Abstract
This paper reconsiders the notion of digital literacy through the lens of post-digital theory and critical pedagogy. Drawing on ethnographic and discourse-analytic research on AI-mediated learning, it argues that future readiness cannot be reduced to technical competence or adaptability to digital change. Rather, it involves developing critical post-digital literacies—forms of knowing and judging that address how algorithmic systems shape what counts as knowledge, truth, and learning. Building on Biesta’s (2022) conception of education as a space of subjectification, Macgilchrist’s (2021) critique of datafication, and Jandrić’s (2022) postdigital epistemologies, the paper examines how artificial intelligence technologies translate, classify, and standardize meaning in educational contexts. These processes, as Mignolo (2018) and Fraser (2008) suggest, reproduce global epistemic hierarchies and forms of data colonialism (Zuboff, 2019), positioning teachers and students as objects of algorithmic governance. Rethinking future readiness, therefore, requires cultivating literacies that engage with the politics of knowledge, technological opacity, and ethical responsibility, rather than merely enhancing digital proficiency. Education must remain a site of judgement and relational encounter (Foucault, 1982; Biesta, 2022) in a world increasingly governed by automated systems of meaning.
Presenters
Monika PopowAssistant Professor, Department of Educational Studies, Polish Naval Academy in Gdynia, Pomorskie, Poland
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Digital Literacy for Future Readiness
KEYWORDS
POSTDIGITAL LITERACY, AI IN EDUCATION, EPISTEMIC JUSTICE, CRITICAL PEDAGOGY, DATA
