Actor-Network Theory in Education

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.

Politics & Social Sciences

Edwards, Richard

Fenwick, Tara

Social Sciences

Routledge

Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Sociomaterial

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: <ul>
<li>complexity science </li> <li>cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) </li> <li>actor-network theory (ANT)</li> <li>spatiality theories.</li> </ul>
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.

Emerging Approaches to Educational Research

Education & Teaching

Sawchuk, Peter

Higher & Continuing Education

Professional Responsibility and Professionalism: A sociomaterial examination

Responsibility and professionalism are increasingly issues of concern for professional associations, employers and educators alike. When bad things happen, professionals are often held personally accountable for complex situations. Professional Responsibility and Professionalism advances our approaches to professional responsibility from individual-centred, virtue-based prescriptions towards understanding and responding effectively to the multifaceted challenges encountered today by professionals working in dynamic complexity. The author applies a sociomaterial examination to specific examples drawn from different professional contexts of practice. She examines important implications for what professional responsibility and accountability might mean individually and collectively, and what it might be becoming when demands increasingly conflict, and when we accept that capacities for action are performed into existence in emergent and precarious webs of both human and non-human forces. The chapters explore some of the most prominent questions in professional responsibility, including:   What does professional responsibility, and accountability, mean in the escalating complexities and conflicts confronting today’s professionals?   How does professional responsibility become developed and enacted, and through what social and material entanglements?    How should responsibility be determined in multi-agency and interprofessional practice?   What happens when professional decisions are delegated to software algorithms and diagnostic instruments?    How are new governing regimes of professional work, such as innovation imperatives, excessive audit and logics of blame and scapegoating, reconfiguring responsibility?   How can professionals respond simultaneously to individuals in need, the obligations of their profession, the demands of their employer and an anxious society?  A major concern addressed by each chapter, and the book as a whole, is educating professionals in and for responsibility. Specific dilemmas and strategies are offered for educators in universities, workplaces and professional development contexts who seek new approaches to helping professionals learn to critically understand and practise responsibility today. This book will appeal to a wide audience of education researchers and post-graduate students studying professional practice, professionalism and education across a wide range of disciplines. Health professionals, professionals working in private practices, such as law, architecture and engineering, newer professions such as social work and policing, and educational professionals at all levels will find stories and strategies reflecting key issues of their practice in this detailed exploration of professional responsibility and accountability.

Professional Responsibility and Professionalism

Business & Money

Business Culture

Responsibility and professionalism are increasingly issues of concern for professional associations, employers and educators alike. When bad things happen, professionals are often held personally accountable for complex situations. Professional Responsibility and Professionalism advances our approaches to professional responsibility from individual-centred, virtue-based prescriptions towards understanding and responding effectively to the multifaceted challenges encountered today by professionals working in dynamic complexity. The author applies a sociomaterial examination to specific examples drawn from different professional contexts of practice. She examines important implications for what professional responsibility and accountability might mean individually and collectively, and what it might be becoming when demands increasingly conflict, and when we accept that capacities for action are performed into existence in emergent and precarious webs of both human and non-human forces. The chapters explore some of the most prominent questions in professional responsibility, including: <ul>
<li>What does professional responsibility, and accountability, mean in the escalating complexities and conflicts confronting today’s professionals?</li> <li>How does professional responsibility become developed and enacted, and through what social and material entanglements? </li> <li>How should responsibility be determined in multi-agency and interprofessional practice?</li> <li>What happens when professional decisions are delegated to software algorithms and diagnostic instruments? </li> <li>How are new governing regimes of professional work, such as innovation imperatives, excessive audit and logics of blame and scapegoating, reconfiguring responsibility?</li> <li>How can professionals respond simultaneously to individuals in need, the obligations of their profession, the demands of their employer and an anxious society?</li> </ul>
A major concern addressed by each chapter, and the book as a whole, is educating professionals in and for responsibility. Specific dilemmas and strategies are offered for educators in universities, workplaces and professional development contexts who seek new approaches to helping professionals learn to critically understand and practise responsibility today. This book will appeal to a wide audience of education researchers and post-graduate students studying professional practice, professionalism and education across a wide range of disciplines. Health professionals, professionals working in private practices, such as law, architecture and engineering, newer professions such as social work and policing, and educational professionals at all levels will find stories and strategies reflecting key issues of their practice in this detailed exploration of professional responsibility and accountability.

The Art of Evaluation is essential reading for educators and prospective educators who are concerned about the critical role of evaluation in the learning process and want to know how to improve their own assessment approaches and enable learners to assume active, meaningful roles in evaluating their own learning. An instructor can know all there is to know about evaluation and still have a difficult time evaluating students well. This book offers practical ways to plan evaluation and develop tools to record and report learner growth. The underlying theme is that good evaluation involves the learner throughout the whole learning experience and is not simply a judgment by an instructor at the end of a course. The book systematically reviews many aspects of learner evaluation from different perspectives and provides practical suggestions about how to conduct evaluation in different contexts to benefit all concerned. This book is intended as an introduction to learner evaluation in various contexts of adult education. We have attempted to address issues and provide examples that would fit the interests of students of adult education, new college and university teachers, trainers in business and government and consultants whose work involves learner evaluation. Every educator works within a unique context of learners, purposes, structures, and cultures. Every reader, therefore, needs to be critical and selective when choosing among the materials offered in this book. Some of it will suit you, some may not fit your philosophy or your situation, and some will need adaptation to be useful in your work.

Art of Evaluation: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers

Parsons, Jim

Schools & Teaching

Thompson Educational Publishing, Inc.

Authors highlight and review the principles of evaluation and provide strateigies on how to implement evaluation in different learning situations.

Art of Evaluation, 2nd Edition: A Resource for Educators and Trainers

Univ of B.C.

Univ of Alberta

Thompson Educational Publishig

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