In much of the discourse surrounding educational technology, “innovation” has become an article of faith. Conferences, policy documents, and strategic frameworks are replete with calls for disruption, agility, and transformation - often accompanied by a sense of inevitability about the digital. Yet beneath this energetic rhetoric lies a striking uniformity. As Biesta (2013) observes, educational reform frequently limits itself to questions of efficiency, delivery, and outcomes, rather than engaging with more fundamental questions about the purpose and meaning of education. The imaginary of education - its horizon of possibility - is increasingly confined by the architectures and logics of platform capitalism (Williamson, 2017), even as the tools at our disposal grow more sophisticated.

This contradiction is central to what we might call the crisis of imagination in educational futures. It is not that institutions lack new tools or technologies, but that they lack the capacity - or perhaps the permission - to imagine education differently. The narrowing of pedagogical imagination is evident in the replication of familiar models across new platforms: the LMS that reinforces linear course structures, the AI that marks to predefined rubrics, the dashboard that reduces learning to metrics. These are not simply technical choices but ideological ones, rooted in what Castoriadis (1997) would call an inherited social imaginary.

Cornelius Castoriadis was a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and political theorist whose work foregrounded the centrality of the radical imagination in human life. For Castoriadis, the social world is not given but created; institutions arise not from necessity but from the capacity of human beings to imagine and institute new forms of social life. At the heart of his thought is the distinction between autonomy - the conscious self-institution of society - and heteronomy - the uncritical reproduction of inherited norms (Castoriadis, 1987). Education, he argued, is a key site in which this dialectic plays out: it can either serve as a vehicle for autonomy, cultivating the capacity to question and create, or as a mechanism of social reproduction, closing off possibilities under the guise of reform.

The problem, then, is not merely that educational technologies are poorly implemented or insufficiently critical. It is that they are embedded within an institutional culture that has lost sight of its imaginative potential. The imaginary of education has become managerial, procedural, and technical. In this context, reclaiming imagination is not a luxury - it is a political necessity. It is the means by which educators can begin to imagine otherwise, to see technology not as destiny but as material for reinvention.

Castoriadis offers a radical rethinking of how societies - and their institutions - come into being. Central to his theory is the concept of the radical imagination, which he defines as the uniquely human capacity to create new social meanings, forms, and institutions from “nothing” (Castoriadis, 1987, p. 3; 1997, p. 373). Unlike ordinary creativity or fantasy, the radical imagination is ontological: it does not merely extend the existing world - it produces the world.

This stands in clear contrast to the reproductive imagination, which simply replicates or perpetuates established structures and norms (Castoriadis, 1987, p. 146). While the reproductive imagination underpins routine, habit, and conformity, the radical imagination is the generative force that inaugurates new collective significations.

De Cock et al. (2013) reinforce this ontological framing, describing the radical imagination as “prior to the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘fictitious’” and foundational to our experience of reality itself (De Cock et al., 2013, p. 150). They emphasize its role in enabling democracy and creativity, tracing how imagination can be a form of collective political agency.

For Castoriadis, institutions are not static frameworks imposed upon society; rather, they emerge from shared imaginary significations - symbolic systems or narratives that give institutions their meaning. This includes broad cultural frameworks (e.g. “meritocracy” or “innovation”) as well as more localized conventions (e.g. grading systems, pedagogical rubrics). These significations are not neutral: they shape what is deemed possible, legitimate, and meaningful (Castoriadis, 1987, pp. 167–220).

Importantly, because institutions are historically instituted - created through imaginative acts - they are also open to being instituted otherwise. The LMS, pedagogical frameworks, and assessment regimes are not natural or inevitable; they are contingent social constructs that can be reimagined and re-created. Yet, institutional change demands autonomy - a collective capacity to question, name, and reinvent the social significations that sustain them (Castoriadis, 1987, p. 50).

In emphasising the radical imagination, Castoriadis does not eschew constraint; he recognises that social-historical conditions shape what can be imagined and instituted. Nonetheless, foregrounding the radical imagination remains essential: it allows us to transcend the limitations of heteronomous institutions and re-envision our educational futures.

Educational reform - especially in digital contexts - is often lauded as a means to enhance pedagogy. Advocates promote platformisation, datafication, and predictive analytics as drivers of efficiency, personalisation, and accountability. Yet, in practice, these reforms often narrow pedagogical horizons. Giro-Gracia and Sancho-Gil (2022) describe this as a form of “technological solutionism,” in which black-box systems and algorithmic governance are accepted uncritically, turning broader pedagogical concerns into technical problems.

Evgeny Morozov (2013) expands on this by defining solutionism as the reflex to deploy technological fixes before fully understanding educational challenges - transforming education into a proving ground for superficial innovations. This is deeply heteronomous: teachers and learners become instruments for external institutional ends encoded in digital systems.

The platformisation of education - commonly expressed through Learning Management Systems, dashboards, and AI-driven analytics - reinforces data-centric modes of knowing. Buchanan and McPherson (2019) describe how big data regimes in education reconfigure subjectivity, reducing learners to data points and shaping behaviour through subtle mechanisms of surveillance and nudging. Efficiency becomes a mode of closure: curricula are streamlined, complexity is filtered out, and the possibility for pedagogical experimentation is diminished.

