Predictive Curricula and the Foreclosure of Pedagogical Futures

Bibliographic Data

ID17185656
AuthorsBrad Bierdz (0000-0003-4860-3962, School of Education Georgia Southern University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-03-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-2004 • E-ISSN: 1741-5446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/edth.70089
OpenAlexW7138849546
LanguageEN
References cited28

This article theorizes predictive curricula: the reorganization of schooling around data extraction, dashboards, and algorithmic governance that translate learners into dividual profiles and narrow inquiry to what is computable. It maps how protocol and platform logics preempt pedagogical judgment, route bodies and knowledges through thresholds and alerts, and sediment a predisteme—an epistemic order that renders deviation a form of computational error and illegibility. Tracing a pipeline from surveillance capitalism, algorithmic governance, and the mediation of flesh and technology to classroom practice, the article details mechanisms of control, somatic and ontic effects on students' bodyminds, and the reproduction of inequity when predictive signals stand in for knowledge and/or being. Classroom vignettes intermittently ground the analysis, showing how readiness scores, data tracking, and auto‐scheduling evacuate the present tense—both epistemically and ontically. In response, the article advances destitution and prefiguration as counter‐designs: deactivating apparatuses that foreclose study and enacting consent‐paced and opaque practices that reopen curricular time

Corporate governance · Curriculum · Dichotomy · Foreclosure · Futures contract · Mediation · Pipeline (software) · Sociology of Education · Temporality · Digital Education and Society · Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

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