Educational Policies, Innovations, and Actor Network Theory

MEO, ANALÍA INÉS; HERAS, ANA INÉS; CHERVIN, MARIANO

Congreso; XX ISA World Congress of Sociology; 2023

This paper presents the epistemological, theoretical, and methodologicalassumptions of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and the centrality it gives to theassociations between human and non-human actants to understand thesocial (disassociating itself from sociological perspectives that have neglectedthe role of materiality and have assumed aprioristic analytical categories intheir interpretations). This approach aims to make visible actions of complexnetworks of human and non-human actors who, following Ball et al. (2012) andFenwick & Edwards (2010), make educational policy. In the second section wereview how ANT has been mobilized by sociological studies on educationalpolicies in different countries. Thirdly, we illustrate ANT´s analytical productivityto unpack innovative processes by examining two studies we have carried outin the City of Buenos Aires. These analyses pay attention both to the practicesof a group of teachers, and to the performative capacity of concepts and ideas,as well as to the action of objects and machines (Latour, 2008). It traces howvarious elements are associated and, in doing so, participate in disputes aroundwhat a good teacher should be -reorganizing central aspects of their work andpromoting innovations of different sorts. The first study analyses pedagogical,labour, and social innovation policies in a technical school in the late 1990s andearly 2000s. The second scrutinizes the policy of pedagogical continuity duringthe pandemic and its effects on teachers´ work. It pays attention to the noveladoption of a digital platform in a technical school to regulate key aspects oftheir work. We argue that ANT contributes to forge an attentive look at aspectsthat often go unnoticed in educational research and that could enrich the waysin which we Problematize and study innovation as processes, practices, andmeanings.