Redefining Educational Technology : A Critical Collaborative Inquiry

Bozkurt, Aras and Crompton, Helen and Farrow, Robert and Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes and Dron, Jon and Palalas, Agnieszka (Aga) and Bower, Matt and Xiao, Junhong and Tlili, Ahmed and Henriksen, Danah and Pazurek, Angelica and Huijser, Henk and Chiu, Thomas K. F. and Jandrić, Petar and Jordan, Katy and Curry, John and Kimmons, Royce and Cukurova, Mutlu and Reeves, Thomas and Hwang, Gwo-Jen and Shea, Peter and Lodge, Jason and Weller, Martin and Ng, Davy and Asino, Tutaleni Iita (2026) Redefining Educational Technology : A Critical Collaborative Inquiry. Open Praxis, 18 (2). pp. 192-211. ISSN 1369-9997

Abstract

Educational technologists have not settled on a fixed definition of the field and likely never will. However, attempting to define the field helps to understand the epistemological meanings that shape what the field sees, values, and considers worth pursuing. Through a critical historical review spanning over a century, alongside theoretical engagement with the concepts of entanglement and distributed agency, this paper identifies three key insufficiencies in current educational technology frameworks. These are the persistence of an instrumental-facilitative paradigm that treats technology as a resource deployed by human agents; the theoretical dissolution of the pedagogy-technology dichotomy that existing definitions have not absorbed; and the near-total silence on generative and agentic artificial intelligence, systems that now function not as tools but as active co-participants in educational processes. In response, we propose a new definition: Educational technology, as a field of inquiry and practice, encompasses the research, understanding, design, orchestration, and evaluation of entangled human-technological systems — spanning analog, digital, organizational, social, and agentic dimensions — through which learning and meaning-making are enabled, mediated, supported, and transformed. The field brings together researchers, practitioners, educators, communities, and institutions in ongoing efforts to study and improve educational experiences across formal, non-formal, and informal contexts. The field holds as a core commitment that its theory, research and practice should be ethically grounded and critically reflexive — attending to the societal implications of technological integration, with particular concern for equity and the distribution of agency among all participants in educational processes. These commitments describe what the field aspires to, not a guarantee of how all its practice is enacted. This definition is offered not as a resolution but as a basis for ongoing discussion, as it is best understood as a living definition. The field’s task is not to settle on a definition, but to keep it constantly evolving.