[Commlist] Call for Proposals: EdTech futures and their histories: exploring the technopolitics of computing education

*Call for Proposals: EdTech futures and their histories: exploring the 
technopolitics of computing education*

*4S 2026 Conference ‘TechnoPower – Technoscientific Futures,’ Toronto*

Panel convenors: Asher Kessler (University of Cambridge), Apolline 
Taillandier (University of Cambridge) and Ksenia Tatarchenko (Johns 
Hopkins University)

While threats of AI tutors ‘rewiring childhood’ recently became 
commonplace, ambitions to transform pupils and schools through computing 
have a longer history. From the 1950s onwards, philosophers, scientists, 
university managers, schoolteachers and parents have debated the future 
of education and technology, questioning the power of computer-assisted 
learning, educational programming and online teaching to enhance minds, 
reshape social relations, or contest dominant epistemologies.

The aim of this panel is to explore the technopolitics of computing 
pedagogy. As STS scholarship has shown, futures of technology in 
education mobilise various notions of citizenship, identity, cognition 
or literacy – including elite and universalist conceptions of 
algorithmic thinking, masculine imaginaries of programming and feminist 
reclaimings thereof, libertarian post-school visions and socialist 
educational reform. Following accounts of pedagogy as key sites of 
technoscientific controversy, the panel seeks to analyse how struggles 
over the definition and transmission of computer science, education 
policy, and the role of AI in schools, universities or vocational 
training reshape computing practices as well as notions of selves, 
society and world orders; and how, in doing so, they enact and transform 
political concepts and ideologies.

We are interested in studies of AI in education from various 
disciplines, methods and perspectives. We especially welcome feminist 
and decolonial perspectives and transnational analyses that decenter the 
US case, and proposals on issues related, but not limited to:

- political, literary, and scientific futures of computing education 
from the Cold War to the contemporary, within and beyond computer 
science (pedagogical science fiction, futurology, etc.);

- studies of pedagogical artefacts (textbooks, spreadsheets, games), 
instruments (curricula, standardised tests) and organisations 
(professional associations, international conferences);

- concepts and methods at the interface between political theory and 
STS, the study of technopolitics, and ideologies and imaginaries of the 
future.

Abstracts should be up to 250 words and submitted through the 4S 
conference platform by *April 30, 2026*. Please reach out to 
(_amit3 /at/ cam.ac.uk) <mailto:(amit3 /at/ cam.ac.uk)>_, (_abk41 /at/ cam.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(abk41 /at/ cam.ac.uk)>_ or (_ktatarc1 /at/ jh.edu) 
<mailto:(ktatarc1 /at/ jh.edu)>_ should you have any questions

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