STS Pedagogies In Higher Education Teacher Development: An Interdisciplinary Proposal From IT, Design And Law

In-service higher education (HE) teachers face increasing challenges concerning the presence of digital technologies in teaching, as they need to expand their knowledge and competencies constantly and experience complex shifts in their professional identities. However, teacher professional development is often focused on educational technologies (e.g. tools and platforms) and it does not enable reflection on how production of academic knowledge is entangled with everyday pedagogical experiences, ways of being and doing.
In this paper, we present a course-concept for HE teachers’ professional development which attempts to address STS issues such as the profound intertwinement between technology and society and the mutual configuration of multiple knowledges and practices.
The project, named Teknosofikum, is funded by the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and developed collaboratively by four Danish institutions: IT University of Copenhagen, Royal Danish Academy of Architecture, Design and Conservation, University of Copenhagen – Faculty of Law, and Design School Kolding, between 2020 and 2023. Through a design-based research methodology in three iterations, Teknosofikum presents cases and scenarios from the disciplinary fields of Design, Information Technology and Law, with the aim to make them relevant for other academic fields. In this paper, we draw on data from the project first iteration, including curriculum design, prototype content development, and first trial with 45 course participants from the four institutions. A critical relational pedagogy is used as a frame for the learning activities design, based on the tradition of critical theory and the relational perspectives informed by STS and sociomaterial feminist studies.