Tara Fenwick – författare

Researching Education Through Actor-Network Theory offers a new take on educational research, demonstrating the ways in which actor-network theory can expand the understanding of educational change.

Researching Education Through Actor-Network Theory offers a new take on educational research, demonstrating the ways in which actor-network theory can expand the understanding of educational change.

The 2007 edition of this respected international volume considers the challenges facing work related education arising from the rapid expansion of the global economy and the impact of this on labour markets and individual workers.

Including perspectives from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, India and South Africa, the 2007 volume is split into four clear sections covering key topics, such as:

The 2007 edition of this respected international volume considers the challenges facing work related education arising from the rapid expansion of the global economy and the impact of this on labour markets and individual workers.

Including perspectives from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, India and South Africa, the 2007 volume is split into four clear sections covering key topics, such as:

The knowledge and decisions of professionals influence all facets of modern life, a fact reflected by the increasing and distinct emphasis on public accountability for what professionals know and do. The nature of this accountability has been fundamentally transformed in response to a changing context of market pressures, network arrangements, declining discretion and public trust, and public managerialism. To tackle these challenges, an important body of research has emerged which concentrates on the material elements and processes of professional learning, and considers how these affect wider society.

This volume presents specific pressures on professionals’ learning in different occupational contexts ranging from public school teaching to medicine and creative industry. These pressures are wrought by changing regulatory frameworks, changing modes of organising, changing demands and changing knowledge authorities in professional practice. The authors stress the importance of understanding these relations as sociomaterial webs through which the important moments of professional action and decisions emerge. This approach moves us beyond accepting ‘learning’ as an identifiable, individualist phenomenon by emphasising the multiplicities around professional practice ‘standards’ and ‘quality’, workarounds, responsibility, agency, and knowledge practices. As the chapters here demonstrate, sociomaterial perspectives raise new questions and methodologies that can highlight what is often invisible in the sometimes messy dynamics of professional learning, and point to new ways of promoting and supporting professional education.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

The knowledge and decisions of professionals influence all facets of modern life, a fact reflected by the increasing and distinct emphasis on public accountability for what professionals know and do. The nature of this accountability has been fundamentally transformed in response to a changing context of market pressures, network arrangements, declining discretion and public trust, and public managerialism. To tackle these challenges, an important body of research has emerged which concentrates on the material elements and processes of professional learning, and considers how these affect wider society.

This volume presents specific pressures on professionals’ learning in different occupational contexts ranging from public school teaching to medicine and creative industry. These pressures are wrought by changing regulatory frameworks, changing modes of organising, changing demands and changing knowledge authorities in professional practice. The authors stress the importance of understanding these relations as sociomaterial webs through which the important moments of professional action and decisions emerge. This approach moves us beyond accepting ‘learning’ as an identifiable, individualist phenomenon by emphasising the multiplicities around professional practice ‘standards’ and ‘quality’, workarounds, responsibility, agency, and knowledge practices. As the chapters here demonstrate, sociomaterial perspectives raise new questions and methodologies that can highlight what is often invisible in the sometimes messy dynamics of professional learning, and point to new ways of promoting and supporting professional education.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.

How can educational research have more impact? What processes of knowledge exchange are most effective for increasing the uses of research results? How can research-produced knowledge be better ‘mobilized’ among users such as practicing educators, policy makers, and the public communities?

These sorts of questions are commanding urgent attention in educational discourses and research policies now circulating around the world. This attention has been translated into powerful material exercises that shape what is considered to be worthwhile research and how research is funded, recognized, and assessed. Yet precisely what activities constitute effective knowledge mobilization, or even what is meant by ‘moving knowledge’, remains unclear. What politics are at play in determining knowledge ‘impact’ across radically different contexts? Who determines what counts as impact, and for what purposes? How are ‘results’ of educational research separated from its participants and processes? In addition knowledge mobilization also invokes debates about the languages through which knowledge is constructed, policy processes are enacted, and research unfolds.

This volume is unique in bringing together these wide-ranging issues of knowledge mobilization in education. The volume editors critically analyse these complex issues and also describe various efforts of knowledge mobilization and their effects. While the contributors themselves speak from diverse material, occupational and theoretical locations. Leading scholars in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia bring disciplinary perspectives from law, digital media studies, museum studies, journalism and policy-making as well as fields of education. Some speak from Anglo-‘Western’ perspectives but others such as Phan Le Ha (Vietnamese), Rui Yang (Chinese) and Dolores van der Wey (Haida/West Coat Salish First Nations) speak from Asian, Indigenous and diasporic locations.

How can educational research have more impact? What processes of knowledge exchange are most effective for increasing the uses of research results? How can research-produced knowledge be better ‘mobilized’ among users such as practicing educators, policy makers, and the public communities?

These sorts of questions are commanding urgent attention in educational discourses and research policies now circulating around the world. This attention has been translated into powerful material exercises that shape what is considered to be worthwhile research and how research is funded, recognized, and assessed. Yet precisely what activities constitute effective knowledge mobilization, or even what is meant by ‘moving knowledge’, remains unclear. What politics are at play in determining knowledge ‘impact’ across radically different contexts? Who determines what counts as impact, and for what purposes? How are ‘results’ of educational research separated from its participants and processes? In addition knowledge mobilization also invokes debates about the languages through which knowledge is constructed, policy processes are enacted, and research unfolds.

