To offer some methodological context to the algorithmic play activity, we would like you to spend a little time familiarising yourself with speculative method. This is an approach to research has recently emerged as way of think creatively and critically about the future of education and our wider social world. With a keen interest in the affects and potentialities of digital technologies and pedagogies, Jen Ross (2017) and George Veletsianos (2020) are among those calling for new ways of anticipating and working with the ‘not-as-yet’. There is a recognition here that conventional approaches to education and social research are not necessarily adequately equipped to anticipate and work with the future of education, including some profound challenges we are experiencing.
As such, speculative method usefully looks beyond some of the firmly-established text book approaches to research, instead encouraging us to develop creative ways of examining the particularities of our complex, networked world. This is not to say that more traditional methods such as interviews and observation cannot help us to shed light on the complex and changing relationship between education and technology, but simply that we should be open to new ways of asking questions and undertaking research. The algorithmic play activity in this block provides a good example of an (admittedly small) investigative exercise that won’t be found within the index of a research handbook or the pages of a methods database, yet has the potential to delve into some of the ways that educational practices are affected by digital technologies in complex ways.
Compared with the Community culture block where it was necessary to undertake several methods readings in order to complete the mini-ethnography, on this occasion it is enough to dip into either or both of these two really interesting and straightforward readings, simply so that you can get a feel for speculative method and what it can bring to the study of digital education.
Ross, J. (2017). Speculative method in digital education research. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(2), 214-229. doi:10.1080/17439884.2016.1160927
In response to what she sees as the heavy emphasis on ‘what works’ within education research, Jen Ross provides three practice-based examples: ‘teacherbot’, ‘artcasting’ and the ‘tweeting book’, that illustrate speculative method in action. This critique highlights the potentialities but also the tensions of employing experimental approaches to critical inquiry.
Veletsianos, G. (2020). How should we respond to the life altering crises that education is facing? Distance Education, 41(4), 604-607, DOI: 10.1080/01587919.2020.1825066
In this recent article, written against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, George Veletsianos, proposes that we need to speculatively consider what digital education should look like in order to confront the profound challenges facing contemporary education.