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28 SES 10 A: Researching Digital Natives
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28. Sociologies of Education
Paper Adolescent Negotiations of Educational Injustices on Digital Platforms 1: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany; 2: Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany Presenting Author:Current research on youth and processes of politicization highlights the importance of social media as a key space for the articulation, negotiation, and collectivization of experiences (Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik 2021; Kligler-Vilenchik & Literat 2024), particularly with regard to experiences perceived as unjust (Jalli 2025; Kelly 2018). Digital platforms enable young people to publicly express grievances, connect individual experiences to broader narratives, and potentially transform personal concerns into shared issues. At the same time, these spaces must be understood in relation to their economic logics, algorithmic structuring, and platform-specific affordances, which shape visibility, interaction, and emotional intensity (Brown et al., 2024; Neumayer & Rossi, 2018). These environments are intertwined with other central contexts of youth socialization and everyday life (boyd et al. 2014; Byron 2021); one of these being school and the education system in general. School plays a significant role in young people’s daily experiences and constitutes a social institution in which perceptions of injustice frequently emerge. Experiences of unfair treatment, unequal opportunities, disciplinary practices, or structural exclusion can produce strong emotional responses and shape young people’s understandings of social order and legitimacy (Seider et al. 2023; Wellgraf 2023; Yeh et al. 2024). Despite its recognized impact on young people’s lives, school-related injustice has so far received limited attention in research on digital youth participation and political expression. We thus seek to explore young people's engagement with perceived experiences of injustice within school and the education system and ask to what extent they perceive, discuss, and seek to address the injustices associated with it. Particularly, we focus on expressions of injustice on social media platforms, as they offer low-threshold opportunities to articulate feelings of injustice and at the same time offer a potentially large public to receive and engage with these articulations. The concrete framework for our empiric research is furthermore based on two assumptions: First, experiences of injustice are particularly emotionally charged, and emotions are intertwined within perceptions of injustice through affective responses like anger, frustration or shame (Ahmed 2014, Shklar 1990; Hochschild 2024). Second, social media platforms not only enable but enforce emotionally charged content and contribute to the formation of “affective publics” (Papacharissi 2015). While there is a growing discourse on politics, emotionalization and social media, less attention has been shed on the ways in which these affective dynamics relate to injustices young people personally experience outside of digital spaces, particularly within institutional contexts such as school. In our study, we analyze how young people articulate and negotiate experiences of school-related injustice on social media, focusing on the interplay between emotions, digital affordances, and differing forms of collective and individualized engagement. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This contribution focuses on the qualitative-reconstructive analyses of juvenile articulations on digital platforms which are part of a multisited and ongoing research project regarding negotiations of injustice across multiple contexts. The primary data source thus consists of articulations by young people on digital platforms, collected from Instagram and TikTok in English and German. These platforms were selected due to their popularity and widespread use among young people (mpfs 2024) and their particular affordances for narrating and negotiating lived experiences through audio-visual expression. The sample includes 50 posts. Data collection followed a multi-step sampling strategy: initially, posts were identified through hashtag-based and free-text searches on Instagram and TikTok using platform-specific search functions. In addition, further posts were identified based on references from focus group discussions conducted as part of the broader research project during the same period. This triangulated sampling approach allowed for the inclusion of both highly visible, platform-curated content and posts that are embedded in peer-based interpretive contexts, broadening the empirical scope beyond algorithmically prominent material. With regard to the category of “youth,” no strict selection based on the age of the users was applied, as this was hardly feasible based on the available metadata; instead, we conceptualize social media as a fundamentally youth-relevant context. By focusing on school as a thematic field intrinsically connected to youth, we assume that most posts are authored by adolescents or young adults or, even when this is not the case, relate to experiences that are salient and relevant to them as recipients. Data analysis consists of a