ABSTRACT

This chapter proposes to highlight some of the emerging features of a material turn and then discusses how this turn might be taken up in education policy research. A material turn moves from the analysis of words for what they can reveal about the world, to the entanglements of words and matter and how bodies materialise and have effects. The chapter focus on the 'more than human only' located and related potentialities. Taking the human out of an assumed centre for/of educational planning and action does not preclude human consequences or concerns. Challenging anthropocentric educational assumptions is important to education policy research. Critical education policy studies work 'on' policy, focusing, in terms of enactment, at the site where education policy is 'done'; that is, in schools or other education institutions. But what education policy research can actually do, or interfere in what ways is such research ontological where research is somehow 'in', as opposed to 'on' education policy.