From Frankenstein to IoToys: educating between control and autonomy in the age of datafication
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The tension between control and autonomy increasingly shapes contemporary educational models, fostering approaches oriented toward the construction of the "perfect child." This tension evokes the figure of teachers and educators as creators, highlighting the enduring risk of a pedagogy of fabrication, as powerfully anticipated in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and later rearticulated in pedagogical theory (Shelley, 1818; Meirieu, 1996; Biesta, 2009). The figure of the "Frankenstein educator" embodies the illusion that education can fully determine its outcomes, reducing the learner to an object of design, rather than recognizing them as a subject of freedom (Meirieu, 1996). Education is thus progressively exposed to a logic of prediction, optimization, and technical control, shifting away from its relational and open-ended nature. Within this framework, the growing pervasiveness of digital infrastructures in early childhood education intensifies such tensions. Chapter in: Francesco Peluso Cassese (ed.), Algorithmic Heartbeats: Affective Education in the Age of the Fourth Revolution, REN Press – Cares srl, 2026, pp. 325-326. ISBN 979-12-82860-00-0. Volume DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23211262. Section: Teacher Education Between the "Frankenstein Complex" and the D-Generation.
Authors: Malara, Silvestro, Milardi, Fabiana
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224813999