Researching Infrastructural Imaginaries in Education Through Future Workshops

Abstract

This case describes the development and implementation of the Future workshops method, as part of a mixed methodology in a PhD project about media technologies and future imaginaries in school art education. The workshop method described here is an attempt to visualize media infrastructures in teaching and the imaginaries surrounding them, thereby making them possible for the research participants to discuss and critique. The practical lessons learned from this case are that designing a functioning research workshop resembles the pedagogic planning done in teaching. Ritual aspects and emotional labor are highlighted as necessary in the process, as well as staying sensitive to the context where the workshops are performed, and to my role as a researcher in this context. Discussing some of the shortcomings of creative methods, the study concludes that workshop methods benefit from being combined with other methods to include, for example, historical perspectives in the analysis. The messiness and non-linearity of the research process is described in the text as a simultaneous development of research questions, theoretical concepts, experiences, and methods.

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