The work technology does not do

Abstract

This editorial introduces Volume 42, Issue 2 of the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology and develops a theme that draws its eight papers together: as educational technologies become more capable, the human work surrounding their use becomes more visible and more consequential. Across studies of mathematics learning, collaborative learning design, medical education, programming education, language research, English language teaching, mathematical creativity, and immersive interventions for anxiety, we trace this human work in three forms: relational, metacognitive, and ethical. We argue that the value of a technology depends less on what the technology does than on the pedagogical, relational, and self-regulatory work that surrounds it, and that this work must be deliberately designed rather than assumed. A second thread runs beneath the first: several contributions are concerned less with immediate learning outcomes than with sustained learner qualities such as agency, motivation, metacognition, and wellbeing. Taken together, the papers suggest that the question worth asking is shifting from what work technology can do to what human work we must do to make technology worth it. We offer the issue not as a set of resolutions but as an invitation to ask better questions.