Rethinking education in the algorithmic age: a model for AI digital literacy and identity

In an increasingly polarised socio-political landscape, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is positioned as both a threat to conventional forms of learning and assessment in educational institutions and a reconfiguration of educational practice within postdigital contexts. This paper critically examines how AI can reshape knowledge production, pedagogy, and learner subjectivity, arguing that it can become an epistemic actor within evolving relations of power. Drawing on Foucauldian discourse theory, we conceptualise educational systems as contested sites where algorithmic logics and the imperatives of surveillance capitalism become spaces for critical literacy. In response, we introduce the PRAXAI pedagogical model through examples from our everyday teaching practice with educators. We introduce a critical literacy model combining human ingenuity with AI’s power as co-creator, mediated by the pull of capitalist surveillance and siloed algorithms that narrow our understanding of the world. PRAXAI advances critical digital literacies that enable learners to interrogate the conditions under which algorithmic systems shape meaning-making and identity. We argue that current policy responses must engage with the interplay of technology, power and subjectivity. We call for educational frameworks that combine insights from critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and critical literacy theory in ways that sustain democratic values and support critically reflexive learners.