
Agential Schooling
A Posthumanist Exploration of Schools, Classrooms, and Youth Participatory Action Research with Diverse Students
Thomas Albright(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 12. June 2025
Book
Hardback
146 pages
978-1-032-84580-7 (ISBN)
Description
This book examines how schooling-the restrictive, oppressive, and disciplinary force in much U.S. education-is protean and has the agency to change in response to challenges. Posthumanist theories were engaged with to better understand the intra-actions between human, nonhuman, and discursive actors.
Utilizing participant observations, interviews, cognitive maps, diffraction, and theory, it argues that traditional humanistic approaches to oppression in U.S. education are inadequate to understanding the ongoing power of schooling. In conversation with these paradigms, this book lays out an agential realist (Barad, 2007) view of schooling and argues in favor of examining schooling itself as an agent, sustained and bolstered by a wide range of other agents acting in and around schools-from clipboards and handouts to adultism and racism. This approach offers a new perspective on how oppressive forces like racism, sexism, and adultism adapt and continue to operate in spaces deliberately designed to oppose them, including Ethnic Studies programs and YPAR projects. At the same time, this book rejects totalizing arguments about schooling's hegemony and shows how a wider recognition of nonhuman agency can help us not only understand but also work to resist such oppressions.
It will appeal to scholars, faculty, and upper-level students with interests in critical youth studies, educational equity, Ethnic Studies, youth participatory action research, and posthumanism.
Utilizing participant observations, interviews, cognitive maps, diffraction, and theory, it argues that traditional humanistic approaches to oppression in U.S. education are inadequate to understanding the ongoing power of schooling. In conversation with these paradigms, this book lays out an agential realist (Barad, 2007) view of schooling and argues in favor of examining schooling itself as an agent, sustained and bolstered by a wide range of other agents acting in and around schools-from clipboards and handouts to adultism and racism. This approach offers a new perspective on how oppressive forces like racism, sexism, and adultism adapt and continue to operate in spaces deliberately designed to oppose them, including Ethnic Studies programs and YPAR projects. At the same time, this book rejects totalizing arguments about schooling's hegemony and shows how a wider recognition of nonhuman agency can help us not only understand but also work to resist such oppressions.
It will appeal to scholars, faculty, and upper-level students with interests in critical youth studies, educational equity, Ethnic Studies, youth participatory action research, and posthumanism.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Academic and Postgraduate
Illustrations
5 s/w Zeichnungen, 4 s/w Tabellen, 17 s/w Abbildungen, 12 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder
4 Tables, black and white; 5 Line drawings, black and white; 12 Halftones, black and white; 17 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
387 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-84580-7 (9781032845807)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Thomas Albright
Agential Schooling
A Posthumanist Exploration of Schools, Classrooms, and Youth Participatory Action Research with Diverse Students
E-Book
06/2025
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download

Thomas Albright
Agential Schooling
A Posthumanist Exploration of Schools, Classrooms, and Youth Participatory Action Research with Diverse Students
E-Book
06/2025
Routledge
€60.49
Available for download
Person
Thomas Albright is Research Assistant Professor at Georgia State University, USA.
Content
1. Introduction - Agential Schooling: "School is Where Dreams Come to Die" 2. Vantage High - School Agent and Classroom Freedom Dreaming 3. Killer of Dreams: When Schooling Impedes Learning 4. Spooky Entanglements: Clipboards, Write-ups, and Resignation Letters 5. Youth Participatory Action Research: Schooling, Learning, and Freedom Dreaming 6. Toward the Im/Possible - Dream Killers, Places of Possibility, and Speculative Becomings