Actor Network Theory: what is it? How might it be useful for educational research? How is it different from Action Research?

1. Actor Network Theory:
What is it?
Might it be useful for educational research ?
How is it different from Action Research?
Michael Carroll, Momoyama Gakuin University, Japan
carroll@andrew.ac.jp

2. Actor network theory
Can Actor Network Theory describe a university curriculum as a process
• in which human ‘actors’ interact with each other;
• and with their physical and cultural environment (books, computers,
desks, classrooms, physical spaces, online spaces),
• in networks?
Why are some curriculum changes successful and others less so?
How we can change our curriculum in rational and sensitive ways?

3. It’s all stories, really
• Granny nodded. 'There's always a story,' she
said. 'It's all stories, really. The sun coming up
every day is a story. Everything's got a story in
it. Change the story, change the world.'
• Terry Pratchett. (2004). A Hat full of sky.
London: Corgi, Random House 2004 p238

4. Stories (narratives) in research
• Putting our observations into manageable,
understandable chunks is ‘telling a story’
• Some stories become the ‘back-story’ that
frame all the other stories in a field (the current
paradigm)

5. Many stories
(multiple narratives)
• There are always many stories - actors have
their own stories, their own ways of seeing
(and telling) the what happens, and the what is
• (paradigms change too, when new theories
displace older ones)

6. … and sometimes we see actors
challenge the paradigm …

8. Actor Network Theory (ANT)
A way of telling a (social) story
A way of challenging a paradigm

10. 200
1

11. “We’d like you
to help us write
a textbook”

12. 2001
~
2010
English curriculum
committee
Future directions committee
Education reform committee
Language Centre
committee

13. Many curriculum changes
but
nothing really changed

15. No way!
I can’t do it.

16. Well, maybe …

17. this is …

18. my chance …

19. … to make real changes!

21. But …

22. http://imagenoire.centerblog.net/rub-marionnette-.html

24. Many curriculum changes
but
nothing really changed

25. Why does curriculum reform often
yield so little?
What is is that we don’t
understand about how
organisations work and how they
change?

26. Actor-Network Theory
…a disparate family of material-semiotic tools,
sensibilities and methods of analysis that treat
everything in the social and natural worlds as a
continuously generated effect of the webs of
relations within which they are located. It assumes that
nothing has reality or form outside the enactment of
those relations. Its studies explore and characterise the
webs and the practices that carry them.(Law 2009).

27. • origin in Science and Technology Studies
• Howard Garfinkel’s Ethnomethodology
• First used to describe how knowledge is socially
constructed , how ‘knowledge' becomes accepted,
how scientists work
• Describes human and non-human ‘actants’ in the
same terms, and grants them equal ‘agency’ (influence)
over social networks.
• Adopted by other areas of social science, including
education
ANT

28. Actants and Actors
• In most social science an actor is any social
entity
In ANT, though:
• Actant : any entity (human or non-human) that
has the potential to influence a social network
• Actor : an actant that does something

29. human and non-human ‘actants/actors’ ?
people, physical objects (blackboards,
computers, classrooms …), events,
circumstances, spaces on and offline, ideas,
ideologies, accepted practices …

30. A key is just a key (an actant)

31. When we ascribe a role to the
key it becomes an actor

32. • Each of these actors (people, objects, events,
circumstances) is a node in the network

33. Network
“ a group of unspecified relationships among entities of
which the nature itself is undetermined” (Callon, 1993,
p.263).
Compare David Tripp, on curriculum:
“a systematic set of relations between particular people,
objects, events, and circumstances” (Tripp, 1987 p.7).

37. Actors, networks and ….
Black boxes

38. A black box
• a group of entities (actants) that together form
a network that operates smoothly so as to
seem to be one single entity
• so the black box is accepted as such without
question
• For example: ‘the teaching staff’ ; a textbook ;
a classroom ; the idea that teaching a
language necessarily entails explaining
grammar

39. And finally ….
(opening up a black box in order to initiate change) or (shaking up the network to
create a new configuration)
• problematizing a situation
• interessement (negotiating with actors their terms of involvement according to
the initiator’s vision)
• enrolment (actors accept terms of involvement - or oppose, resist, demand
different terms)
• mobilisation of allies (actors representing others try to get support from those
they represent)
Translation

40. Stability (Black box)
Problematization: the new
proposal
Stability (New black box)?
Getting actors interested, negotiating
terms, setting plans in place, mobilising
support

41. For example
• The-division-of-labour black box:
Japanese teachers - Receptive skills (reading
and listening)
‘foreign’ teachers - Productive skills (speaking
and writing)

42. Problematization
• many teachers in fact teach all four skills
• 4 skills teaching is supported by the literature
• students need role models of Japanese teachers producing
English
• complicates the timetable
• shared roles promote collegiality
• implies Japanese teachers can’t teach speaking ; and
foreign teachers can’t teach grammar. (This view in itself is
a black box: full of assumptions.)

