Greener, Smarter, Better? Imaginaries of Postdigital Educational Futures in South Korea
摘要
This chapter examines the imaginaries of postdigital educational futures in South Korea, focusing on the Green Smart Future School (GSFS) Initiative. Launched amid the Covid-19 pandemic as part of Korea’s New Deal policies, the initiative envisions technologically advanced and environmentally sustainable learning environments. Through a critical discourse analysis of nine award-winning GSFS lesson plans, the study explores how teachers imagine the educational future and conceptualise their roles and responsibilities within these imagined futures. Findings reveal that teachers are positioned as facilitators of a technologically driven, market-oriented pedagogy, where digital tools, external experts, and entrepreneurial discourse shape classroom practices. The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), and other digital technologies is framed as essential for fostering student competences for future employment. However, this vision risks reinforcing neoliberal agendas, marginalising teachers’ agency, and promoting an instrumentalist view of education. By situating these findings within broader postdigital debates, this study highlights the socio-technical entanglements shaping contemporary teacher subjectivity and calls for alternative imaginaries that resist technocratic and market-driven narratives. Ultimately, it challenges the presumed inevitability of digital educational futures and advocates for a more critical, localised, and sustainable approach to postdigital education.