new materialism

A DIFFRACTIVE TRANSVERSAL FRAMEWORK: CRAFTING CARTOGRAPHIES OF PEDAGOGICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH A POSTHUMAN TEACHERBOT

A DIFFRACTIVE TRANSVERSAL FRAMEWORK: CRAFTING CARTOGRAPHIES OF PEDAGOGICAL ENCOUNTERS WITH A POSTHUMAN TEACHERBOT

Written by: Patricia Gibson. Institute of Art, Design + Technology, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland

Abstract: t: Cartography as a posthuman method cultivates the creative and critical mapping of relational encounters between human, non-human and material entities. These empirically grounded accounts render the dynamic, intra-connected and inexhaustible possibilities verifiable in educational research practices. However, the current literature cites a number of examples of cartography mapping but provides no clarity as to how such an analytical practice might come about. In this paper, I design a Diffractive Transversal Framework to guide the cartographies in my research project where 21 interactive media students collectively author a story with(in) Flors the Teacherbot. The purpose of the framework is threefold: to limit the thresholds of encounter in an ethical and sustainable way; the multiperspectival nature of the framework acknowledges material entities; and transdisciplinarity draws from theory traversing multiple disciplines to become philosophically, educationally, and politically driven. A selected cartography charts the qualitative shift in student understandings around knowledge and its creation. Here, the students diffractively analyse how the collective story came about, rather than its meaning, through structured reflective dialogue enacted with(in) Flors. This is a novel approach to research in automated teaching and demonstrates how the method of cartography can be used to analyse digital data from a posthuman perspective.

Keywords: cartography, transversality, diffraction, new materialism, posthuman critical theory, automation

DIFFRACTIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CHILDREN’S CREATIVITY IN SCIENCE ENQUIRY

DIFFRACTIVE ENCOUNTERS WITH EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF CHILDREN’S CREATIVITY IN SCIENCE ENQUIRY

Written by: Rebecca Digby. Bath Spa University, Bath, England

Abstract: Diffractive methodology is a recently established alternative to the interpretivist approach commonly used in educational research. Unlike epistemological practices grounded in representation, it recognises knowledge making as performative and emergent from difference. This paper offers new insights into diffractive readings in early childhood science education through experimentation with entangled empirical video data, theoretical perspectives and transdisciplinary space. A methodological contribution is made by showing how critical points of difference are created when video footage of shared understandings held by early childhood practitioners encounters existing research on early childhood science education diffractively. These points of difference are made to matter and illuminated as affecting emergent new connections which can reconfigure dominant ways of understanding creativity in early childhood science education. In doing so, children’s creative knowledge making practices in science enquiry are (re)presented as expansive, material knowing which is enacted at once through talk and materials.

Keywords: new materialism, diffraction, early childhood, science education, creativity, videography, transdisciplinary