Why do so many aspects of digital education today, dashboards, learning analytics, platform ecosystems, surveillance mechanisms, feel not only pervasive, but somehow inevitable? Why do policies and platforms, even those met with critique, persist with an air of taken-for-grantedness? These are not just questions of policy inertia or market dominance; they are questions of imagination. The sense of inevitability that clings to contemporary digital education has roots in a broader shift: the rise of platform capitalism, managerialism, and audit culture in higher education. In such a context, digital systems are not presented as contingent tools, but as the self-evident infrastructure of progress.

To interrogate this apparent inevitability, we turn to the concept of the social imaginary as developed by Charles Taylor (2004). For Taylor, a social imaginary is the way people “imagine their social existence”, the implicit understandings, narratives, and shared moral visions that underlie institutions and give legitimacy to social practices. Unlike ideology, which often refers to codified beliefs or doctrines, a social imaginary is diffuse and embodied. It operates beneath the level of formal discourse, shaping what we perceive as normal, desirable, or even possible.

Education, like all institutions, is constituted within such imaginaries. It is not merely shaped by policies and technologies but by shared assumptions about what knowledge is, what learning looks like, who the learner is, and what education is for. These assumptions are embedded in digital platforms, institutional routines, and even in the language we use, phrases like “student experience,” “learning outcomes,” or “data-driven teaching” are not neutral descriptors, but artefacts of an underlying imaginary. What appears to be “just good practice” or “evidence-based” is always already situated within moral and cultural frameworks that define value and legitimacy.

This blog series builds on the previous two: Reclaiming Digital Pedagogy, which examined how educational technologies encode values and reproduce power, and The Imaginary Institution of Education, which drew on Castoriadis (1997) to explore how institutions both crystallise and constrain the radical imaginary, the human capacity to create new social forms and meanings. Castoriadis reminds us that institutions are not immutable structures but social-historical creations, open to reinvention. Together, these earlier series argued that pedagogical practice must resist the default settings of technological modernity and reclaim its creative and ethical potential.

In this third series, we bring these threads together under the theme of the social imaginary. We ask: What imaginaries underlie current digital education practices? How do they shape our sense of what is possible or desirable in pedagogy? And how might we open these imaginaries to critique, experimentation, and transformation? Our aim is not to offer a singular alternative or blueprint. Rather, it is to deepen our collective capacity to imagine otherwise, to recognise that things could be otherwise, and that pedagogy, at its best, is the collaborative work of imagining and instituting more just, humane, and democratic forms of education.

To understand the foundations of this series, we need to clarify what is meant by a social imaginary. Charles Taylor (2004) defines it as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations”. In other words, a social imaginary consists of the shared understandings that make common practices, institutions, and forms of legitimacy not only possible, but meaningful, including those that govern education, technology, and institutional life.

Importantly, social imaginaries are not abstract theories. They are not typically articulated in philosophical treatises or taught in formal curricula. Instead, they are embedded in everyday practices, symbols, norms, and embodied routines. As Taylor explains, they are carried by images, stories, and legends more than by explicit doctrines (2004). They are lived and felt, rather than formally reasoned through. This distinguishes them from ideologies, which aim to be systematic and explicit. A social imaginary functions more diffusely, operating as the unspoken background that gives coherence to how we live together.

Crucially, these imaginaries are not fixed. They emerge historically, shaped by material conditions and cultural shifts, and they can evolve as new meanings and practices take hold. The imaginary of the modern market economy, for instance, developed alongside the rise of industrial capitalism and the liberal state. Its functioning depends not just on institutional arrangements or economic theory, but on a shared sense of individual autonomy, contractual fairness, and the belief that private interests can contribute to public good. People do not simply exchange goods, they act within a framework of shared expectations about competition, value, labour, and responsibility.

Similarly, modern democratic societies rest on an imaginary of equal citizenship, popular sovereignty, and legitimate public deliberation. These ideas underpin our perceptions of legitimacy: they shape what seems right, fair, or natural in everyday life. Practices and policies gain moral weight when they resonate with the dominant social imaginary, even if they are contested in other respects.

This is equally true in education. The notion that education should be “meritocratic” or “data-driven” reflects imaginaries of individual achievement, neutrality, and technocratic efficiency. These assumptions shape how teaching and learning are designed, evaluated, and experienced. They define the boundaries of what counts as legitimate practice, often before any formal policy is written or any platform deployed.

In this light, to talk about social imaginaries is to surface the taken-for-granted worlds we inhabit. It is to recognise that institutions, technologies, and pedagogical norms do not stand alone, but are sustained by a background imaginary that renders them plausible and desirable. Before we can reimagine education, we must first understand the cultural and moral frameworks that make our current arrangements feel so inevitable, imaginaries which we will explore further in the context of education and digital pedagogy.

To deepen our understanding of the social imaginary, it is useful to set it in dialogue with a related but distinct concept: Cornelius Castoriadis’ notion of the radical imagination. Castoriadis (1997) argues that human societies are not built upon fixed laws or transcendent truths, but on the radical imagination, the collective capacity to create new social meanings, institutions, and ways of being. This imaginative force is not merely individual or artistic, but the ontological foundation of social life. It is what makes the continual reinvention of society possible.

