Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy

This book invites readers to both reassess and reconceptualize definitions of childhood and pedagogy by imagining the possibilities - past, present, and future - provided by the aesthetic turn to science fiction. It explores constructions of children, childhood, and pedagogy through the multiple lenses of science fiction as a method of inquiry, and discusses what counts as science fiction and why science fiction counts.

The book examines the notion of relationships in a variety of genres and stories; probes affect in the convergence of childhood and science fiction; and focuses on questions of pedagogy and the ways that science fiction can reflect the status quo of schooling theory, practice, and policy as well as offer alternative educative possibilities. Additionally, the volume explores connections between children and childhood studies, pedagogy and posthumanism. The various contributors use science fiction as the frame of reference through which conceptual links between inquiry and narrative, grounded in theories of media studies, can be developed.

Autorentext
David W. Kupferman is an Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education at Minnesota State University Moorhead. He is interested in employing trans-disciplinary methods that engage with socio-cultural constructions of pedagogy and why they matter. Recent writings have put forward poststructural and pop cultural critiques of neoliberal education reforms and the ways in which contemporary educational discourse and policy legitimize or delegitimize particular schooling subjectivities. His first book, Disassembling and Decolonizing School in the Pacific: A Genealogy from Micronesia, is available from Springer as part of their Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education Series (Vol. 5), and was nominated for a Critics Choice Award by the American Educational Studies Association in 2013. He has published articles in Postmodern Culture, Journal for Cultural Research, Global Studies of Childhood, and Postcolonial Directions in Education, among other journals. He is the Immediate Past Chair of the Foucault and Contemporary Theory in Education Special Interest Group at AERA, and is an Associate Editor of Policy Futures in Education.
Andrew Gibbons is an early childhood teacher, teacher educator, and associate professor at the School of Education, Auckland University of Technology. His research focuses on the construction and experience of the early childhood teaching profession drawing upon the philosophy of early childhood education and the philosophy of technology. His book The Matrix Ate My Baby (Sense) critiques the role of new media in early childhood education. In Education, Ethics and Existence: Camus and the Human Condition (Routledge, co-authored with Peter Roberts and Richard Heraud), he explores the contribution of Albert Camus for the critique of schooling. Andrew is Editor in Chief of ELearning and Digital Media, Executive Editor of the Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory and Associate Editor of Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Inhalt

Introduction: Why childhood ex machina?.- Part I Relationship.- Franken-education, or when science runs amok.- The monstrous voice: M.R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts.- Toy Gory, or the Ontology of Chucky: Childhood and killer dolls.- Part II Affect.- Through the Black Mirror: Innocence, abuse, and justice in "Shut Up and Dance".- Your Android Ain't Funky (or Robots Can't Find the Good Foot): Race, Power, and Children in Otherworldy Imaginations.- Tension, Sensation, and Pedagogy: Depictions of Childhood's Struggle in Saga and Paper Girls.- Part III Pedagogy.- A Utopian Mirror: Reflections from the future of childhood and education in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Island.- Filling the mind: Cortical knowlege uploads, didactic downloads, and the problem of learning in the future.- Heretic Gnosis: Education, children, and the problem of knowing otherwise.- "Life is a Game, So Fight for Survival": The neoliberal logic of educational colonialism within the Battle Royale Franchise.- Part IV Conclusion.- Children and Pedagogy Between Science and Fiction.