two-staged process. After an initial open and iterative coding adapted to identify central categories and interpretive frameworks, selected posts are subjected to an in-depth interpretive analysis using the method of Objective Hermeneutics (Oevermann et al. 1987). These case-oriented analyses focused on the sequential structure of the posts, including textual, visual, and audiovisual elements, to reconstruct latent meaning structures and implicit orientations underlying the explicit articulation of injustice (ibid.). This enables both a systematic comparison across cases and a fine-grained reconstruction of individual contributions. The findings presented will largely be focused on contrasting cases that were subject to in depth reconstruction. All data are anonymized; usernames, images, and identifiable references are removed or altered to protect the privacy of content creators. The study follows established ethical guidelines for qualitative research using social media data (Franzke et al. 2020). Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The results of our research contribute to closing a significant research gap by exploring the impact of unfair treatment, unequal opportunities, disciplinary practices and structural exclusion in school on young people's lives, and how they make sense of educational injustices. The results will therefore provide insights into the emotional responses of adolescents to educational injustices, as well as the extent to which digital media is used by young people to express, negotiate and process experiences of injustice at school. The findings will also shed light on the significance of affordances and algorithmic curation for articulating adolescent experiences. Understanding the dynamics of participation within these digital spaces will reveal opportunities and barriers to accessing educational spaces, contributing to a broader understanding of digital orders. Thus, our research will contribute to the broader discourse on educational and algorithmic injustices by presenting young people's perspectives. The presentation focusses on two contrasting cases of juvenile engagement with the current education system and the injustices associated with it. First, we examine collective and politicized practices of criticizing the school system, which raise fundamental questions about the role of education in times of societal transformation (Biesta 2022). Second, we analyze individualized forms of criticism that are primarily sparked by individual experiences of injustice in school articulated as biographical or situational grievances rather than collective demands. By bringing findings from education and youth research into conversation with perspectives from emotion theory and media theory, we aim to highlight the connections between experiences of injustice, the emotions associated with them, and their articulation and processing on digital platforms. Our qualitative-reconstructive approach, which combines different methods of collecting data, enables a profound analysis of young people's lives as they unfold on digital platforms, as well as deeper structures of meaning that refer to overarching social orders and structures. References Biesta, G. (2021). World-centred education. London/New York: Routledge. Boyd, D., Levy, K., & Marwick, A. (2014). The Networked Nature of Algorithmic Discrimination. In S. P. Gangadharan & V. Eubanks (Eds.), Data & Discrimination: Collectes Essays (pp. 43-57). Open Technology Institute. Brown, Y., Pini, B., & Pavlidis, A. (2024). Affective design and memetic qualities: Generating affect and political engagement through bushfire TikToks. Journal of Sociology, 60(1), 121-137. https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833221110267 Byron, P. (2021). Digital Media, Friendship and Cultures of Care. Routledge. Franzke, A. S., Bechmann, A., Zimmer, M., Ess, C. & the Association of Internet Researchers (2020). Internet Research. Ethical Guidelines, 3.0, 1-82. https://aoir.org/reports/ethics3.pdf Hochschild, A. (2024). Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right. The New Press. Jalli, N. (2025). Viral Justice: TikTok Activism, Misinformation, and the Fight for Social Change in Southeast Asia. Social Media + Society, 11(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251318122 Kelly, L. L. (2018). A snapchat story: how black girls develop strategies for critical resistance in school. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(4), 374–389. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1498352 Kligler-Vilenchik, N., & Literat, I. (2024). Not your parents’ politics: Understanding young people’s political expression on social media. Oxford University Press. Krogh, Søren Christia, Jensen, Sune Qvotrup, Larsen, M. (2024) Girl Culture, Unspectacular Resistance and Social Media – A Study of How Adolescent Girls Undo Emphasized Femininity through Shitposting, Journal of Youth Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2024.2392631 Literat, I., & Kligler-Vilenchik, N. (2021). How Popular Culture Prompts Youth Collective Political Expression and Cross-Cutting Political Talk on Social Media: A Cross-Platform Analysis. Social Media + Society, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211008821 Neumayer, C., & Rossi, L. (2018). Images of protest in social media: Struggle over visibility and visual narratives. New Media & Society, 20(11), 4293–4310. