Critical Perspectives on AI, Digitalisation, and Human-Centred Learning: Towards Reclaiming Digital Education Futures

This Open Access book examines digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation in education, with a particular focus on their implications for human agency, equity, and institutional futures. This Open Access book examines digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI), and automation in education, with a particular focus on their implications for human agency, equity, and institutional futures. The chapters reflect a shared commitment to centring the human in conversations about educational futures, not as a moral constant, but as a provisional figure whose meaning is always under negotiation. They examine how power, inequality, and ideology shape not only the uses of technology, but also the interpretive frames through which its presence is rendered meaningful. They call not just for critique, but for ways of paying attention that remain attuned to context and responsive to the complexities of technological life. The topics and critical framings in this book are of particular interest to readers concerned with the sociopolitical and ethical dimensions of digital transformation in education. Rather than celebrating digitalisation and AI as inherently progressive, this book interrogates who benefits, who is marginalised, and what is lost in the rush toward automation and algorithmic governance. Readers gain a deeper, more critical understanding of how digitalisation, AI, and automation are reshaping education, not just in terms of tools and systems, but in relation to power, ethics, and the human condition.