Abstract
 
This study examines the educational implications of Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism, a framework emerging from posthumanism and new materialism. By foregrounding the entanglement of matter and discourse, agential realism fundamentally reconfigures key concepts such as knowledge, reality, subjectivity, and education. The research employs conceptual analysis and analytical–inferential methods.The study first explicates the core tenets of Barad’s agential realism. Through its critique of representationalism, agential realism rejects the view that knowledge is pre-existing and transferable. Instead, it conceptualizes knowledge as produced through material–discursive intra-actions within specific apparatuses. From this perspective, subjects do not precede relations; rather, they emerge through the dynamic intra-actions of human and non-human agents. Meaning, therefore, is not independent of these relational processes but is constituted within them.
Building on this theoretical foundation, the study derives the educational implications of agential realism. The findings suggest that this framework advances a new paradigm in education in which teaching is not merely the transmission of content but an ethical, participatory, and performative process of world-making. The key implications include: understanding the curriculum as an apparatus; conceiving teaching as a collaborative intra-action among teachers, students, and material elements; interpreting assessment as a reality-producing apparatus; rejecting the commodification of knowledge; viewing educational research as actively constructing educational realities; and recognizing tools and technologies as agents in the production of educational phenomena.These implications collectively position agential realism as a transformative theoretical framework for rethinking educational theory and practice.
 
 
Synopsis
This article aims to explicate Karen Barad’s theory of agential realism and to extract its educational implications. Using an analytical–inferential approach, the philosophical foundations of agential realism are first explained, and then its implications for curriculum, teaching, assessment, educational policy, educational research, and the role of technologies are examined. Karen Barad critiques the dominant epistemology that assumes knowledge to be a representation of an independent reality and regards matter as passive. Drawing on posthumanism and new materialism, Barad’s agential realism challenges this view. She argues that the excessive focus on language and discourse in modern epistemology has neglected the role of matter in the production of knowledge. From her perspective, matter is not merely a raw background for meaning but has agency and plays an active role in the formation of reality and human experience.
Within the framework of representationalism, it is assumed that language or theories provide a more or less accurate picture of external reality. Referring to Niels Bohr’s quantum physics, Barad demonstrates that observational instruments are not neutral but participate in the production of phenomena. For example, whether light appears as a wave or a particle depends on the type of measuring apparatus. Therefore, knowledge is not simply a reflection of reality but the outcome of material–discursive interventions and practices. This view understands knowing not as observing the world from a distance, but as a form of practical engagement with it. Another key concept in Barad’s philosophy is performativity. In this framework, knowing does not mean standing apart and representing the world; rather, it emerges through material engagement with it. Theorizing and observing are performative acts that take place within specific apparatuses. Inspired by Bohr, Barad understands concepts not merely as mental ideas but as physical and practical arrangements that make reality possible in particular ways. A further concept is intra-action. Instead of the term “interaction,” Barad uses “intra-action” to show that entities do not pre-exist their relations but rather emerge through them. The boundary between subject and object is produced through “agential cuts” within apparatuses, and these boundaries are always temporary and context-dependent. Consequently, reality consists of inherently relational phenomena that are enacted through material–discursive practices. Barad also introduces the concept of the apparatus. An apparatus is not merely a physical tool but includes theories, purposes, methods, language, and technologies. Apparatuses not only observe phenomena but also produce them; by making agential cuts, they foreground certain aspects of reality while excluding others. This perspective turns research and education into world-making practices.
Educational Implications: First, the curriculum is introduced as an apparatus. The curriculum is not a neutral text; rather, it constructs particular realities while excluding others. Therefore, curriculum design is an ethical and political act. Moreover, the curriculum is understood as practice rather than as a set of predetermined outcomes, since reality is indeterminate and knowledge is produced in moments of intra-action. In the domain of teaching, education as the transmission of knowledge is rejected. Teachers and students are not pre-given subjects but emerge within networks of relations, spaces, tools, and language. Learning is the product of multiple intra-actions among human and non-human agents, and knowledge is regarded as a performative and collaborative phenomenon. From this perspective, the teacher bears ethical responsibility for the agential cuts produced through the selection of methods and tools. In the area of assessment, tests are analyzed as apparatuses that produce reality. Assessment does not discover existing abilities; rather, it produces particular forms of subjectivity such as the “successful” or “weak” student. Accordingly, standardized tests are criticized for their limitations, and emphasis is placed on authentic, diverse, and process-oriented forms of assessment. Classroom layouts, school buildings, digital tools, and even mobile phones all carry values and power relations and play an active role in shaping learning experiences. Education is thus a political–material process in which the choice of technologies enables particular forms of reality and subjectivity. If knowledge is the product of intra-actions among multiple agents, it cannot be transferred or owned as a commodity. Learning is participation in the construction of reality rather than the consumption of content. Educational research is likewise understood as producing educational realities, and the researcher bears ethical responsibility for the worlds that are brought into being.
Conclusion
Agential realism opens up a new horizon in education in which teaching is understood as participation in the creation of the world. As a novel perspective in educational thought, agential realism adopts a political and ethical stance, viewing education as a process that actively contributes to the construction of reality. Within this framework, curriculum planning, teaching, and assessment are no longer regarded as neutral tools; rather, each function as an apparatus that, through processes of selection and exclusion, produces particular realities and thereby foregrounds the responsibility of teachers and curriculum designers. This approach moves beyond traditional dichotomies, conceiving learning as the situated and collaborative production of reality. Ultimately, it defines education as participation in world-making and rejects a commodified view of knowledge.