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818770602 mpfs (2024). JIM-Studie 2024: Jugend, Information, Medien. LFK, Medienanstalt Rheinland-Pfalz. https://mpfs.de/studie/jim-studie-2024/ Oevermann, U., Allert, T., Konau, E., Krambeck, J. (1987): Structures of Meaning and Objective Hermeneutics. In Meja, V., Misgeld, D., Stehr, N. (Eds.), Modern German sociology (pp.436-448). New York, NY: Columbia University Press Seider, S., Graves, D., El-Amin, A., Kelly, L., Soutter, M., Clark, S., Jennett, P. & Tamerat, J. (2023). The development of critical consciousness in adolescents of color attending “opposing” schooling models. Journal of Adolescent Research, 38(1), 3-47. https://doi.org/10.1177/07435584211006466 Shklar, J. N. (1990). The Faces of Injustice. Yale University Press. Wellgraf, S. (2023). That Sinking Feeling: On the Emotional Experience of Inferiority in Germany’s Neoliberal Education System. Berghahn Books. 28. Sociologies of Education
Paper Spaces for Agency Performed Through Planning the Digitalisation of Education - the NextGenerationEU and the National Recovery Plans´ Varied Positionalities 1: Trnava University, Slovakia; 2: Charles University, Czech Republic (Czechia); 3: UIDEF, IE-ULisboa; 4: School of Philosophy and Education, Aristotele University of Thessaloniki, Greece; 5: Department of Didactics and Educational Organization, University of Barcelona, Spain; 6: Department of Education, University of Cyprus Presenting Author:This conference proposal is based on a comparative analysis of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRP) of six European countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) to identify therein the agential spaces of education, explicitly or implicitly articulated within their anticipated architecture of digitalisation of education. We thus explore how conceptions of the digitalisation of education, as articulated within the framework of the Next Generation EU (NGEU) strategy, are re-territorialised in the contents and architectures of individual national recovery plans. We conceive the problem of planning digitalisation of education and the possibility of action as a conjoined spatial and imaginational problem. The sociotechnical imaginary (STI) is a term used to describe the connection between technological and material developments and the social arrangements that inspire and sustain their production (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015). These imaginaries are not innocent fantasies that have little effect on reality; even though they are not followed in litera, these imaginaries are highly normative, setting what is “normal” to think about and to do in education and, through this, governing what is actually done (Saari, 2022). Sociotechnical imaginaries are thus situated within the tradition of science and technology studies (STS), aiming to understand techno-futuring as performative, partial, and political (Hendriks et al., 2025). However, social scientific research has also documented the emergence of a “new order of spatio-temporal continuity for forms of economic, political and cultural life today” (Lury et al., 2012, p. 4), characterised by the increasing significance of practices of digital mediation. This trend mobilised technology in a new way and led to the reformulation of processes, ideas, institutions, and cultural objects (Lury et al., 2012, p. 9), including what is made amenable for change or reform, notably education (Hartong, 2018). This implies the enactment of new patterns of relations between people and things (Allen, 2016; Decuypere et al., 2022). This topological perspective considers spaces as not predetermined (i.e. as following the imaginaries of the EU) and as created through the spatial practices of “approaching”, “reaching”, and “folding in” (Allen, 2016). We thus view the EU’s influence on member states through the NG-EU as not merely a top-down seepage of programmes. We rather traced and compared the emergence of different agential spaces in these various settings and sites, as articulated and envisioned in the national RRPs. This is why we approach the latter not as “translations” of the EU’s imaginaries, but as a re-spatialisation of education change processes, containing, among other possible twists, also completely new agential spaces of education (alongside sedimented ones) or the reterritorialization of distorted administrative settings that have evolved from such re-spatialisation in a broader sense. Drawing on this, we aim to compare the ways of anticipation of what education can /must do and what is rendered (in)visible to make these unknown futures known and real. Therefore, to disentangle the social relations that enable such anticipation (futuring) and, hence, the specific realisation of digitalisation in education, we need to know the contents of these sociotechnical imaginaries, as well as the topological relations that sustain the articulation and composition of the founding elements that render these imaginaries reasonable. These are the topological practices of reach, proximity, and distance that shape social relations between the subjects of education (actors) and educational objects within conceived spaces in particular ways. Bringing social topology alongside socio-technical imaginaries as analytical heuristics offers the advantage of capturing a novel way in which influence, through and on education, is performed via programs such as the NG-EU. