Becoming-with technology: a pragmatic ontology informed by the ontological turn and epistemic ascent with design and technology education as a revealing case

McLain, M ORCID: 0000-0002-8691-3155 Becoming-with technology: a pragmatic ontology informed by the ontological turn and epistemic ascent with design and technology education as a revealing case. Curriculum Journal. ISSN 0958-5176 (Accepted)

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Abstract

The ontological turn, often associated with new materialism, posthumanism, and socio-material perspectives, reframes curriculum as an emergent achievement of human–nonhuman relations rather than a text enacted by autonomous human subjects. Using design and technology education as a revealing case, this article develops a curriculum-theoretical argument for understanding curriculum-making as assemblage work, shaped by technologies, materials, tools, infrastructures, assessment regimes, and professional judgement. Drawing primarily on Bennett’s account of thing-power, actants, and distributive agency, and connecting these ideas to curriculum debates about knowledge, purpose, and normativity, it explores how socio-material conditions redistribute participation and define what becomes teachable and assessable. Also addressed are key limitations of ontological approaches (including concerns about political “flattening” and accountability) by proposing a pragmatic ontology that retains normative curriculum questions while widening causal analysis. The article concludes with implications for curriculum-making across system levels (teachers, senior leaders, teacher educators, and policymakers) and a research agenda for studying curriculum enactment under more-than-human conditions.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Liverpool Institute for Research in Education (LIFE); actants; assemblage; curriculum-making; epistemic ascent; ontological turn; pragmatic ontology; teacher agency; 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy; 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General) T Technology > T Technology (General)
Divisions:	Education
Publisher:	Wiley
Date of acceptance:	29 March 2026
Date Deposited:	31 Mar 2026 10:50
Last Modified:	31 Mar 2026 10:50
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/28320

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