2021-09-24 - Anne-Kathrin Peters SPOTLIGHT seminar

The SPOTLIGHT this time is on Anne-Kathrin Peters who joined the Department of Learning in May 2021 as Associate Professor in technology education with a focus on sustainability, especially equality and justice. Anne joins the department coming from the IT department at Uppsala University (UU). There she was a member of the Uppsala Computing Education Research group (UpCERG). She was also the coordinator of the climate change leadership initiative at UU, initiating and supporting cross-disciplinary and -institutional research collaborations on societal transformations. Anne has studied the discipline of computing as it is produced and reproduced in universHere, she was part of different groups working on the role of education for environmental sustainability and social justice.¶

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Anne says:¶

In the Spotlight seminar, I will talk about how research on education for sustainability and equality in education. A central finding is that students are socialized into masculine and unsustainable disciplinary practices. You can read connect. I will do this in two parts, telling about 1) critical work on university education, and 2) conceptions of university education for sustainability.¶

Higher education today is highly reproductive. I will tell a bit about thismy research in her PhD work [1], a journal article published in TOCE [2], or in a Swedish book chapter published by Studentlitteratur [3].¶ ¶ Anne says:¶ - In the SPOTLIGHT event, I will focus on how higheron social identity in computing education, showing how students are socialized and constrained to disciplinary practices, norms and values (see e.g. [1,2,3]). I will point to research on education in other disciplines and university education to give broader perspectives on contemporary university education, (especially technology education) might be reimagined and transformed to become a domain that allows diverse people to care for the world,.¶

Yet, alternative conceptions of higher education for a more sustainable and just society exist and learne by doing so. I will tell a bit about research on social constructions of university/technology education to discuss change. I hope the presentation will allow us to connect and I appreciate if you tell me about related work already going on at KTH and beyondeing developed, e.g. in environmental and sustainability education research and futures studies. I find this work exciting, and see an as of yet mostly unused potential of feminist perspectives in this work. I will discuss an example, an article by Deborah Osberg (2010) on the role of education to take care of the future.

- As a preparation of the spotlight presentation, you can read a 4-page description of a special session, introducing perspectives of care for computing and engineering education [43]. You can read the article that I will present as one one of my favourite articles, theorising education that takes responsibility for the future [5], authored by Deborah Osberg.¶ - [4]. If you have more time and interest, have a look at one of my very recent accepted articles, which I will present at the FIE conference in October [65]. I applied some of the education theories I have come to find valuable in the past years to develop and reflect on a project course at UU. In the future, I would like to bring together some of these theoretical perspectives from environmental and sustainability education research, futures studies, and philosophy of education with feminist research.n this article, we reflect on a project course in which we applied alternative conceptions of education as “emergentist education”.

PROGRAM 9.00 - 10.00

* Anne-Kathrin Peters presents her research (20 minutes)
* discussion
* Anne-Kathrin Peters presents her favourite paper (10 minutes)
* discussion
Documentation: (will appear here after the seminar)

For PhD students: 10.00 - 11.00 Continued discussions (separate invitation)

REFERENCES

Articles 4 and 5 will be sent out on email 10 days before the seminar. You can also request all articles anytime from akpeters@kth.se or kristina@kth.se.

[1] Peters, A.-K. (2017) Learning Computing at University: Participation and Identity: A Longitudinal Study, Doctoral Thesis, Uppsala.

[2] Peters, A.-K., (2018) Student Experience of Participation in a Discipline – A Longitudinal Study of Computer Science and IT Engineering Students, in ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE).

[3] Koch-Svedberg, G., Peters, A.-K. (2021) Om utbildningens möjlighet att förändra den mansdominerade teknikkulturen in Franzén, C., Tzimoula, D. (Eds.) Genus och Professioner, Studentlitteratur.

[4] Peters, A.-K., Bengtsson, S., Cajander, Å., Daniels, M., Grande, V., Lönngren, J., Salminen-Karlsson, M. (2020) “Care ethics to develop computing and engineering education for sustainability”, Frontiers in Education conference 2020.

[5] Osberg, D. (2010). Taking Care of the Future? The complex responsibility of education & politics. In Osberg, Deborah & G. Biesta (Eds.), Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education (pp. 157–170). Sense Publishers.

[6] Peters, A.-K., Golay, D., Mats, D. (2021), Making Futures in Computing Education. "Emergentist Education" in an Open-Ended Group Project. Frontiers in Education Conference 2021.