Creating Feminist Futures by Imagining Lessons Differently: Using Speculative Fabulation and Poetic Inquiry as Methods to Trouble Classroom Expectations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article employs speculative fabulation and poetic inquiry as methods to explore the role of the body and embodied experiences in the classroom. We read ethnographic material from secondary schools in Finland and Further Education colleges in England with Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti and Jane Bennett to trouble the practices and expectations in mainstream classrooms. By fabulating stories we demonstrate how seeing classrooms as sites of intra-action allows us as educators to see the relationships between humans and non-humans differently. By turning ethnographic data into poems we create shared experiences of lessons, perhaps invoking shared feelings and memories from our past. Above all, we strive towards a feminist future that challenges the prevailing mind/body dualism in the classroom and calls for better understanding of the diverse needs of our students by asking what if things were done differently in our mainstream classrooms?