Current educational research and policy increasingly emphasise the need to reimagine K-12 teaching and learning in the context of ongoing digital transformations [1]. While digital technologies, and artificial intelligence in particular, are often framed as solutions to educational challenges, their ethical, relational and political implications remain insufficiently examined in everyday pedagogical practices [2]. Therefore, the central research question guiding this paper is: How can sociotechnical imaginaries be critically reclaimed to support more democratic and caring educational futures? This question is explored through three subsidiary questions: What forms of absence, invisibility or silence characterise the use of digital tools and environments in everyday educational practices? How do teachers and learners negotiate, resist or reinterpret dominant narratives of AI-driven innovation? And what pedagogical conditions enable collective reflection on alternative sociotechnical futures?
This paper emerges from a research stay of a Portuguese junior researcher with an Irish leading author in sociotechnical imaginaries to foreground questions of attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness in education with digital technologies, while understanding ethical tensions around digital security, privacy, equity and social justice. These tensions are reshaping the humanistic foundations of educational research and practice and call for renewed inquiry into a Digital Ethics of Care (DEC) grounded in lived educational experiences [3]. Therefore, the paper adopts a narrative-based methodological orientation to explore how negotiation, engagement, trust and responsiveness emerge within digitally mediated learning environments oriented towards more just educational futures.
Our approach recognises sociocultural and ethical practices shaped by power relations, institutional expectations and everyday pedagogical decisions [4]. In doing so, it responds to growing concerns about the depoliticisation of educational practice and the marginalisation of professional judgement under data-driven and automated systems. The research stay pursues the strategic objective of mapping the present through a scoping review of recent literature to identify key ethical, pedagogical and relational challenges and opportunities associated with digital technologies and AI in compulsory education.
Conceptually, the paper is informed by futures studies in education and structured around two interconnected axes: critical pedagogy and ethics of care. From a critical pedagogy perspective, this axis draws attention to processes of depoliticisation within contemporary pedagogical discourse, particularly those that present technological change as inevitable or value-neutral [5]. It examines how power relations are embedded in data-driven technologies and AI systems, and how these technologies shape what counts as knowledge and participation in schools. The ethics of care axis foregrounds relationality, vulnerability and responsibility in educational practice. It explores how care is enacted, constrained and reconfigured in digitally mediated environments [3]. At the same time, the paper considers how care practices can resist or rework dominant sociotechnical imaginaries, creating space for more humane, inclusive and context-sensitive forms of education [6].

Based on a work plan of a research stay, this paper is grounded in a qualitative methodological approach informed by narrative inquiry [7], exploring anticipatory ethics and speculative research. The methodological design draws from a two-month research mobility in an Irish University, providing a situated and dialogic research context. Narrative inquiry constitutes the primary methodological orientation, enabling attention to how meanings around digital innovation, care and responsibility are constructed, negotiated and contested across texts, practices and interactions [8]. The methodological strand consists of a scoping literature review combined with the collection of publicly available digital artefacts. The literature review draws on major international databases, including ERIC, Web of Science and SCOPUS, to map epistemological, methodological and ontological challenges and opportunities associated with digitally enhanced and care-oriented research in education. The scoping review aims to identify dominant narratives, silences and tensions in current research. In parallel, publicly available digital artefacts such as policy documents, institutional strategies, online educational materials and media resources are collected. These sources are analysed narratively and relationally, with attention to how particular imaginaries of digital education are promoted, normalised or rendered invisible. This approach allows connections between discourse, practice and absence to be critically explored, highlighting how ethical concerns related to care, equity and responsibility are articulated or marginalised, imagining engagement and critical reflection on alternative educational futures [9].

It is important to clarify that, at the time of this submission, the research stay and, therefore, the implementation of the proposed work plan have not yet begun. Consequently, this paper does not present empirical findings, but instead outlines expected outcomes that are analytically, conceptually and methodologically oriented. These outcomes are directed towards deepening understanding, opening spaces for critical reflection and supporting more caring and democratic engagements with digital technologies in K-12 education and educational research. Conceptually, the paper is expected to contribute to ongoing debates on digital transformation by advancing the notion of a Digital Ethics of Care as a critical lens for examining AI and digitally mediated educational practices. By bringing together critical pedagogy, ethics of care and futures studies, the paper illuminates how dominant sociotechnical imaginaries often foreground efficiency, optimisation and inevitability, while marginalising relationality and vulnerability. A key outcome is the debate of recurring absences, silences and tensions in discourses and practices that shape how digital technologies are imagined and enacted in everyday educational practice.

[1] Facer, K. (2011). Learning futures: Education, technology and social change (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203817308 [2] Gouseti, A., James, F., Fallin, L., & Burden, K. (2025). The ethics of using AI in K-12 education: A systematic literature review. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 34(2), 161–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2024.2428601 [3] Costello, E. (2024). Postdigital ethics of care. In: Jandrić, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35469-4_68-1 [4] Costello, E., Welsh, S., Girme, P., Concannon, F., Farrelly, T., & Thompson, C. (2023). Who cares about learning design? Near future superheroes and villains of an educational ethics of care. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(3), 460–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2074452 [5] Macgilchrist, F., Allert, H., Cerratto Pargman, T. et al. (2024). Designing postdigital futures: Which designs? Whose futures?. Postdigital Science and Education, 6, 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00389-y [6] Miller, R. (2024). Liberating the human imagination: Futures literacy and the diversification of anticipation. In Handbook of futures studies. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035301607.00015 [7] Clandinin, D. J. (2022). Engaging in narrative inquiry (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003240143 [8] Freitas, A. (2026). Decision-making in narrative inquiry in education: Ethical gathering, transcription, validation and analysis of lived experiences. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 49(1), 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2025.2543261 [9] Malpass, A., Breel, A., Stubbs, J. et al. (2023). Create to collaborate: Using creative activity and participatory performance in online workshops to build collaborative research relationships. Res Involv Engagem 9, 111. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40900-023-00512-8