Reading Educational Reform with Actor Network Theory: Fluid spaces, otherings, and ambivalences

Abstract

In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor-network theory (ANT). The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors -human and non-human entities, including the entity that is taken to be 'educational reform' -are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on the material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor-network(s) but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio-material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities. IntroductionA recent conference that gathered leading scholars in sociology, human geography, phenomenology, cultural studies and anthropology declared a growing central interest across social science disciplines in the analytical category of 'material practice': 'the move now is to explain the emergence and experience of 'things''.1 In analysing educational reform processes, what insights may be yielded, and what challenges encountered, when we focus on material practices, the politics they produce, and how they are entwined with agendas for educational change? One theoretical approach or 'sensibility' to a socio-material analysis is offered by actornetwork theory (ANT), which has proliferated in the broad field of organizational studies and organizational change since the 1980s. In its early and enthusiastic iterations, as later critics pointed out, ANT tended to focus on the most powerful actors, to imply that all phenomena could be folded into a network ontology, and to overlook the location and gaze of the ANT analysis itself. Certain analytic constructs that emerged from the fine-grained early-ANT studies (e.g. Latour, 1996) also tended to be taken up in ways that eventually became formulaic. Later, reflexive re-thinkings of ANT such as Law and Hassard's Actor Network Theory and After (1999) pointed to the flowering of what is sometimes referred to as 'after-ANT' approaches: a wide-ranging diffusion of rich analyses that continued to trace how things become enacted through messy linkages among human and non-human elements, and to explore networks within networks, but which also honour multiple ontologies, ambivalences, and modes of enactment. Given this wide diversity, and given analysts' own care to distance themselves from any identifiable ANT orthodoxy or method, i...

Artefacten als onderwijsvernieuwers. De casus van de BaSO-fiche in de zorgcontinuïteit tussen basis- en secundair onderwijs.

“…Ondanks de relevantie van de processen van individuele en collectieve betekenisgeving, hebben verschillende auteurs gewezen op de noodzaak om in het onderzoek naar onderwijsvernieuwingen ook aandacht te besteden aan de materiële elementen in dat proces van betekenisgeving en sociale relaties in scholen (zie Burch, 2007;Fenwick, 2011;Fenwick & Edwards, 2011 Ondanks het feit dat artefacten alomtegenwoordig zijn in de dagelijkse praktijk van (school)organisaties -in de vorm van handboeken, tablets en educatieve technologie-, heeft men gedurende lange tijd hun rol in het begrijpen van vernieuwingsprocessen geminimaliseerd (zie Barad, 2003;Fenwick, 2011;Lawn & Grosvenor, 2005): ze worden hierbij vaak gezien als passieve dingen die toelaten iets te doen en wachten op menselijke interventies om een handeling uit te voeren. De onderliggende assumptie is hier dat artefacten gemaakt worden met zeer praktische doeleinden voor ogen, dat ze een intrinsieke logica in zich dragen en dat die logica duidelijk is voor de gebruikers ervan.…”

“…Ons vertrekpunt hierbij was dat de verwevenheid tussen artefacten en schoolorganisatorische processen een complexe aangelegenheid vormt, die empirisch ontrafeld dient te worden in functie van adequate theorieontwikkeling over onderwijsvernieuwingen (Fenwick, 2011). In plaats van de betekenis en de rol van artefacten te herleiden tot wat ontwerpers ermee bedoelen of gebruikers ervan denken, hebben we willen aantonen dat artefacten zelf ook een bepaalde onderwijswerkelijkheid mee in het leven kunnen roepen.…”

“…Om meer zicht te krijgen op de determinanten en processen die een rol spelen bij de vormgeving van dergelijke organisatorische routines en de rol van artefacten hierin, is het noodzakelijk om in een vervolgonderzoek die netwerken ook meer systematisch in kaart te brengen aan de hand van observaties. Hiervoor zouden sociale netwerkanalyse (Daly, 2010;Moolenaar, 2012) of actor-netwerk theorie (Fenwick, 2011) ons de analytische tools kunnen bieden. Daar waar sociale netwerkanalyse ons kan helpen om op een meer systematische manier te analyseren hoe het netwerk van zorg veranderd is in de scholen, kan de actor-netwerk theorie ons helpen om de relaties tussen artefacten en mensen meer systematisch in kaart te brengen.…”

Introducing Actor–Network Theory via the Engineering Sophomore Year

“…• Translation is classically known as the central work-process of ANT 25,26 and denotes the process wherein "an entity, human or nonhuman, becomes selected, enticed, persuaded and partially or fully changed in ways that mobilize it to join the [actor-]network's movements" 27 . Translation is evident when "one element stands in for another or many others, just like a word in one language stands in for another, or a symbol stands for many strings of symbols" 28 .…”

“…To recall, translation was defined as the process wherein "an entity, human or nonhuman, becomes selected, enticed, persuaded and partially or fully changed in ways that mobilize it to join the network's movements" 27 . In the excerpt from the instructor, the "machine" that is the engineering mathematics department has been persuaded to add a variety of curricular features to the basic course structure of Calc 3, changing the overall shape and organization of the actornetwork that includes the interactions pertaining to the course.…”