Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality critically reads the intersubjective theories on educational relations and uses a posthuman approach to ascribe agency relationally to humans and nonhumans alike. The book introduces the concept of ‘educational relationality’ and contains examples of nonhuman elements of technology and animals, putting educational relationality and other concepts into context as part of the philosophical investigation. Drawing on educational and posthuman theorists, it answers questions raised in ongoing debates regarding the roles of students and teachers (...) in education, such as the foundations of educational relations and how these can be challenged. The book explores educational relations within the field of philosophy of education. After critically examining intersubjective approaches to theories of educational relations, anthropocentrism and subject-centrism are localized as two problematic aspects. Post-anthropocentrism and intra-relationality are proposed as a theoretical framework, before the book introduces and develops a posthuman theory of educational relations. The analysis is executed through a diffractive reading of intersubjective theories, resulting in five co-concepts: impermanence, uniqueness-as-relationality, proximity, edu-activity, and intelligibility. The analysis provided through educational examples demonstrates the potential of using the proposed theory in everyday practices. Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, early childhood education, research methodology and curriculum studies. (shrink)

[A Hand on the Shoulder: Touch as a Posthuman Feminist Phenomenon] With a posthuman feminist perspective, we explore touch as a phenomenon in the philosophy of education. Our argument is that touch is one of the prominent phenomena in educational contexts and therefore it requires closer theoretical investigation. In this article, we seek to challenge a ‘subject centric’ and ‘anthropocentric’ perspective, proposing a posthuman approach where touch is relationally intra-active and constantly present with multiple directions. Inspired by the methodological approach (...) ‘concept as method’, we explore the phenomenon of touch through tracing-and-cartographing how it is used in educational texts. Two central aspects – body and ‘natureculture’– appeared in the intersection of touch, education and posthuman feminism. Touch as an educational phenomenon is seen as active in highlighting everyday activities in educational practices, and pushing them to be questioned and disrupted. To conclude, we raise a few questions and discuss some challenges that emerged while working with touch as a posthuman feminist phenomenon. (shrink)