Performance metrics as formal structures and through the lens of social mechanisms: When do they work and how do they influence?

Our current educational environment is subject to persistent calls for accountability, evidence-based practice, and data use for improvement, which largely take the form of performance metrics (PMs). This rapid proliferation of PMs has profoundly influenced the ways in which scholars and practitioners think about their own practices and the larger missions in which they are embedded. This article draws on research in organizational sociology and higher education to propose a framework and research agenda for analyzing the relationship between PMs and practice. I argue that PMs need to be understood as a distinctive form of data whose consequences in use relate to their role as formalized systems of abstractions and the social mechanisms through which they exert change in practice.