OVERVIEW AFFECT: Prioritising care, maintenance, and repair in space science education

Both education about space science and the social studies of space science have been dominated by men and masculine ideals, where western masculinity and masculine traits (e.g. assertiveness, strength, discipline, risk-taking, or individualism) are rife in education spaces, in the field, and in other the theorisation of space sciences.

This workshop, sits within feminist-informed approaches to science education and space science.

In our workshop we shift in focus towards themes and traits that have been coded and gendered and racialised as subordinate by western societies such as emotional or reproductive labour, cooperation, repair and maintenance of systems, and dependence, and their potential to pluralise what matters when we think and teach about space science and physics.

This workshop brings together educators, scholars and practitioners who are interested in finding new ways of teaching about three specific themes - care, repair and maintenance - in the context of space science.

Two sessions are proposed: one explores the ways that care, repair and maintenance are theorised within social studies of space science to understand possible areas that could be included in curriculum shift; and one explores the pedagogical and curriculum innovations that a focus on such ideas might foreground.

The workshop will have a public digital record (including recorded talks, posters, and a "tool-kit" for educators to innovate) and will also form the basis of a journal article.