Part I. Foundations and Tensions of Postdigital Learner Agency

Abstract

Postdigital learning theories are marked, in part, by their rejection of clean and discrete divides between digital and non-digital learning environments, blurring the boundaries between the human and the machine, and suggesting a collaborative, hybrid agency. And yet, although it is abundantly clear that the kinds of tools we use influence the ways we think, the overlap between internal and external cognitive agency is not absolute. Individual agency must first exist before a hybrid agency can be achieved. This is particularly true in teacher preparation. Whereas experienced in-service teachers may have well-developed individual pedagogical agency, pre-service teachers are still under development. The tasks that might be easily shared with the machine, such as writing lesson plans and developing rubrics, are the same tasks that foster the development of pedagogical agency. Consequently, teacher educators must use caution when adopting or promoting hybrid pedagogical agency as part of teacher preparation program, because pre-service teachers must first develop their own unique pedagogical agency before they can enter into a hybrid pedagogical agency with a digital pedagogical agent.