Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality


Book Description

Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality critically reads the intersubjective theories on educational relations and uses a posthuman approach to ascribe agency relationally to humans and nonhumans alike. The book introduces the concept of ‘educational relationality’ and contains examples of nonhuman elements of technology and animals, putting educational relationality and other concepts into context as part of the philosophical investigation. Drawing on educational and posthuman theorists, it answers questions raised in ongoing debates regarding the roles of students and teachers in education, such as the foundations of educational relations and how these can be challenged. The book explores educational relations within the field of philosophy of education. After critically examining intersubjective approaches to theories of educational relations, anthropocentrism and subject-centrism are localized as two problematic aspects. Post-anthropocentrism and intra-relationality are proposed as a theoretical framework, before the book introduces and develops a posthuman theory of educational relations. The analysis is executed through a diffractive reading of intersubjective theories, resulting in five co-concepts: impermanence, uniqueness-as-relationality, proximity, edu-activity, and intelligibility. The analysis provided through educational examples demonstrates the potential of using the proposed theory in everyday practices. Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, early childhood education, research methodology and curriculum studies.




Posthumanism and Higher Education


Book Description

This book explores ways in which posthumanist and new materialist thinking can be put to work in order to reimagine higher education pedagogy, practice and research. The editors and contributors illuminate how we can move the thinking and doing of higher education out of the humanist cul-de-sac of individualism, binarism and colonialism and away from anthropocentric modes of performative rationality. Based in a reconceptualization of ontology, epistemology and ethics which shifts attention away from the human towards the vitality of matter and the nonhuman, posthumanist and new materialist approaches pose a profound challenge to higher education. In engaging with the theoretical twists and turns of various posthumanisms and new materialisms, this book offers new, experimental and creative ways for academics, practitioners and researchers to do higher education differently. This ground-breaking edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of posthumanism and new materialism, as well as those looking to conceptualize higher education as other than performative practice.




Posthumanism and Educational Research


Book Description

Focusing on the interdependence between human, animal, and machine, posthumanism redefines the meaning of the human being previously assumed in knowledge production. This movement challenges some of the most foundational concepts in educational theory and has implications within educational research, curriculum design and pedagogical interactions. In this volume, a group of international contributors use posthumanist theory to present new modes of institutional collaboration and pedagogical practice. They position posthumanism as a comprehensive theoretical project with connections to philosophy, animal studies, environmentalism, feminism, biology, queer theory and cognition. Researchers and scholars in curriculum studies and philosophy of education will benefit from the new research agendas presented by posthumanism.




Posthumanism and Literacy Education


Book Description

Covering key terms and concepts in the emerging field of posthumanism and literacy education, this volume investigates posthumanism, not as a lofty theory, but as a materialized way of knowing/becoming/doing the world. The contributors explore the ways that posthumanism helps educators better understand how students, families, and communities come to know/become/do literacies with other humans and nonhumans. Illustrative examples show how posthumanist theories are put to work in and out of school spaces as pedagogies and methodologies in literacy education. With contributions from a range of scholars, from emerging to established, and from both U.S. and international settings, the volume covers literacy practices from pre-K to adult literacy across various contexts. Chapter authors not only wrestle with methodological tensions in doing posthumanist research, but also situate it within pedagogies of teaching literacies. Inviting readers to pause, slow down, and consider posthumanist ways of thinking about agency, intra-activity, subjectivity, and affect, this book explores and experiments with new ways of seeing, understanding, and defining literacies, and allows readers to experience and intra-act with the book in ways more traditional (re)presentations do not.




Towards Posthumanism in Education


Book Description

This edited volume presents a post-humanist reflection on education, mapping the complex transdisciplinary pedagogy and theoretical research while also addressing questions related to marginalised voices, colonial discourses, and the relationship between theory and practice. Exhibiting a re-imagination of education through themed relationalities that can transverse education, this cutting-edge book highlights the importance of matter in educational environments, enriching pedagogies, teacher-student relationships and curricular innovation. Chapters present contributions that explore education through various international contexts and educational sectors, unravelling educational implications with reference to the climate change crisis, migrant children in education, post-pandemic education, feminist activists and other emergent issues. The book examines the ongoing iterations of the entanglement of colonisation, modernity, and humanity with education to propose a possibility of education capable of upholding heterogeneous worlds. Curated with a global perspective on transversal relationalities and offering a unique outlook on posthuman thoughts and actions related to education, this book will be an important reading for students, researchers and academics in the fields of philosophy of education, sociology of education, posthumanism and new materialism, curriculum studies, and educational research.




