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Charged Bodies in Science Education: A Posthumanist Theorizing of the Affective Dimensions of Science Learning and Disciplinary Spaces

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Title: Charged Bodies in Science Education: A Posthumanist Theorizing of the Affective Dimensions of Science Learning and Disciplinary Spaces
Language: English
Authors: Katherine Ann Ayers (ORCID 0000-0002-0305-0367)
Source: Science Education. 2026 110(4):1187-1197.
Availability: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 11
Publication Date: 2026
Sponsoring Agency: National Cancer Institute (NCI) (DHHS/NIH)
Contract Number: P30CA021765
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Evaluative
Descriptors: Science Education, Humanism, Affective Behavior, Learning Processes, Learning Theories, Psychological Patterns, Logical Thinking, Concept Formation
DOI: 10.1002/sce.70059
ISSN: 0036-8326
1098-237X
Abstract: This paper advances a posthumanist theorization of learners in science education as "charged bodies"--entities whose capacities to act, belong, and become emerge through affective, material, and discursive entanglements. Rather than treating identity as a stable cognitive alignment with science, this framing foregrounds affect as a constitutive force that modulates trajectories of belonging before thought. Drawing on a diffractive methodology, I read Damasio's neurobiological account of affect through Ahmed's theorization of emotion's social orientations and Massumi's conceptualization of affective fields. This intra-action unsettles individualist accounts of emotion, highlighting affect as a distributed, field-like phenomenon that charges bodies unevenly within science learning spaces. The manuscript unfolds as a set of diffractive movements that map how charged bodies are configured in science education. It develops a conceptual grounding of affect as relational modulation, reimagines classrooms and laboratories as affective ecologies haunted by historical residues, reframes recognition as a force of induction and deflection, and considers pedagogical encounters as openings for reconfiguring what counts as science. Empirical vignettes--such as tears in a laboratory, hesitation before reform, and creative inscriptions in the classroom--are read not as incidental disruptions but as affective intensities that reveal the spectral infrastructures through which belonging and exclusion are organized. By theorizing science education through the concept of charged bodies, this work foregrounds affect as central to science identity and disciplinary becoming. It argues that what science is, and who it becomes with, are inseparable from the affective fields that contour livable and unlivable possibilities in educational spaces.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2026
Accession Number: EJ1508338
Database: ERIC
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Katherine+Ann+Ayers%22">Katherine Ann Ayers</searchLink> (ORCID <externalLink term="https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0305-0367">0000-0002-0305-0367</externalLink>)
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  Data: This paper advances a posthumanist theorization of learners in science education as "charged bodies"--entities whose capacities to act, belong, and become emerge through affective, material, and discursive entanglements. Rather than treating identity as a stable cognitive alignment with science, this framing foregrounds affect as a constitutive force that modulates trajectories of belonging before thought. Drawing on a diffractive methodology, I read Damasio's neurobiological account of affect through Ahmed's theorization of emotion's social orientations and Massumi's conceptualization of affective fields. This intra-action unsettles individualist accounts of emotion, highlighting affect as a distributed, field-like phenomenon that charges bodies unevenly within science learning spaces. The manuscript unfolds as a set of diffractive movements that map how charged bodies are configured in science education. It develops a conceptual grounding of affect as relational modulation, reimagines classrooms and laboratories as affective ecologies haunted by historical residues, reframes recognition as a force of induction and deflection, and considers pedagogical encounters as openings for reconfiguring what counts as science. Empirical vignettes--such as tears in a laboratory, hesitation before reform, and creative inscriptions in the classroom--are read not as incidental disruptions but as affective intensities that reveal the spectral infrastructures through which belonging and exclusion are organized. By theorizing science education through the concept of charged bodies, this work foregrounds affect as central to science identity and disciplinary becoming. It argues that what science is, and who it becomes with, are inseparable from the affective fields that contour livable and unlivable possibilities in educational spaces.
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