did not share—or actively contradicted—these values. This misalignment manifests in what Ball (2003) describes as the personal and subjective dilemmas of policy actors—situations where personal identities and beliefs are subordinated to institutional expectations. In these cases, policy enactment “requires individual practitioners to organize themselves as a response to targets, indicators and evaluations. To set aside personal beliefs and commitments and live an existence of calculation” (p. 215).

The narratives above demonstrate the positioning of the research leader within competing discourses: personal commitments to enacting the principles of data equity and QuantCrit (Gillborn et al., 2018; Castillo & Babb, 2024) were often at odds with school board norms that prioritized compliance and neutrality. These tensions are exacerbated by neoliberal modes of governance that shape school districts’ approach to policy and reform. As scholars like Lewis et al. (2022) and Gulson et al. (2022) have argued, neoliberalism is reshaping education into a technocratic field, governed by data, metrics, dashboards, and machine learning. Within this regime, demographic data risks easily becoming another input for performative accountability rather than a tool for identifying and addressing systemic inequities. This reflects broader critiques of datafication as depoliticization (Williamson, 2016), where the transformative potential of demographic data is blunted by institutional demands for objectivity, neutrality, and maintenance of the status quo. At a systemic level, this cultural clash leads to policy inaction and non-performativity. At an individual level, it contributes to policy fatigue and professional disillusionment, as educational leaders must contend with institutional environments that undermine the equity work they are tasked with advancing.

7. Conclusions

This article presents an autoethnographic account of the enactment of demographic data collection policies in one Ontario school board. It identifies both the possibilities and impossibilities of demographic data collection projects for achieving the anti-oppressive, anti-racist reform of school districts. The findings reveal that the collection of demographic data, while legislatively mandated, faces various constraints and resistance. Although demographic data holds emancipatory potential, school boards must move beyond technocratic rationalities and create demographic data infrastructures embedded in a politics of anti-racist resistance (Shah et al., 2022b). This requires both middle leaders and senior leaders to actively and unrelentingly pursue a politics of anti-racist resistance, especially in the face of right-wing populism and anti-EDI backlash. Following Doan et al. (2020), research leaders are public intellectuals and they “deserve to have their profession understood as distinct and rigorous” (p. 9). To this end, research leaders must be valued, trusted, and respected, especially by the senior leaders to which they report. Future research is needed to explore the experiences of research leaders in district school boards whose work is located at the intersections of data, policy, and equity. Their expertise is a trove of untapped insights on how school districts can engage with demographic data in ways that challenge, rather than entrench, systemic inequities.