This volume is unique in bringing together these wide-ranging issues of knowledge mobilization in education. The volume editors critically analyse these complex issues and also describe various efforts of knowledge mobilization and their effects. While the contributors themselves speak from diverse material, occupational and theoretical locations. Leading scholars in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia bring disciplinary perspectives from law, digital media studies, museum studies, journalism and policy-making as well as fields of education. Some speak from Anglo-‘Western’ perspectives but others such as Phan Le Ha (Vietnamese), Rui Yang (Chinese) and Dolores van der Wey (Haida/West Coat Salish First Nations) speak from Asian, Indigenous and diasporic locations.

The last fifteen years have seen much conceptual and methodological innovation in research on education and learning across the lifecourse, bringing both fresh insights and new dilemmas. This innovation was initially fuelled by the growing influence of conceptual framings often named as either post-structural or postmodern. The works of Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard have variously found their way into the canons of educational research, and in more recent years, the influence of the work of Deleuze and Guattari has also grown. This work has proved controversial both in the challenges it has raised for the purposes and practices of education and training but also over the assumptions underpinning such work.

As part of and also in response to the influence of post-structuralism and postmodernism in the social sciences, there have emerged and developed a further range of conceptual and methodological framings which are more relational, system and practice-focussed. Several of these framings work with a non-linear understanding of causality and embrace unpredictability in the world and undecidability in our understanding of it. They also challenge any notion of a strong boundary between the social and natural sciences.

This book explores the most significant four of these framings, how they are being taken up in research in education and learning across the lifecourse, as well as their possibilities and limitations:

Illustrated throughout with examples drawn from educational contexts across the life courses, including schooling, post-compulsory education and training, educational policy, workplace and community-based education in North America, the UK, and Australia this vital guide to understanding fresh ways of conducting and understanding educational research will prove essential reading for everyone undertaking educational research in the modern world.

The last fifteen years have seen much conceptual and methodological innovation in research on education and learning across the lifecourse, bringing both fresh insights and new dilemmas. This innovation was initially fuelled by the growing influence of conceptual framings often named as either post-structural or postmodern. The works of Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard have variously found their way into the canons of educational research, and in more recent years, the influence of the work of Deleuze and Guattari has also grown. This work has proved controversial both in the challenges it has raised for the purposes and practices of education and training but also over the assumptions underpinning such work.

As part of and also in response to the influence of post-structuralism and postmodernism in the social sciences, there have emerged and developed a further range of conceptual and methodological framings which are more relational, system and practice-focussed. Several of these framings work with a non-linear understanding of causality and embrace unpredictability in the world and undecidability in our understanding of it. They also challenge any notion of a strong boundary between the social and natural sciences.

This book explores the most significant four of these framings, how they are being taken up in research in education and learning across the lifecourse, as well as their possibilities and limitations:

Illustrated throughout with examples drawn from educational contexts across the life courses, including schooling, post-compulsory education and training, educational policy, workplace and community-based education in North America, the UK, and Australia this vital guide to understanding fresh ways of conducting and understanding educational research will prove essential reading for everyone undertaking educational research in the modern world.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has enjoyed wide uptake in the social sciences in the past three decades, particularly in science and technology studies, and is increasingly attracting the attention of educational researchers. ANT studies bring to the fore the material – objects of all kinds – and de-centre the human and the social in educational issues. ANT sensibilities are interested in the ways human and non-human elements become interwoven. Since its first introduction, actor-network theory has undergone significant shifts and evolutions and as a result, it is not considered to be a single or coherent theoretical domain, but as developing diversely in response to various challenges.

This book offers an introduction to Actor-Network Theory for educators to consider in three ways. One mode is the introduction of concepts, approaches and debates around Actor-Network Theory as a research approach in education. A second mode showcases educational studies that have employed ANT approaches in classrooms, workplaces and community settings, drawn from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. These demonstrate how ANT can operate in highly diverse ways whether it focuses on policy critique, curriculum inquiry, engagements with digital media, change and innovation, issues of accountability, or exploring how knowledge unfolds and becomes materialized in various settings. A third mode looks at recent ''after-ANT'' inquiries which open an array of important new approaches. Across these diverse environments and uptakes, the authors trace how learning and practice emerge, show what scales are at play, and demonstrate what this means for educational possibilities.

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) has enjoyed wide uptake in the social sciences in the past three decades, particularly in science and technology studies, and is increasingly attracting the attention of educational researchers. ANT studies bring to the fore the material – objects of all kinds – and de-centre the human and the social in educational issues. ANT sensibilities are interested in the ways human and non-human elements become interwoven. Since its first introduction, actor-network theory has undergone significant shifts and evolutions and as a result, it is not considered to be a single or coherent theoretical domain, but as developing diversely in response to various challenges.

This book offers an introduction to Actor-Network Theory for educators to consider in three ways. One mode is the introduction of concepts, approaches and debates around Actor-Network Theory as a research approach in education. A second mode showcases educational studies that have employed ANT approaches in classrooms, workplaces and community settings, drawn from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia. These demonstrate how ANT can operate in highly diverse ways whether it focuses on policy critique, curriculum inquiry, engagements with digital media, change and innovation, issues of accountability, or exploring how knowledge unfolds and becomes materialized in various settings. A third mode looks at recent ''after-ANT'' inquiries which open an array of important new approaches. Across these diverse environments and uptakes, the authors trace how learning and practice emerge, show what scales are at play, and demonstrate what this means for educational possibilities.