One of the knowledge mobilization activities of my SSHRC grant on education futures was a podcast. This post shares episode 3 of 7.
First, a bit of background
The future of education is open and contested. In this podcast we approach the future of education from a storytelling perspective.Stories about the future of education are diverse, complex, and run the gamut of wild hope to doom and despair. In some of these stories techno-optimism drives what is thought to be possible. In others, education is imagined to be a regenerative cultural force. In yet others, the impact of capitalism and authoritarian systems of surveillance already taking hold in education create dystopian spaces of control and management. The stories we tell have the power to create the world we live in. Understanding the stories we tell about what is possible, and the trends in those stories, can give us insight into the present, into ourselves and each other, and the worlds we might seek to or are already in the process of creating.
What are the stories being told about the future of higher education today? Who tells them? What do these stories reveal about our values and our assumptions? What do they reveal about technology and about our universities? What do they say about the future, but also about the present? The speculative learning futures podcast,brings together diverse voices and perspectives, from artists to scholars of different backgrounds, to imagine and discuss the future of education and the role of storytelling in moving towards or away from those futures. [As an aside: More on this questions in this paper and this paper. And if you have a paper of yours that centers these questions, consider submitting it to a journal special issue I am co-editing].
Subscribe to all episodes on Google, Apple, or Spotify. Or, if you prefer to download the mp3 files without subscribing, you can download all of them from here.
Episode 3
In this episode, George and Shandell sit down with Dr. Eamon Costello and Lily Girme to get their insights into the future of education, how speculative methodologies can help us subvert expectations about the future, and how thinking about the future can be an act of resistance. Dr Eamon Costello is an Associate Professor of Digital Learning in Dublin City University. Lily, or Prajaka Girme, is a frequent collaborator with Eamon, providing the visual designs for their shared work. She’s an academic developer in Dublin City University and is pursuing PhD research into the University of Sanctuary initiative. With these two scholars, we begin to wonder how thinking about the future can be a process of connection and appreciation, and where it allows us to work towards not just liberatory futures, but also liberatory presents.
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