The embedding of AI and EdTech in visions of a “future-ready” world often excludes those at the margins. In rural India, where intersecting forms of marginalisation continue to restrict access to digital literacy and infrastructure, these narratives of technological transformation risk entrenching existing inequities. This raises urgent questions about who is enabled to participate in knowledge production and whose realities remain absent from the utopian promises of innovation.
This paper foregrounds the human conditions that shape and constrain the rush to digitise education. Using a qualitative methodology, it examines how female teachers in rural India navigate the infrastructural, social, and gendered inequities within their communities. Sixteen teachers, eight from a government-aided school and eight from a privately managed school, participated in semi-structured interviews on their experiences of integrating technology into teaching during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012), informed by van Dijk’s (2005) theory of the digital divide and resource appropriation, illustrates how all three layers of the digital divide: access, skills, and usage, limit meaningful engagement with EdTech. Yet within these constraints, teachers demonstrate agency, improvisation, and resilience.
This presentation offers a critical lens on the assumptions underpinning EdTech-driven reform. It argues for a human-centred approach to educational futures; one that begins not with technological innovation, but with inclusion, equity, and the lived realities of those most often left behind.

Authors:
Juno Felecia Michael Alphonse, Ashoka University, India

About the Presenter(s)
Juno Felecia Michael Alphonse is currently a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University, India. She enjoys reading and research!

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juno-michael-alphonse-a02b351a/

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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