For Castoriadis, every society is constituted by a web of imaginary significations: cultural meanings that cannot be reduced to material necessity or functional logic. These significations, such as justice, equality, or freedom, give shape to institutions and practices, but are themselves historically contingent and socially instituted. Crucially, Castoriadis insists that the radical imagination is not only reproductive but transformative: societies are always capable of reimagining themselves. Educational examples abound. When students and educators co-design curricula that reject standardised metrics in favour of dialogic learning or collective inquiry, they enact the radical imagination by instituting alternative pedagogical values.

Charles Taylor’s account of the modern social imaginary, by contrast, emphasises the stabilisation of meaning within specific historical and cultural contexts. In Modern Social Imaginaries (2004), Taylor explores how shared moral and cultural frameworks underpin institutions such as markets, public spheres, and democratic states. These imaginaries are not articulated as formal theories but are embedded in everyday practices, mutual expectations, and the implicit background assumptions that make modern social life feel coherent and legitimate.

The distinction between the two thinkers lies not in opposition but in emphasis. Castoriadis foregrounds the generative potential of imagination to institute the new. Taylor focuses on how these instituted meanings become collectively recognised and embedded in historical forms. One draws attention to rupture and creation, the other to maintenance and coherence. This divergence reflects a deeper tension between transformation and consolidation in how we understand social life.

Yet when read together, Castoriadis and Taylor offer a powerful lens through which to understand both the resilience and the reconfigurability of educational norms. Taylor helps us see how certain assumptions, such as the value of efficiency, accountability, or meritocracy, are sedimented in the imaginaries that structure digital education. Castoriadis reminds us that these imaginaries are not immutable: they were made, and they can be unmade.

Framing education through both lenses allows us to recognise that pedagogy is never merely a technical or procedural domain. It is a contested space in which inherited norms are reproduced, but also a site where new futures can be imagined into being. Understanding the interplay between the radical imagination and the social imaginary is thus essential for any serious attempt to reclaim education as a space of autonomy, meaning, and collective possibility.

Educational technologies and policies often present themselves as neutral instruments, tools designed to deliver instruction more efficiently, personalise learning, or enhance engagement. Yet beneath this technical veneer lie powerful moral frameworks. As Charles Taylor (2004) argues, social imaginaries are not just collections of shared beliefs; they are grounded in normative visions of what is good, fair, and legitimate. In education, these moral assumptions shape the design of platforms, the language of policy, and the rhythms of everyday pedagogical practice. Even when left unnamed, pedagogy is always a site of moral reproduction.

Take the ideal of autonomy, often invoked to justify “personalised learning” platforms. These systems promise tailored educational experiences, adjusted to learners’ individual preferences and behaviours. But built into this promise is an image of the learner as a rational, self-directing subject, someone who knows their goals, makes optimal choices, and bears responsibility for their own outcomes. This reflects a liberal moral imaginary in which autonomy equates to choice, and success is measured through individual optimisation. The platform’s affordances, its dashboards, recommendation engines, and adaptive pathways, which guide and constrain user behaviour, do not merely serve the learner. They enact a particular vision of what the learner is and ought to be.

Learning analytics offers another instructive example. Often championed for their objectivity and efficiency, these systems monitor student behaviour, predict performance, and trigger interventions. Yet as Williamson and Eynon (2020) argue, the rise of AI in education often builds on a fragmented history and lacks critical reflection on the social and ethical assumptions underpinning these technologies. Far from neutral, learning analytics operationalise particular visions of education, ones in which learning is seen as a predictable process, students are defined by their data profiles, and success is cast in terms of measurable outputs. Within this imaginary, support becomes surveillance. Risk is pathologised. Success is personal. The moral claim is implicit but powerful: education is fair if everyone competes under the same metrics.

These frameworks don’t reside only in the tools. They are reflected in institutional governance structures and policy regimes. For example, many universities now use early alert systems that flag students deemed “at risk” based on attendance, login frequency, or grades. Automated emails may be sent urging them to improve engagement. Staff may be expected to record interventions in standardised formats. These practices reflect a governance logic grounded in behavioural nudging and accountability. But they also express a moral vision, one in which a “good” student is punctual, visible, responsive, and optimally productive.

And yet, these assumptions are rarely named. They become background conditions, baked into platform architecture, embedded in policy language, and enacted in practice. They structure the field of possible pedagogical actions while remaining invisible as values. That is why it is no longer sufficient to treat pedagogy as a neutral or technical domain. It is a site of struggle over what education is for, what kind of person it aims to produce, and what futures it seeks to make possible. Reclaiming pedagogy begins by exposing these moral assumptions and recognising that every educational decision is already an ethical one.

If educators are to reclaim pedagogy as an ethical and imaginative practice, they must learn to see and name the moral background that shapes their everyday decisions. As Taylor (2004) argues, social imaginaries structure our sense of what is normal, legitimate, and desirable. In education, these imaginaries are embedded in technologies, policies, and pedagogical routines, not as external pressures, but as the very frameworks through which teaching and learning become intelligible. To teach or assess is to act within a moral order, often without recognising what that order assumes or how it came to be.