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used Digitalisation imaginaries are communicated in European culture predominantly through normative documents with varying degrees of bindingness, from politically official state documents in the form of law, through “white papers”, national strategies, and so on, to recommendations from non-governmental and interest organisations. These normative documents, be they “authorised” or “non-authorised” set the model of the world worth acting on (Levinson, Winstead, & Sutton 2018). The content and architecture of these documents are consequential for both imagination and action (Turner, 2001). The selection of the NRRPs of Cyprus, Czechia, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain was based on three criteria. First, several of these states belong to the solidarity coalition, namely Portugal, Spain, and Greece, whose governments advocated a strengthened EU-level fiscal response during the negotiations of the RRF, in contrast with the sovereignty coalition characterised by a more intergovernmental approach to EU economic governance (Fabbrini, 2023). Second, at the turn of 2020, these countries were not positioned among the EU’s structurally central economies; instead, they represent member states with lower to the EU average GDP per capita and diverse developmental trajectories within the EU’s economic architecture. Thirdly, these countries demonstrated a notable lack of responsiveness in the EU context, particularly in education, during the initial stages of the pandemic (Bohle & Eihmanis, 2022; Rodríguez-Teruel et al., 2025) and their experiences with the digitalisation of distance education during the pandemic often diverged from the technological optimism espoused by the EU in its campaigns and programmes (incl. the NG-EU). The initial phase of research entailed a discursive analysis of each national NRRP, conducted at its three levels as delineated by Humes (2000, p. 48): 1. at the level of ‘text’ identifying central concepts and metaphors; 2. at the level of voice, connecting metaphors with actors; and 3. at the level of ‘narrative’, taking into account legitimization strategies, future promises, and utopias. A comprehensive topology of education digitalisation for each NRRP was constructed through discursive analysis. In constructing social topologies, analytical categories from the spatial approach in the sociology of education (Robertson, 2010) are drawn upon, including categories of ‘territory’, ‘place’, ‘scale’, ‘network’ and ‘positionality’ (Jessop et al., 2008), and intensive and extensive spatial practices (Allen, 2016). In the concluding analytical step, these topologies have been compared with the spatial imaginaries of digitalisation contained in the NG-EU initiative. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Significantly, expansive strategies based on the spread of digitalisation were identified in the social topologies of NRRPs. However, the material and curricular expansion of digitalisation does not concern only existing educational spaces and environments, since new spaces and institutional modalities are also emerging in the representations of digitalisation architecture. Therefore, it is no longer only a process of expansion, but also of a fundamental re-territorialisation of the education. New hierarchies and relationship structures affect not only the reach and scope of schools' agency, but also the permeability of boundaries between institutions and organisations. Findings suggest that the territories of conventional schools are subject to spatial disruption, with boundaries becoming permeable and less clearly defined. In some NRRPs, new patterns of clustering of schools and education professionals are being envisioned following re-territorialisation processes, thereby promoting the architecture of networking. Furthermore, re-territorialisation facilitates alterations in positionality within prevailing structures, whilst concomitantly affecting modifications to the system of power and social relations. Notably, in some national cases, the process leads to the establishment of new positions for old and new actors. However, the NRRPs differ in their internal architecture and the digitalisation spaces they have conceived. This indicates a fundamental and unique shift, despite all documents referring to the same criteria based on the NG-EU initiative and despite an expectation for a shared digitalisation vision for this strategy. Transnationally shared digitalisation imaginaries decompose in space and time into unique educational architectures and landscapes, which, instead of EU utopias, also allow us to consider heterotopias. This problem raises broader questions concerning the form and nature of Europeanisation in education today (Lawn & Grek, 2012): whether or not the common European starting points expressed in the criteria of digitalisation as the main pillar are succeeding in achieving homogeneity in the national architectures of educational change. References Allen, J. (2016). Topologies of Power. Routledge. Bohle, D., & Eihmanis, E. (2022). East Central Europe in the COVID-19 crisis. East European Politics, 38(4), 491–506. https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2122051 Decuypere, M., Hartong, S., & van de Oudeweetering, K. (2022). Introduction―Space-and time-making in education: Towards a topological lens. European Educational Research Journal, 21(6), 871–882. