Who cares about learning design? Near future superheroes and villains of an educational ethics of care

This article undertakes a critical appraisal of learning design and its relation to ethical ideas of care. We give an account of three personae of near future learning designers, developed using speculative methods, seeded with real-world data comprising job advertisements and validated with learning designers. The personae illustrate conflicts about the role of learning designers within the teaching and research missions of the academy and issues of care or lack thereof for these workers. The disembodied skills of learning designer job advertisements are contrasted with the bodies of (more than) real people that can suffer and care. We finish by contributing elements of a speculative job advertisement for a learning designer, who will help shape educational spaces of the near future by entangled care and unencumbered attentiveness.