Speculative Social Science Fiction of Digitalization in Higher Education: From What Is to What Could Be

In this paper, we grapple with the possibility of rethinking education futures by arguing for the continued use of speculative education fiction in critical education studies, a method which has the potential for radical imagination. However, we note that, as a research method, such fictions need to rely less on what we identify as pessimistic visions of the future, which are visions exploring themes such as disconnection, lack of autonomy and sovereignty, and technological, corporate, state and/or authoritarian control, as these visions and themes are currently over-represented in recent publications using this method. We further demonstrate the limits of these thematic visions by tracing the relationship between the ways in which pessimistic storytelling, related as it is to apocalyptic storytelling, risks reinforcing inequality, especially with respect to settler colonial injustice. Alternatively, we propose using this method to help develop hopeful futures. These are futures shaped by themes, such as connection, agency and community and individual flourishment, and suggest a turn to the genres of hopepunk, solarpunk and visionary fiction as models of storytelling grounded in hope which imagines more liberatory education and learning futures.

Section: Speculative Research Methods In Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impossible Dreaming: On Speculative Education Fiction and Hopeful Learning Futures

Houlden

Veletsianos

2022

“…They aim to reflect on our constitutive relationships with our present and past. Instead of mobilizing users' representations and mental models, future (s)-oriented methods stimulate imagination, which is an essential part of a research inquiry (Suoranta et al 2022).…”

Section: Future(s)-oriented Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation Is Coming! Exploring Future(s)-Oriented Methods in Education

Pargman

Lindberg²,

Buch³

2022

Emerging automated-decision making (ADM) technologies invite scholars to engage with future points in time and contexts that have not yet arisen. This particular state of not knowing yet implies the methodological challenge of examining images of the future and how such images will materialize in practice. In this respect, we ask the following: what are appropriate research methods for studying emerging ADM technologies in education? How do researchers explore sociotechnical practices that are in the making? Guided by these questions, we investigate the increasing adoption of ADM in teachers’ assessment practices. This constitutes a case in point for reflecting on the research methods applied to address the future of assessment in education. In this context, we distinguish between representational methods oriented to recounting past experiences and future(s) methods oriented to making futures. Studying the literature on speculative methods in digital education, we illustrate four categories of future(s)-oriented methods and reflect on their characteristics through a backcasting workshop conducted with teachers. We conclude by discussing the need to reconsider the methodological choices made for studying emerging technologies in critical assessment practices and generate new knowledge on methods able to contribute to alternative imaginaries of automation in education.

“…It uses the body and experiences of the first author-the I so far of this text-and takes them via a speculative auto-ethnography, further into the terrain hinted at in the Prologue. Speculative approaches are being increasingly used in a variety of ways in education (Costello et al 2020(Costello et al , 2022Kupferman 2022;Suoranta et al 2022). In academic literature, they may comprise science fictions of teachers with built-in obsolescence (Jandrić and Hayes 2021), classrooms from the future (Selwyn et al 2020), explorations of AI educational futures (Cox 2021) and medical education futures where struggling medical schools offer perks of 'comfort animals' (Cifu et al 2021).…”

Section: Speculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rewild My Heart: With Pedagogies of Love, Kindness and the Sun and Moon

Costello

2022

The pressing problems we face from wars to pandemics erupt against the less dramatic background of the mundane continued destruction of our planet as a habitable realm. In education, technology can be environmentally destructive in a variety of ways. Educators may feel the urge to address these matters but we also know that EdTech solutionism can create new problems as fast as it fixes old ones. Something in the urgency of the fix may be the problem. It may be that we are too desperate to fill a hole in the world that we only see through a hole in ourselves. Hence, in order to truly escape our colonised and domesticated fates, we need to rewild our very thinking. We need to examine the underlying emotional tones and waves that cause us to act as we do against our own interests and that of our planet. This conundrum is explored here through the device of storytelling using a multimodal speculative auto-ethnography to push into realms beyond mere utility and out into conceptual wilds. No fixes or solutions are offered here for the planet. Lifeless celestial objects such as the sun and moon loom large by contrast. Both have walk-on parts in this tale, and watch us as we watch them, with whatever love and kindness we can.