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041221076306 Fabbrini, S. (2023). Going beyond the pandemic: ‘next generation eu’ and the politics of sub-regional coalitions. Comparative European Politics 21, 64–81, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-022-00302-8 Hartong, S. (2018). Towards a topological re-assemblage of education policy? Observing the implementation of performance data infrastructures and ‘centers of calculation’ in Germany. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 16(1), 134–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2017.1390665 Hendriks, A., Karhunmaa, K., & Delvenne, P. (2025). Shaping the future: A conceptual review of sociotechnical imaginaries. Futures, 170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103607 Humes, W. (2000). The Discourses of Educational Management. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 1(1), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203463383 Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. The University of Chicago Press. Jessop, B., Brenner, N., & Jones, M. S. (2008). Theorizing sociospatial relations. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26(3), 389–401. https://doi.org/10.1068/d9107 Lawn, M., Grek, S. (2012). Europeanizing Education: Governing a New Policy Space. Southampton: Symposium Books. Lury, C., Parisi, L., & Terranova, T. (2012). Introduction: The Becoming Topological of Culture. Theory, Culture & Society, 29(4–5), 3–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276412454552 Robertson, S. L. (2010). ‘Spatializing’ the sociology of education: Stand-points, entry-points, vantage-points. In M. W. Apple, S. J. Ball, & L. A. Gandin (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Sociology of Education (pp. 15–26). Routledge. Rodríguez-Teruel, J., Real-Dato, J., Verney, S. (2025). Southern Europe in The Covid-19 Pandemic. The First Phase. Routledge. Saari, A. (2022). Topologies of desire: Fantasies and their symptoms in educational policy futures. European Educational Research Journal, 21(6), 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904120988389 Turner, S. M. (2001). Texts and the institutions of municipal government: The power of texts in the public process of land development 1. Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, 5286, 297–325. https://doi.org/10.1080/10245280108523562 28. Sociologies of Education
Paper The Autonomous Learner in the Age of Generative AI: Rethinking Autonomy and Self-Directed Learning Through Human-AI Agency in East Asian Contexts 1: Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Academy of Future Education; 2: University of Liverpool, School of Computer Science and Informatics Presenting Author:Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has been increasingly adopted in higher education to enhance learner autonomy and support students’ self-directed and self-regulated learning (SDL/SRL) (Lan & Zhou, 2025; Navas Bonilla et al., 2025). These constructs refer to learners’ capacity to direct their learning, from goal setting and resource management in SDL (Garrison, 1997) to monitoring and strategy use in SRL (Zimmerman, 2002). Recent reviews suggest that AI-enabled tools support SDL/SRL processes by helping students plan activities, seek explanations, and revise work (Achuthan, 2025; Banihashem et al., 2025; Lan & Zhou, 2025). However, these emerging studies also indicate that GenAI does not merely assist learning but actively participates in decision-making, reconfiguring how autonomy unfolds. While European policies, such as the Digital Education Action Plan (European Commission, 2020) and the OECD’s (2025) Education for Human Flourishing, emphasise human-centred AI under human oversight, this framing overlooks how agency is increasingly distributed across human and nonhuman actors in complex sociotechnical configurations.
Existing research on GenAI-supported SDL/SRL largely frames GenAI as a tool or scaffold for enhancing individual cognitive and metacognitive processes, with SDL/SRL operationalised as improvements in planning, monitoring, and strategy use. For example, Nguyen et al.’s (2024) research on academic writing with GenAI highlights how AI complements learners’ planning and executive functions through dynamic interaction, while Pan et al.’s (2026) studies on chatbot-supported reading emphasise personalised scaffolding that progressively strengthens procedural management and SRL strategy use. While these approaches demonstrate positive motivation for learning, they rarely examine how agency and autonomy are redistributed when AI systems actively suggest goals, reframe tasks, or evaluate progress. Conceptually, this leaves limited space to examine whether autonomy remains entirely human or becomes shared and reconfigured through human-AI interaction. Methodologically, the field is dominated by instrumental and psychological models that capture SDL as an individual capacity, typically through self-report or outcome-based designs, rather than as a relational process emerging through engagement with GenAI.