43. Proposed solution - a first step
• have some Japanese teachers teach
productive skills classes
• have some ‘foreign’ teachers teach receptive
skills classes

44. Network nodes? (actants/actors)
Director
Teacher B
Teacher C
Education
affairs manager
Committee
member B
Committee
member A
Education
affairs staff
member A
Student B
Student A
Textbook B
Textbook A
50 student
classroom,
fixed desks
Computer Lab
Textbook C
Publicity department
Graded
readers
Teacher contracts
Timetable
Our own test
Commercial testCALL software
differential salary scalesJapanese-ness
Native Englishspeaker-ness
Teacher A

45. Some attempts to shape the
network
• I’d like to teach a receptive class
• I don’t want to teach classes of 50
• Foreign teachers are paid more to teach communication - we
can’t ask Japanese teachers to do it for less
• It’s not natural - every university divides the skills
• Students expect at least one foreign teacher
• Productive skills are just games and fun: it’s not a serious class
• Students need to hear ‘native English’
• What’s ‘native English’ anyway?

46. • The faculty won’t like it
• It sends a message to students that we’re all teaching the
same thing
• I don’t care either way
• The teacher needs to speak Japanese to teach at the lower
levels
• Classes should be English only
• The textbook’s all in English
• The textbook’s has some Japanese in it!
• It’s bad/good for publicity
• How do I do this?
• Why haven’t I got a Japanese/foreign teacher?

47. Successful and unsuccessful
translations
• Some teachers did teach across the divide
• Those teachers learned from the experience of
‘the other side’
• The administration organised to remove the
practical necessity for cross-divide teaching in
future
• The division-of-labour black box remained
strong

48. Lessons learned
• Actors utilise both personal and institutional power and
authority in attempting to mobilise support
• Admin management, vocal faculty members, some teachers,
admin workers, university publicity office - supported and were
supported by the argument for the status quo
• The director, less-vocal faculty members, some teachers -
mobilised for change
• Educational arguments carried less authority than political ones
(salary differentials, competitors practices, tradition) …
• … and resources arguments (the timetable, classroom
configurations, textbook and software preferences and
availability)
Getting actors interested, negotiating terms, setting plans in place,
mobilising support

49. Callon, M. (1993). Variety and irreversibility in networks of technique conception
and adoption. In D. Foray and C. Freeman (Eds.) Technology and the Wealth of
Nations: The Dynamics of Constructed Advantage. London, Pinter Publishers: 232-
268.
Latour, Bruno (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Law, John (2007) Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics, version of 25th April
2007, available at
http://www. heterogeneities. net/publications/Law2007ANTandMaterialSemiotics.pdf,
(downloaded on 18th May, 2007).
Tripp, D. (1987). Theorising Practice: The Teacher's Professional Journal. Geelong:
Deakin University Press.
Citations

50. Typical research design
• Decide theoretical stance
• Define research question
• Review literature
• Design data collection method
• Collect data
• Analyse data
• Write report

51. Qualitative research
• Can follow typical research design process
• ....but may not
• Especially participatory research, practitioner
research

52. Some characteristics of
participatory research in teaching
• The main activity is PRACTICE not research
• Some (much?) of the data arises out of daily
practice
(though additional data may be collected)
• Method, research question, may come AFTER
data collection

54. What does it mean,
“arises out of practice”?
• a teacher’s (or administrator’s) first
responsibility is to teach (or facilitate teaching)
• the purpose of all actions is to change (or
maintain) learning outcomes
• research is weighted towards reflection (on
actions already undertaken)
• (or proposed - as in the action research spiral)

56. Actor Network Theory and Action
Research
Similarities
• reflect on action
• rooted in practice
• fundamentally interested in change
• specific to single situations

57. Differences
• focuses on human
actors
• focuses on actions and
evaluating their results
• aims to improve
practice
• recognises the agency
of non-humans (things)
• focuses on network
nodes, and the
influences they might
have, through action or
through lack of action
• aims to understand why
things happen (or fail to
happen)