TRANSLATION AND TREASON: AN ANALYSIS OF POLICY DOCUMENTS ON THE USE OF DIGITAL TOOLS IN THE ROMANIAN SCHOOL COUNSELLING SYSTEM

Abstract

The analysis looks at the policy documents of the Centres for Resources and Educational Support regarding the use of digital technology in school counselling, as they were enacted at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. For this task, I employed a framework provided by socio-material theories (Cooren, 2010; Latour, 2005). Policy documents are designed to be obligatory points of passage (Callon, 1986) for human and non-human actors to bind them together for common goals. They take on a life of their own, beyond what their authors intended, in what is termed textual agency (Cooren, 2004). Using controversies (Venturini, 2010) as a means of retracing agencies, I analyse the references to digital technology within two types of documents: the institutional development plan and the managerial plan. The results point towards the existence of a state of incontrovertibility regarding the use of digital technology within the school counselling system, which precludes human and non-human actors from entering a negotiation process led by service managers and sets the stage for subversive actions (Callon, 1986). The failure of the policy documents to set themselves as obligatory points of passage opens up the school counselling system to being governed through obligatory points of passage designed by other actors with non-transparent and divergent agendas.