Encouraging and Enabling Student Socio-political Actions Based on Longitudinal Dispositif Analyses

Much of the world is—albeit controversially—in crisis, including regarding the climate emergency, species losses and more. Given that fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are linked to many such threats, STEM education may have much potential in addressing them. Many STEM education systems appear, however, more faithful to small, elite, fractions of societies than to the rest. In this chapter, we suggest that concepts of a dispositif—which we consider an actor-network of mostly cooperating living, nonliving and symbolic actants—may be helpful in structuring STEM education for increased ecojustice. Our analyses of changes in a dispositif opposing airborne dust that citizens claim is emanating from nickel ore piles on their city’s marine port and contains many toxic elements (e.g., lead and arsenic) may be particularly useful in educating students about ongoing technosocial controversies. This dispositif appeared to ‘wax and wane’ over the last decade, apparently stimulated at different times by different new events—like business promotion of port expansion to generate increased nickel used in batteries for electric vehicles. Our educational programme aims to benefit students ontologically, methodologically, epistemologically and axiologically concerning such often-lengthy controversial power dynamics.