Decentering the Human in Higher Education: A Posthuman Pedagogical Framework for University Learning

Abstract

Rapid change in technology, ecological crisis and changing epistemological assumptions are also influencing higher education and pose a challenge to the dominance of human-based pedagogies. Conventional models of instruction and education have favoured human reasoning and agency, often excluding the expanding role of non-humans, including artificial intelligence and digital systems, along with environmental systems in educational processes. This research sought to investigate how principles of posthuman pedagogy can be comprehended and utilised in higher education, but more specifically how educators understand and respond to non-human agency in their practise. The study adopted a qualitative research design through semi-structured interviews with 12 University educators (lecturers/faculty) with different institutional backgrounds. The results showed that teachers are becoming more aware of the fact that technologies, artificial intelligence, and ecological systems are active contributors to the learning process, but not neutral instruments. The participants explained that teaching is a relational and distributed practise, whereby knowledge is created through interactions among human and non-human actors. The paper concluded that posthuman pedagogy can be an excellent conceptual as well as practical approach towards rethinking higher education within the framework of technological disruption and global sustainability issues. Posthuman approaches can provide more accepting, ethical, and robust education that can better correspond to the complexity of modern society because they decentre the human and recognise the agency of non-human actors.