Characteristics of Education Fiction

Education fiction can reveal unexpected insights and spark imagination (Suoranta et al. 2022). There is ‘merit in working out key issues, ideas and concerns through writing, reading and thinking “out loud” in ways that are explicitly speculative and fictional’ (Selwyn et al. 2020: 105), although speculative and fiction approaches can also include other media, such as photographs (Pfohl et al. 2021), images (Costello et al. 2020), and objects (Ross 2023). Education fiction can be used to encourage reflection on the potential impact of current trends in education (Selwyn et al. 2020) and speculate on different possible futures of education (Ross 2023). There is an increasing interest in the role of fiction and speculation in education. Social science fiction has been developing since the 1950s among sociologists (Gerlach and Hamilton 2003) as a response to Mill’s (1959) call to use science fiction as a material for sociological thinking and imagination. This call is based on the premise that science fiction and social science share an interest in constructing and exploring social worlds (Gerlach and Hamilton 2003). Different terms, such as social science fiction (Macgilchrist et al. 2020; Selwyn et al. 2020), educational fabulation (Conrad and Wiebe 2022), speculative fiction (Ross 2023), and design fiction (Bleecker 2009; Cox 2021), are used, sometimes interchangeably. While science fiction was mainly developed by fiction authors, social science fiction by sociologists, and design fiction by interaction designers, this article focuses on education fiction. The article explores the following question: What characterizes the use of fiction in education research? In the following sections, it is suggested that education fiction (1) connects the past, present, and future; (2) is both speculative and informed; (3) uses atmosphere to evoke emotions; and (4) encourages reflection.


Introduction
Education fiction can reveal unexpected insights and spark imagination . There is 'merit in working out key issues, ideas and concerns through writing, reading and thinking "out loud" in ways that are explicitly speculative and fictional' (Selwyn et al. 2020: 105), although speculative and fiction approaches can also include other media, such as photographs (Pfohl et al. 2021), images (Costello et al. 2020), and objects (Ross 2023). Education fiction can be used to encourage reflection on the potential impact of current trends in education (Selwyn et al. 2020) and speculate on different possible futures of education (Ross 2023).
There is an increasing interest in the role of fiction and speculation in education. Social science fiction has been developing since the 1950s among sociologists (Gerlach and Hamilton 2003) as a response to Mill's (1959) call to use science fiction as a material for sociological thinking and imagination. This call is based on the premise that science fiction and social science share an interest in constructing and exploring social worlds (Gerlach and Hamilton 2003). Different terms, such as social science fiction (Macgilchrist et al. 2020;Selwyn et al. 2020), educational fabulation (Conrad and Wiebe 2022), speculative fiction (Ross 2023), and design fiction (Bleecker 2009;Cox 2021), are used, sometimes interchangeably. While science fiction was mainly developed by fiction authors, social science fiction by sociologists, and design fiction by interaction designers, this article focuses on education fiction.
The article explores the following question: What characterizes the use of fiction in education research? In the following sections, it is suggested that education fiction (1) connects the past, present, and future; (2) is both speculative and informed; (3) uses atmosphere to evoke emotions; and (4) encourages reflection.

