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Caring cuts: unfolding methodological sensibilities in researching postdigital worlds
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Education. Faculty of Education and Business Studies, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5079-3067
Department of Education, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7165-3891
2023 (English)In: Postdigital research: genealogies, challenges, and future perspectives / [ed] Petera Jandrić; Alison MacKenzie; Jeremy Knox, Cham: Springer Nature, 2023, p. 173-190Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

In this chapter, we introduce the configuration of caring cuts. Composed of care and cuts, two key notions in feminist posthumanism and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), caring cuts addresses the entanglement of epistemology and ontology. By putting to work an ontology of relational materialisms, the chapter explores how to respond to the mess, emergence, and elusive objects that become centred by our concern and ways of producing knowledge with and on postdigital worlds. It means that vital methodological questions are raised for postdigital relationalities in education and elsewhere. Instead of seeking to untangle the postdigital, caring cuts is put to work to examine mundane research events with sensibilities of the world-making practices of research. We argue that caring cuts affords acknowledgements of the collective responsibilities that research practices involve and bring attention to the inevitably untidy and non-innocent character of knowledge production and making worlds researchable. With caring cuts, modest interruptions and uneventful events suggest a methodological sensibility of not too hastily putting things ‘right’ but acknowledging that other worlds are possible. This means that caring cuts invites thinking and researching more-than-digital relations anew.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cham: Springer Nature, 2023. p. 173-190
Series
Postdigital science and education
Keywords [en]
Relational materialism, Actor-network theory, Educational posthumanism, Postqualitative inquiry, Ontology, Matters of care, Agential cuts, More-than-digital, Care-ful research
National Category
Pedagogy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-223669DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-31299-1_10ISBN: 978-3-031-31298-4 (print)ISBN: 978-3-031-31301-1 (print)ISBN: 978-3-031-31299-1 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-223669DiVA, id: diva2:1853561
Available from: 2024-04-22 Created: 2024-04-22 Last updated: 2024-05-21Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Maintaining teaching: exploring te(a)ch-abilities with actor-network theory
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Maintaining teaching: exploring te(a)ch-abilities with actor-network theory
2024 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Alternative title[sv]
Att ta hand om undervisning : en aktörnätverksstudie av digital teknik i pandemins skolvardag
Abstract [en]

The thesis investigates everyday teaching with digital technology during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The pandemic was one of the world’s largest disruptions to everyday education with both health and education at stake. With the pandemic control measures affecting upper secondary education in Sweden, gathering in the classroom cannot be taken for granted and digital technologies accelerated and intensified everyday practices. The aim is to explore the relation of teaching and digital technology. How can we understand the ways in which digital technology and teaching become jointly experimented with to cope with pandemic uncertainty?

With an Actor-Network theory (ANT) approach, the thesis puts emphasis on how everyday teaching holds together at the pandemic intersection of routine and breakdown. The everyday teaching practices during the pandemic is an empirical focal point for inquiry into how they become enacted and, secondly, what the implications are for knowledge production when examining this novel educational practice with ANT’s relational materialism. To answer these questions, ethnographic methods are used with an upper secondary school in Sweden from May 2020 to June 2021. The fieldwork consists of empirical engagements in school visits, interviews, and online observations. In line with recent ANT scholarship, the methodological approach is articulated as a care-ful methodology. It implies tracing vulnerable and stable relations that enact sociomaterial practice and acknowledging cuts and becoming.

The results show how a manifold of more-than-digital practices enact everyday teaching. The included studies in the thesis examine attendability and mundane rituals, lesson enactments of scheduling practices, and digital platforms that co-produce specific practices while obscuring others. Teaching in the pandemic challenges taken-for-granted notions of a rapid transition to distance and online teaching. By surfacing neglected aspects of everyday teaching with digital technology the thesis discusses how ‘digitalisation of teaching’ erases the local work of everyday teaching as an equipped practice. In conclusion, the proposal is made that maintaining teaching takes into account the materiality, abilities, care, and vulnerabilities that enact everyday teaching.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Umeå: Umeå University, 2024. p. 107
Series
Akademiska avhandlingar vid Pedagogiska institutionen, Umeå universitet, ISSN 0281-6768 ; 135
Keywords
teaching, Covid-19, digital technology, ethnography, digital platforms, upper secondary education, attendance, maintenance, actor-network theory, care, science and technology studies
National Category
Pedagogy
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-224628 (URN)978-91-8070-415-1 (ISBN)978-91-8070-414-4 (ISBN)
Public defence
2024-06-14, Stora Jadwiga, Gävle, 13:00 (Swedish)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2024-05-24 Created: 2024-05-21 Last updated: 2024-05-23Bibliographically approved

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Mörtsell, Sara

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Citation style
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