ABSTRACT
It may be fair to say that educational researchers did not rush to embrace actornetwork theory (ANT) when it was first being taken up more widely in organizational studies and other studies of professional practice. In its first educational uptake,ANT studies were published by a few science educators as well as by researchers tracing technology innovations in education. This is perhaps not surprising, given ANT’s early focus on the assemblage of scientific knowledge and innovation practices (Latour and Woolgar 1979) and its roots in science and technology studies. Perhaps some educators found it difficult to connect with a theory whose constructs of actant, network, translation and intermediaries may sound too mechanistic for questions of learning, meaning and humanity. Nor has ANT tended to align itself with education.The major European association devoted to science and technology studies since 1981 did not include a stream for education until 2010 (EASST 2010).