This instrumental model aligns with Castoriadis’ critique of heteronomy - the uncritical acceptance of inherited institutional logics. Where institutions are allowed to reproduce existing significations without reflection, they foreclose the possibility of re-creation and innovation (Castoriadis, 1987, pp. 10–11, 50–51).

Reclaiming pedagogical possibility thus demands resisting this closure. It entails creating spaces of uncertainty, experimentation, and collective imagination, where technology is treated as a site of possibility - not destiny.

In reclaiming educational imagination, we must recognize education not as a fixed system but as a space for institutional invention. As Biesta (2013) stresses, this requires revisiting education’s purpose - to interpret, question, and decide what kind of world we wish to inhabit. Digital tools should serve that purpose, not confine it.

Reopening pedagogical imagination. Castoriadis reminds us that institutional forms - classrooms, curricula, LMSes - are not pre-ordained but historically instituted through our collective beliefs and practices (Castoriadis, 1987). Recognizing their contingency enables us to imagine otherwise (Castoriadis, 1997), beyond the default of data-driven, platformized structures.

Educators as imaginative inventors. Teachers and students alike are engaged in collective meaning-making (Freire, 1970). Noddings (2015) emphasizes the teacher’s role in naming reality. This naming is creative: educators can propose, test, and iterate alternative learning arrangements. Through dialogue, narrative and experimentation, educators reclaim agency as institutional inventors.

Practical gestures in imaginative pedagogy

• Co-creation with learners: Embracing participatory design in classroom design and syllabi (Katz, 2021) fosters agency - a form of self-institution that enacts autonomy.
• Speculative design pedagogies: Graduate-level courses in speculative design engage students in world-making exercises about future educational possibilities (Bianchi & Canepa, 2024; Lab et al., 2024). Such courses promote critical reflection on technology, power, and ethics.
• Non-instrumental learning spaces: Inspired by Ratto’s (2011) concept of critical making (Wikipedia, 2025), assignments that foreground dialogue, material experimentation, or arts-based inquiry support deeper engagement and resist metric-driven mandates. Critical making challenges technological determinism through embodied creativity in educational practice.

Together, these gestures demonstrate that reopening educational imagination is not abstract - it is practical. They showcase how educators can operationalize Castoriadis’ vision: by using imagination as a social force in the world (Castoriadis, 1997), reclaiming learning as collective self-creation.

Critical Digital Pedagogy (CDP), as articulated by Hybrid Pedagogy and its contributors (Stommel, Friend and Morris, 2020), insists that technology-enhanced education must be defined by questions rather than tools. It’s about reclaiming agency - treating digital platforms not as neutral infrastructure but as sites of political engagement and ethical pedagogy.

In Reclaiming Digital Pedagogy we emphasised challenging platform defaults and reclaiming learner and educator agency. CDP aligns closely here: it affirms that imagination is not an escape from technology but a means to repurpose it toward democratic ends - for instance, by collectively redesigning assignments, resisting surveillance metrics, or leveraging open tools to foreground care, dialog, and reflection.

Tim Fawns (2022) offers a useful framing in An Entangled Pedagogy, urging educators to view teaching and technology as mutually shaping rather than sequential. The act of reimagining digital tools within pedagogical settings is itself an enactment of agency - showing how imagination operates in real-world classrooms.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2006, 2011) underscores that software and platforms carry embedded political logics and that habitually using them without critique reinforces existing power relations (“Updat­ing to Remain the Same”). Reconnecting with CDP involves interrogating these logics, refusing passive adoption, and instead using design and reflection to shift them.

Thus, imagination in digital pedagogy is radical and practical: it catalyses democratic transformation of tools, curricula, and practices. It aligns with Castoriadis’ idea that institutions are instituted - and can be re-instituted - through collective creativity. By linking CDP with radical imagination, we reclaim digital education as a political and ethical project, not a technical inevitability.

As we draw this post to a close, we must re-affirm a core conviction: the future of education is not determined by technology, but by our collective capacity to imagine otherwise. The tools we deploy are contingent - they embody and surface the imaginaries we choose. In this, they are not destiny, but material for reinvention.

Gert Biesta (2005) challenges the dominance of the term “learning” in contemporary educational discourse, arguing that it reduces education to an individualised, instrumental process stripped of its normative and democratic dimensions. In place of this “learnification,” he calls for a reinvigoration of educational language that foregrounds teaching, responsibility, and subject-formation. When we foreground imagination, we align with this call - affirming that education is a social-historical undertaking, not a set of technical problems awaiting optimisation through apps or platforms.

Cornelius Castoriadis offers a vision consistent with this frame. For him, our social world is brought into being through imaginary significations, and autonomy depends on our willingness to interrogate - and invent - these significations. Waltzing into new technological futures uncritically ensures the reproduction of the heteronomous institution; instead, educators must see themselves as co-instituters - participants in the social-historical project of instituting meaning.

This is our invitation: to reclaim the educational imaginary as worth wanting. Educators, learners, designers - together - can open the walls of default educational logics and reimagine learning spaces as sites of democratic possibility. The aim is not innovation for its own sake, but imagination oriented toward collective freedom.

In the next post, we will deepen our engagement with autonomy and the formation of the subject. We will investigate how technology-enhanced learning environments either empower or constrain subjectivation, and explore pedagogical approaches that cultivate autonomy - not compliance - through digital means.

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