a definition.
Postdigital learner agency refers to the capacity of learners to act, adapt, and make choices within complex, hybrid educational environments shaped by both digital and non-digital forces. It moves beyond traditional notions of individual autonomy to include relational, collective, and contextual dimensions of agency, recognizing how technologies like AI, algorithms, and data systems influence access to knowledge, power, and participation. At its core, postdigital learner agency emphasizes critical engagement, ethical awareness, and the ability to navigate and co-create within sociotechnical systems that structure contemporary learning.
Code, J. (2025). The Entangled Learner: Critical Agency for the Postdigital Era. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00544-1
Starting April 7th, read my “Reclaiming Agency in a Postdigital Age” blog series.
Rethinking Learner Agency in the Postdigital Era
What does it mean to be a learner in a world where your classroom is a browser tab, your study partner is a chatbot, and learning is curated by algorithms?
a call for chapters.
Postdigital learner agency: Navigating hybrid and algorithmically mediated education
In my recent article, “The Entangled Learner: Critical Agency for the Postdigital Era” (Code, 2025), I explored how traditional notions of learner agency no longer serve us in a world shaped by algorithms, AI, and hybrid learning environments. As our educational spaces become increasingly mediated by sociotechnical systems, we need new frameworks that reflect this complexity.
That’s why I’m editing a new volume titled Postdigital Learner Agency: Navigating Hybrid and Algorithmically Mediated Education, and I’m inviting chapter proposals from scholars, educators, designers, and researchers who are engaging critically with these issues.
This volume builds on the Postdigital Learner Agency (PLĀ) framework, which redefines agency not as something purely individual, but as relational, collective, and deeply entangled with both digital and non-digital realities. It’s about equipping learners—and ourselves—to navigate power, bias, and possibility in education shaped by data and code.
If you’re working in K–12, higher education, lifelong learning, or professional training, I’d love to hear from you. I’m especially interested in chapters that explore:
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Redefining learner agency – Expanding beyond autonomy and self-regulation to relational, collective, and hybrid forms of agency.- Postdigital perspectives on learning and agency – Examining how digital and non-digital interactions shape learner agency in contemporary education.
- Hybrid and algorithmic learning environments – Investigating how AI, datafication, and adaptive technologies mediate and shape learner agency.
- Algorithmic literacy and critical engagement in agency – Equipping learners with the skills to navigate, critique, and co-create within algorithmically mediated systems that influence agency.
- Inclusive postdigital pedagogies – Centering Indigenous and Global South perspectives in education, addressing digital divides, systemic biases, and the role of diverse epistemologies in shaping learner agency.
- Researching postdigital learner agency – Methodologies for studying, measuring, and co-constructing agency in digital and hybrid learning contexts.
- Future directions for postdigital learner agency – Envisioning ethical, transparent, and learner-centered educational futures that empower agency in the postdigital era.
Key Dates:
Abstracts (500 words) due: 15 May 2025
Full chapters due: 1 October 2025
Please send your abstract to me at jillianne.code@ubc.ca with the subject line Postdigital Learner Agency – Chapter Proposal.
Download the complete Call for Chapters and read the foundational article that sets the stage for this work here:
Code, J. (2025). The Entangled Learner: Critical Agency for the Postdigital Era. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00544-1
