Paper short abstract:

We explore epistemic brokering, navigating the interplay of diverse knowledges and emerging tech in postdigital science education, advocating for inclusivity and culturally appropriate protocols in knowledge co-construction.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, we explore how postdigital and technoscientific contexts reshape the contours of knowledge in science education. We draw from the concept of “epistemic brokering” (Kim, 2023) to consider how knowledges are brokered among educators, students, more-than-human, and other-than-human in science education. Specifically, we engage postcolonial, feminist, and postdigital scholarship to discuss how non-local knowledges, traditional local knowledges, and contemporary local knowledges interface in science education, particularly within settler colonial societies, such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We then turn to how, in current postdigital contexts, i.e., where digital and analogue dimensions of education and knowledge are inextricable, digital elements (including those present and not present in the physical learning environment) are agents that introduce new possibilities and tensions for knowledge co-construction. For example, we discuss the power of new and emerging technologies as tools for the re-establishment of knowledge transmission practices disrupted through colonisation. We also explore the brokering potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for its ‘far-reaching’ abilities to introduce knowledge from diverse storehouses. We simultaneously critique the harms of these same technologies, such as the ways in which AI privileges dominant knowledges and reproduces human social bias. We then turn to the importance of thoughtful attention to culturally appropriate protocols for brokering knowledge in postdigital science education, in which teachers, curriculum developers, students, and communities must play a key role.