Posthuman Research Practices in Education


Book Description

How do we include and develop understandings of those beyond-the-human aspects of the world in social research? Through fifteen contributions from leading international thinkers, this book provides original approaches to posthumanist research practices in education. It responds to questions which consider the effect and reach of posthuman research.




Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course


Book Description

Posthumanism and the Massive Open Online Course critiques the problematic reliance on humanism that pervades online education and the MOOC, and explores theoretical frameworks that look beyond these limitations. While MOOCs (massive open online courses) have attracted significant academic and media attention, critical analyses of their development have been rare. Following an overview of MOOCs and their corporate means of promotion, this book unravels the tendencies in research and theory that continue to adopt normative views of user access, participation, and educational space in order to offer alternatives to the dominant understandings of community and authenticity in education.




The Posthuman Child


Book Description

The Posthuman Child combats institutionalised ageist practices in primary, early childhood and teacher education. Grounded in a critical posthumanist perspective on the purpose of education, it provides a genealogy of psychology, sociology and philosophy of childhood in which dominant figurations of child and childhood are exposed as positioning child as epistemically and ontologically inferior. Entangled throughout this book are practical and theorised examples of philosophical work with student teachers, teachers, other practitioners and children (aged 3-11) from South Africa and Britain. These engage arguments about how children are routinely marginalised, discriminated against and denied, especially when the child is also female, black, lives in poverty and whose home language is not English. The book makes a distinctive contribution to the decolonisation of childhood discourses. Underpinned by good quality picturebooks and other striking images, the book's radical proposal for transformation is to reconfigure the child as rich, resourceful and resilient through relationships with (non) human others, and explores the implications for literary and literacy education, teacher education, curriculum construction, implementation and assessment. It is essential reading for all who research, work and live with children.




Learning in the Age of Digital Reason


Book Description

Learning in the Age of Digital Reason contains 16 in-depth dialogues between Petar Jandrić and leading scholars and practitioners in diverse fields of history, philosophy, media theory, education, practice, activism, and arts. The book creates a postdisciplinary snapshot of our reality, and the ways we experience that reality, at the moment here and now. It historicises our current views to human learning, and experiments with collective knowledge making and the relationships between theory and practice. It stands firmly at the side of the weak and the oppressed, and aims at critical emancipation. Learning in the Age of Digital Reason is playful and serious. It addresses important issues of our times and avoids the omnipresent (academic) sin of pretentiousness, thus making an important statement: research and education can be sexy. Interlocutors presented in the book (in order of appearance): Larry Cuban, Andrew Feenberg, Michael Adrian Peters, Fred Turner, Richard Barbrook, McKenzie Wark, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, Siân Bayne, Howard Rheingold, Astra Taylor, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, Ana Kuzmanić, Paul Levinson, Kathy Rae Huffman, Ana Peraica, Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat?), Christine Sinclair, and Hamish Mcleod.




Transforming Language and Literacy Education


Book Description

The field of languages and literacies education is undergoing rapid transformation. Scholarship that draws upon feminist, post-colonial, new material and posthuman ontologies is transcending disciplinary boundaries and disrupting traditional binaries between human and nonhuman, the natural and the cultural, the material and the discursive. In Transforming Language and Literacy Education, editors Kelleen Toohey, Suzanne Smythe, Diane Dagenais and Magali Forte bring together accessible, conceptually rich stories from internationally diverse authors to guide new practices, new conversations and new thinking among scholars and educators at the forefront of languages and literacies learning. The book addresses these concepts for diverse groups of learners including young children, youth and adults in formal educational and community-based settings. Challenging and disruptive, this is a unique and important contribution to language and literacy education.