Education Fiction Connects the Past, Present, and Future
Education fiction is a way to connect the past, present, and future. When imagining a potential education future, the author will implicitly or explicitly draw on the past and present. Also, education fiction that describes a potential future encourages the reader to reflect on whether such a future is desirable or not, and to take action in the present.
Although most education fiction is situated in the future, there are examples of fiction taking place in the past (O'Sullivan 2022) and present (Matthews 2022). Such fiction can still inform discussions on education futures. For example, O'Sullivan's (2022) short story includes sections of dialogue conducted in 2022 at an actual sustainability seminar, where a manager argues that international students are important but they are also 'costing the university their carbon bill'. This is an example of a present dilemma with implications for the future. Using the reverse approach of 'future histories', Macgilchrist et al. (2020) play with temporality. They describe three histories written in 2040 imagining the effects of educational policy decisions from the 2010s. Similarly, Hillman et al. (2020) combine vignettes and future histories to speculate on how current education trends, such as commercial influence and platformization, might affect schooling and the public mission of education.
When a more distant future is imagined, education fiction gets increasingly speculative. While we might have some idea of education in the next few years, we have a more limited image of what it might look like decades from now. For example, in Costello and Girme's (2022) 'Edge School', higher education has become a content production factory with no opportunities to learn from other students. In 'Schooling in the Playbourer's Cave' (Hurley 2022), virtual reality has become the default mode of schooling.
Fiction has become an increasingly common approach in discussions about education futures because we cannot predict the future of education; we can only speculate about possible futures for education. The plural is important, as there are many possible futures. Education fiction is an opportunity to reflect on and discuss these possible futures. This will, for example, help us identify futures we would like to avoid and futures we would like to achieve. In the words of Selwyn et al. (2020: 105), scholars can put forward alternative stories 'in a collective effort to capture the narrative and perhaps re-set prevailing agendas for the education of the future'.

Education Fiction is Speculative and Informed
Education fiction encourages speculation to support imagination unrestricted by academic formality. Education fiction is also always implicitly informed by the experience and expertise of its author. So what makes a text written by an educational researcher different from a text written by a fiction author? Selwyn et al. (2020) suggest: Our vignettes all tell stories of unremarkable 'slices of everyday life'the significance of which lies in their connection to the social science of schools and education. This is not fictional writing of any particular merit -luckily for us, this is not the point of social science fiction. Instead, these are stories to help us think critically about the future nature and form of schools and schooling in the digital age. (Selwyn et al. 2020: 94) Some educational researchers are also excellent authors, and that is a clear benefit. However, the main aim of education fiction is not the mastery of writing; it is to imagine what education can become.
The collection of short stories, 'Imagining Education Futures: Researchers as Fiction Authors', soon to be published in Postdigital Science and Education and edited by Hrastinski and Jandrić (2023), leans towards the speculative side of education fiction (e.g., Boyd 2022; Curcher 2022; Motson 2022). These visionary stories could not have been published in traditional academic journals with requirements such as theoretical grounding and using citations to support claims. The article type these stories are published under, Commentary, is a 'subversion of form' that, according to Michael Peters, 'is not easy, but it is possible, and it is a critical pedagogy in itself' (Means et al. 2022(Means et al. : 1047. Published in a mainstream education journal, these stories make contributions to discussions on education futures and complement traditional research. Selwyn et al.'s (2020) vignettes on the future of schooling present an example of slightly more informed education fiction. The authors drew on research methodology, by conducting workshops and following guidelines for writing social science fiction (Lackey 1994) and ethnographic writing (Atkinson 2015). They also 'drew on [their] position as academic experts in the area of digital technology and education -using [their] knowledge of theory and empirical literature around educational technology as the starting point of each vignette' (Selwyn et al. 2020: 94). Thus, the vignettes were implicitly informed by their position as academic experts.
Education fiction can also be more explicitly informed by, for example, literature and empirical research. Cox (2021) conducted a systematic literature review on Artificial Intelligence and robots in higher education. Design fictions were developed to illustrate issues that were identified in the review, and Cox (2021: 1) argues that the fictions 'offer a means both to explain and query the technological possibilities'. Another example of more informed fiction is the Near Future Teaching project 1 that uses participative and co-design methods to envision a future for digital education at the University of Edinburgh (Bayne and Gallagher 2021). The project was conducted over two years in four phases: scoping, scenario development, testing, and finalizing. The authors returned to the work in 2022 to produce speculative scenarios on the future of higher education teaching, together with a set of 'tarot' cards, posters, and short stories. 2 They intend to use the stories and scenarios in workshops on 'collaborative future-making work' with colleagues and students.

