Speculative Pedagogies

Can you imagine future learning environments devoid of the systemic inequities that stifle student learning opportunities and teacher decision-making in most classrooms today? This volume offers the necessary steps—playful, participatory, historically informed—that are required to forge a pathway from the present U.S. educational landscape to a freer tomorrow. The authors use speculative approaches to teacher education and student learning to intentionally design beyond the boundaries of traditional research and practitioner resources that seek to “fix” current schooling conditions. Building from visionary organizing and artistic traditions that have captured the popular imagination, this volume suggests new forms of engagement for diverse learners. It pragmatically explores how to work toward radical new spaces of possibility for learning and teaching. Chapters include a range of learning contexts, from problem solving in complex video game settings to innovative world-building alongside young people in schools and communities. Readers will be inspired to completely rethink what is possible when it comes to justice-oriented, culturally responsive education.

Book Features:

• Over 40 contributors explore speculative education across a range of research settings.
• Examples of digital learning that include videogames and online collaboration.
• Multiple chapters that feature coauthored research and innovation with students and teachers.
• Innovative design and pedagogical strategies, including a chapter rewriting policy documents based on speculative imagination.

Antero Garcia is an associate professor at Stanford University and coauthor of Pose, Wobble, Flow: A Culturally Proactive Approach to Literacy Instruction. Nicole Mirra is an associate professor of urban teacher education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and author of Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement.

“This nuanced collection provides a prismatic invitation to engage the powers of worldmaking, storying as a way of knowing, and leaning into uncertainty as a consistent practice and science of learning. Shattering the basement and ceiling limits of tired education reforms that tinker with deep-seated inequities, this collection lifts voices, collectives, play, gaming, and curation as practices of not just worldmaking, but of many worlds, with many suns.”
—Leigh Patel, professor, University of Pittsburgh

“While it may be challenging to find hope in our work toward equity and justice in educational research and practice, the authors in this volume provide the powerful energy needed to bolster our imaginations, to incite vivid dreams, and to demand love and joy in any educational endeavor. This beautiful work reminds us to imagine different educational worlds. It comes to life in a range of voices that are powerfully disrupting the status quo, and engaging communities to look toward futures where they fully belong.”
—Danny C. Martinez, associate professor, University of California, Davis

Contents (Tentative)

Introduction
“Always a War Story”: Speculative Pedagogies and Breaking the Narrative of Multicultural Education Possibilities
Antero Garcia and Nicole Mirra

Part I: Designing Learning Futures

1. Critical Constructionist Design: A Design Framework and Analytic Tool for Developing and Documenting Speculative Learning Experiences
Nathan Holbert, Michael B. Dando, and Isabel Correa

2. “A Deep Reckoning”: Re/Mixing Literacies and Imaginative Rupture in “Let’s Talk About Election 2020”
Emma P. Bene, Emma C. Gargroetzi, Lynne M. Zummo, and Alexandra R. Aguilar

3. Speculative Pedagogies in Video Gameplay: Designing for New Social Futures in Collaborative World-Making
Arturo Cortez and José Ramón Lizárraga

4. Abolitionist and Afrofuturist Game Design Pedagogies
Matthew W. Coopilton, Brendesha M. Tynes, Olivia Peace, and De’Andra Johnson

Part II: Kindling Community

5. Dreaming Together: Exploring Youth-Adult Partnerships in Speculative Educational Design
Lauren Kelly

6. Community-Engaged Culturally Sustaining Social and Emotional Learning as an Approach to Speculative Education
Jingjing Sun, Ronda Howlett, Debbie Hogenson, Lindsey M. Nichols, Anisa N. Goforth, Sisilia Kusumaningsih, Niki Graham,and Emily Brooke

7. “I Think a Song Would Be Good”: Grounding Youth Speculative Practices in Theories of Relationality and Desire
Lee Melvin M. Peralta and Joanne E. Marciano

8. Participatory Methodologies TO Transform the Project of Schooling: Student Voices Leading
Leyda W. Garcia, Edwin Cruz, Jaune Reyez, Aliza Manalo, Eduardo Galindo, Adriana Rios-Cruz, Alex Alejo, Nareli J. Lopez, Le’kie Hatfield-Whitlock, Claire Matias, and Walter Hernandez Mejia

9. “Is This How It’s Always Going to Be?”: Speculative Teacher Education With(in) Community Toward Liberatory Praxis
Kristen Jackson and Rubén A. González

10. Education as a Fundamental Right: A Speculative Narrative about Educational Dignity
Raquel Isaac, Maria Karina Sanchez, Duy Tran, Tania Soto Valenzuela, and mandy wong, with Remi Kalir, on behalf of the Right2Learn Dignity Lab

Endnotes

Index

About the Editors and Contributors