The purpose of this study is to examine how learner autonomy and SDL/SRL are sociotechnically reconfigured in GenAI-related educational research. We introduce a lens from Science and Technology Studies (STS) to complement psychological perspectives on SDL/SRL. By utilising concepts such as sociotechnical configuration (Suchman, 2007), relational agency (Edwards, 2005), and human-nonhuman assemblages (Gourlay & Oliver, 2018), this research shifts the focus from internal cognitive states to the distributed interactions within the learning environment. The value of this approach is to treat GenAI not as a neutral tool but as an active participant that scripts learner behaviour, enabling SDL to be understood as a co-produced outcome of students, GenAI systems, and institutional norms. Learner autonomy is reconfigured as a relational achievement enacted within the unique cultural and digital learning contexts of higher education (Selwyn, 2010).
This study focuses on East Asian Higher Education (EAHE) literature because the intersection of its rapid GenAI adoption with environments frequently stereotyped as low-autonomy and exam-oriented offers a unique vantage point to observe shifts in agency. By investigating how autonomy is negotiated within these strong institutional and cultural structures (Lin et al., 2021; Phan, 2012), the study seeks to critically examine how learner autonomy and SDL/SRL are being reconfigured through human-AI relations in EAHE studies following the rise of GenAI. This approach allows for an open dialogue between East Asian empirical realities and European theoretical frameworks, ultimately contributing to a more globally inclusive understanding of the relational agency between humans and AI in higher education. The guiding research question is therefore: How are learner autonomy and SDL/SRL reconfigured through human-AI agency in East Asian higher education studies following the emergence of GenAI? Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used This study performs a configurative literature review and sets STS as an analytical sensibility. Configurative reviews are particularly suitable for research fields that are conceptually fragmented and theoretically diverse, where the aim is to interpret, organise, and theorise how phenomena are understood (Gough et al., 2012). This approach is especially appropriate for the present study, which sits at the intersection of education research, STS, and artificial intelligence, where multiple epistemic traditions coexist and often operate with different assumptions about learners, technologies, and agency. Because configurative reviews are inherently exploratory and iterative, and attentive to heterogeneity, seeking patterns across differences, they enable the identification of recurring patterns across diverse perspectives (Barnett-Page & Thomas, 2009). This makes the approach well-suited for tracing how learner autonomy and SDL/SRL are variously conceptualised in early GenAI in educational research (2023-2026), a period marked by the widespread application of GenAI technologies in education, and allows us to develop concepts that provide enlightenment through new ways of understanding. The review draws on peer-reviewed literature retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science, ensuring coverage across education and interdisciplinary research. The corpus includes English-language publications, with the selective inclusion of Chinese-language scholarship where relevant, in order to capture perspectives from East Asian higher education contexts. Search terms are organised into three clusters: (1) generative AI and learning; (2) STS-related concepts; and (3) regional context. This strategy supports transparency and ensures systematic yet flexible coverage of relevant debates. Data analysis follows thematic synthesis as outlined by Thomas and Harden (2008), comprising three stages: line-by-line coding of relevant textual material, the development of descriptive themes, and the generation of analytical themes. While descriptive themes remain close to the primary literature, analytical themes involve a higher level of interpretation, enabling the reviewer to move beyond individual studies and generate new conceptual insights. In this study, thematic synthesis focuses on recurring patterns in how agency is articulated, how control and responsibility are configured, and how AI’s role in learning is represented. Analytically, the study adopts an STS-informed interpretive sensibility, attending to how generative AI is positioned in the literature, as a tool, partner, or authority, and how learner autonomy is framed as a distributed sociotechnical configuration rather than an individual possession. The STS analytical lens allows us to critically reflect on how heterogeneous scholarly voices coalesce into particular “figures” of the autonomous, self-regulated learner in the current GenAI era. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings The study is expected to offer a conceptual reframing of SDL/SRL as a relational and sociotechnical process, rather than an individual cognitive capacity. By synthesising early GenAI-in-education scholarship through an STS-informed configurative review, the analysis will develop a typology of human-AI configurations in SDL, distinguishing how agency, responsibility, and decision-making are distributed across learners, AI systems, and institutional arrangements. This typology will clarify emerging tensions between autonomy, delegation, and automation, showing how ideals of learner independence are reworked rather than replaced in AI-mediated learning environments. Empirically, the review is expected to identify dominant narratives and problem framings within EAHE research on GenAI and SDL, highlighting how learner autonomy is variously idealised, constrained, or technologized. The analysis will make visible the cultural, institutional, and policy mediations shaping these framings, including examination regimes, data governance norms, and pedagogical traditions. In doing so, the study offers a nuanced account of how autonomy is configured differently, rather than less fully, in EAHE contexts. For European researchers and policymakers, the findings provide a critical point of comparison. European AI and education policies (European Commission, 2025, Art. 4; Gattupalli, 2025) frequently foreground personalised learning and learner competencies, implicitly relying on liberal-individualist models of autonomy even as they articulate human-centred ethical values. East Asian cases complement these assumptions by revealing alternative configurations of autonomy that emphasise relational responsibility, guided self-regulation, and institutional coordination. The study’s outcomes can therefore inform European AI policy discussions, support culturally responsive educational technology design, and enrich comparative education research by demonstrating why autonomy should be understood as contextually situated and sociotechnically produced, rather than universally defined. References Achuthan, K. (2025). Artificial intelligence and learner autonomy: a meta-analysis of self-regulated and self-directed learning. Frontiers in Education, 10. Banihashem, S. K., et al. (2025). A systematic mapping review at the intersection of artificial intelligence and self-regulated learning. Int J Educ Technol High Educ, 22. Barnett-Page, E., & Thomas, J. (2009). Methods for the synthesis of qualitative research: a critical review. BMC Med Res Methodol, 9. Edwards, A. (2005). Relational agency: Learning to be a resourceful practitioner. Int J Educ Res, 43(3). European Commission. (2020). Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027. European Commission. (2025). AI Act: AI talent, skills and literacy. Garrison, D. R. (1997). Self-Directed Learning: Toward a Comprehensive Model. Adult Educ Quart, 48(1). Gattupalli, S. (2025). AI, Education & Society: November 2025 in Review. Society & AI. Gough, D., et al. (2012). Clarifying differences between review designs and methods. Systematic Reviews, 1. Gourlay, L., & Oliver, M. (2018). Student engagement in the digital university: Sociomaterial assemblages. Routledge. Lan, M., & Zhou, X. (2025). A qualitative systematic review on AI empowered self-regulated learning in HE. npj Sci Learn, 10. Lin, L., et al. (2021). Online Self-Regulated Learning Profiles: Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners. Front Psychol, 12. Navas Bonilla, C., et al. (2025). The Future of Education: A Systematic Literature Review of SDL with AI. Future Internet, 17. Nguyen, A., et al. (2024). Human-AI collaboration patterns in AI-assisted academic writing. Stud High Educ, 49. OECD. (2025). Education for human flourishing: A conceptual framework. OECD Publishing. Pan, M., et al. (2026). Self-regulation plus individual interests? A study on a GenAI platform for reading. Comput Educ, 241. Phan, T. T. T. (2012). Teacher autonomy and learner autonomy: An East Asian’s perspective. Int J Soc Sci Humanit, 2. Selwyn, N. (2010). Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology. J Comput Assist Learn, 26. Suchman, L. A. (2007). Human-machine reconfigurations: Plans and situated actions. Cambridge University Press. Thomas, J., & Harden, A. (2008). Methods for the thematic synthesis of qualitative research. BMC Med Res Methodol, 8. Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner: An Overview. Theory Pract, 41(2). | ||