Education Fiction Uses Atmosphere to Evoke Emotions
The atmosphere is an important element of education fiction because it helps to draw the reader into the story and engage their emotions. Education fiction might leave the reader hopeful, pessimistic, or perhaps confused. Recent education fiction has mainly been critical, pessimistic, and dystopian (Houlden and Veletsianos 2022;Selwyn et al. 2020;Dickey et al. 2022). For example, Teräs et al. (2022) present a story on 'the life and times of university teachers in the era of digitalization' in the form of a classical tragedy play structured in six acts.
Calls for (Houlden and Veletsianos 2022) and examples of (Blaj-Ward 2022) hopeful and even utopian education fiction are currently emerging. Houlden and Veletsianos argue that.
fictions need to rely less on what we identify as pessimistic visions of the future, which are visions exploring themes such as disconnection, lack of autonomy and sovereignty, and technological, corporate, state and/or authoritarian control, as these visions and themes are currently over-represented in recent publications using this method. (Houlden and Veletsianos 2022) Instead, they call for more hopeful futures 'shaped by themes, such as connection, agency and community and individual flourishment'. Rahm and Rahm-Skågeby (2023) argue that there is a relationship between desired futures and deliberately destructive speculative design: 'imaginaries of desired futures must also examine the relationship between desirable and useful futures and, above all, how current orders can be reshaped, dismantled, extinguished, or redirected to create futures for common (rather than corporate) use and care'. Selwyn et al. (2020) suggest that education fiction can be provocative rather than prophetic, by reorienting understandings of education as complex systems where there is no obvious way forward or solution. Different atmospheres can also be combined. Cox (2021) avoids the common dualism between utopia and dystopia focusing on tensions related to questions about human agency, AI, and robots in education. He argues that fiction can include elements that are both inspirational and controversial. Such fiction can suggest tensions within and between different possible education futures.

Education Fiction Encourages Reflection
Education fiction encourages the reader to reflect on education. Science fiction is described as 'a powerful and engaging medium because it uses extrapolation and speculation to explore possible worlds and to encourage the reader to reflect on how those worlds came into being, how they operate, and how they differ from and reflect our present world' (Graham et al. 2019: 10). Along these lines, education fiction could encourage reflection on different possible 'education worlds'.
Alternative education fiction can be put forward to stimulate discussion and debate. Blaj-Ward (2022) directly builds on Matthews' (2022) story in which mission statements for 2050 are imagined, but instead describes a more open and hopeful university; a university where there is no need to develop mission statements because the university already 'lives and breathes its triple mission' (Blaj-Ward 2022). A similar approach is to identify fictions in the literature that are then further developed (Cox 2021).
Readings of education fiction can foster identification of themes, concerns, and opportunities. Bozkurt et al. (2023) invited researchers to explore the role of ChatGPT and generative AI in education. In a collective article, researchers wrote short stories that imagine different potential opportunities and challenges of such technologies in education. Based on the stories, emerging themes are identified and their implications for education are discussed. Importantly, however, the education fiction approach encourages readers to identify different issues. Based on their vignettes, for example, Selwyn et al. (2020) identify a concern that schooling might become a never-ending 'pursuit' and schools might become platformized and datafied. However, another reader might also see opportunities; for instance, that schooling might become more flexible, and schools might use data to personalize education. While traditional research is focused on what is, education fiction encourages reflection on what could be ).

Looking Forward
This article provides an initial discussion of some characteristics of education fiction. The literature is currently dominated by speculative and pessimistic explorations. There are opportunities to develop more hopeful education fiction (Houlden and Veletsianos 2022), more informed fiction, and also to develop fiction that reveals tensions and complexities (Cox 2021;Selwyn et al. 2020).
The recent interest in education fiction is driven by researchers who typically also write the fiction. There are opportunities to explore how others with an interest in education, such as teachers, staff, and students, can be engaged to contribute to the development of education fiction. For example, teachers ) and students (Teräs et al. 2023) have been asked to write short stories that imagine digital futures of education. Interviews and other empirical data could also be used to inform stories .
There are numerous opportunities to debate characteristics of education fiction suggested in this article and to identify its further characteristics. Such work may be valuable for furthering our understanding of this emerging and exciting approach and its future potentials.
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