Materialities of Schooling : Design, Technology, Objects, Routines

This is a book with an interest in the materiality of schooling. It is focused on objects in schooling, which, taken individually and together, constitute the sites of schooling. It does not assume a fixed dichotomy between objects and people, in other words, that there is a life of imagination and action, and there are collections of inanimate objects. Nor does it assume that the technologies and objects of schooling, chained together by routines and action, should remain invisible from inquiry into schools as sites of learning and work. Instead, by drawing attention to the materiality of schooling, that is, the ways that objects are given meaning, how they are used, and how they are linked into heterogeneous active networks, in which people, objects and routines are closely connected, it is hoped that a richer historical account can be created about the ways that schools work.