Issues of sustainability, equity, and datafication are moving to the forefront of educational inquiry. To grapple with these issues, scholars are gravitating toward posthumanist perspectives across educational research (e.g., Eglash, et al.; 2020; Behar, 2016; Taguchi, 2009; Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; Jackson, 2013; Kuby & Rowsell, 2017; Wargo, 2017). Posthumanist perspectives decenter the human in our epistemological and analytical approaches and suggest blurrier relationships of social and material worlds (e.g., Barad, 2003). These perspectives offer possibilities for showing material forces on teaching and learning that would otherwise be overlooked but actively play into issues of sustainability, equity, and datafication. Posthumanist perspectives call into question many assumptions that underlie methodological approaches for the study of teaching and learning, which center human talk, gesture, and movement in the analysis of objects and artifacts as primarily mediators of human interactions. Scholars in the posthuman field inquire how methodological tools can capture the increasing complexities that could help foster sustainable, equitable, and digital teaching and learning.

With this special edition, we aim to contribute to a fuller understanding of the study of teaching and learning by bringing together a multitude of posthumanist approaches related to the following themes and beyond: 

• Digital and socio-material ethico-onto-epistemologies – Methodological approaches toward the historical, cultural, and ecological shaping of technologies in education.

• Materiality of studying teaching and learning – Presentations of how cultural and materialized practices of research shape understanding of teaching and learning.

• Decolonial and indigenous research practices – Reflections of how practices of research instrumentations shape theoretical understanding of teaching and learning and open research towards non-extractivist approaches.

• Sustainable and ecological relationships – Ways of capturing and understanding socio-material configurations toward more sustainable and equitable futures in education.

For more information contact Anna Keune or Paulina Ruiz Cabello