The danger lies in mistaking these culturally contingent imaginaries for neutral infrastructure. A platform that nudges students toward “engagement” may seem pedagogically helpful, but it often encodes assumptions about productivity, discipline, and timeliness. For instance, a system might reward streaks of daily logins or generate red-alert flags for delayed responses, subtly shaping behaviour in line with a managerial moral economy. Similarly, learning analytics dashboards present themselves as objective mirrors of student performance, while reinforcing meritocratic values and behavioural norms. When such artefacts are treated as value-free, educators risk enacting assumptions they neither chose nor examined.

This is why institutional critique, though necessary, is not sufficient. Diagnosing the limits of a policy or the flaws of a platform is vital. But unless these critiques are rooted in a cultural diagnosis, an account of the moral and symbolic frameworks that render these systems intelligible and desirable, they remain partial. Cultural diagnosis means asking not just how systems function, but what kinds of learners, teachers, and futures they presuppose. As Shotter (1993) reminds us, our actions gain meaning within shared conversational and cultural contexts. Without surfacing those contexts, pedagogical change risks reproducing the very conditions it seeks to challenge.

Educators, then, are not merely implementers of policy or users of tools. They are participants in the ongoing reproduction, or transformation, of social imaginaries. Every decision about curriculum design, assessment method, or classroom practice contributes to the moral grammar of education. This awareness need not be paralysing. It opens the possibility of pedagogical choice grounded in ethical clarity. To become conscious of the imaginaries one inhabits is to gain the capacity to imagine otherwise.

Reframing the educator in this way calls for a shift in professional identity. It moves beyond the image of the teacher as technician or content expert and towards the educator as cultural agent. It invites attention not only to outcomes or compliance, but to the meanings and values enacted through practice. This is not about individual guilt or purity. It is about recognising that pedagogy is always entangled with visions of the good, and that within those entanglements, there is space for critical agency.

To reclaim pedagogy, then, is to reclaim the imagination. It is to see education not just as a means to fixed ends, but as a space where ends themselves can be interrogated and reimagined. The educator’s task is not only to teach within the world, but to help make the world otherwise.

Education is not only shaped by platforms, policies, or institutional strategies. It is structured by deeper cultural imaginaries, shared visions of what education is for, what a learner should be, and what makes a practice legitimate. These imaginaries are not always visible, but they are powerfully operative. They determine why certain technologies feel intuitive, why some pedagogical models seem self-evident, and why alternative approaches are often dismissed as unrealistic or inefficient. For example, the widespread use of engagement dashboards in virtual learning environments reflects the assumption that learning can be tracked, quantified, and improved through behavioural feedback loops. As Taylor (2004) reminds us, the social imaginary is not a static set of ideas but a lived background, an ensemble of expectations and images that render our practices intelligible and persuasive.

Throughout this post, we have explored how such imaginaries underpin the moral frameworks of contemporary digital education. From personalised learning systems that valorise individual self-optimisation, to learning analytics platforms that reinforce meritocratic ideals, today’s educational tools are imbued with assumptions about autonomy, efficiency, and fairness. These assumptions are not merely philosophical, they are encoded into technical design, policy discourse, and pedagogical norms. And because they operate below the level of conscious reflection, they are often enacted without question, even by educators committed to justice and equity.

That is the starting point for this series. Pedagogy and the Social Imaginary aims to expose, interrogate, and reimagine the frameworks that shape what digital education becomes. It builds on the previous two series, Reclaiming Digital Pedagogy and The Imaginary Institution of Education, by bringing into dialogue Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary and Cornelius Castoriadis’ notion of the radical imagination. Taylor highlights how shared meanings stabilise into coherent practices, while Castoriadis emphasises our capacity to generate new social forms. Taken together, they offer a lens through which education can be understood not as a neutral mechanism of delivery, but as a dynamic space of cultural production and transformation.

In the next post, we turn to the concept of autonomy, a central but underexamined idea in educational design. Many learning technologies assume a model of the learner as a self-regulating agent: someone who monitors progress, sets goals, and adapts behaviour to meet predefined standards. This managerial vision reduces autonomy to compliance within a fixed system. But as Castoriadis (1997) argues, genuine autonomy is not self-regulation, it is self-institution: the capacity to question inherited norms and to participate in shaping new ones.

By revisiting autonomy through this lens, we aim to open new possibilities for pedagogical design, ones that foster reflective, co-creative, and socially engaged learners. Educators, as participants in and potential challengers of dominant imaginaries, are central to this effort. Reclaiming pedagogy means reclaiming the capacity to imagine and enact alternatives. It is to see education not just as preparation for the world, but as a practice of shaping the world differently, toward more just, open, and humane horizons.

• Castoriadis, C. (1997) The Imaginary Institution of Society. Translated by K. Blamey. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Shotter, J. (1993) Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructionism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Taylor, C. (2004) Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Williamson, B. & Eynon, R. (2020) Historical threads, missing links, and future directions in AI in education. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(3), 223–235. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1798995