Conference Program

The platformisation and datafication of education are transforming school life not only through policy and infrastructure, but also through the everyday negotiations of school actors. In Spain, these processes have accelerated in primary education through the expansion of corporate digital ecosystems, the increased use of learning platforms and the growing presence of data-driven tools. Far from being a linear or consensual process, digitalisation is experienced in schools as a contested terrain in which leadership teams, ICT coordinators and teachers negotiate responsibilities, meanings, limits and risks.

This research, developed within the Digiproted project, analyses the tensions surrounding the adoption and use of digital platforms in a Spanish primary schools. Based on qualitative interviews the study examines how actors justify adaptation to platforms, when and why they negotiate their use, and what tensions emerge between actors and within their professional positions. The analysis focuses on how platforms are embedded in school practices and how their use reconfigures pedagogical authority, labour distribution and institutional decision-making.

The findings show that digital platform adoption is often driven less by pedagogical reflection than by organisational and economic rationalities. Platforms such as Google Classroom are valued because they reduce technical maintenance, simplify teacher onboarding and facilitate the management of tasks, materials and feedback. In this sense, platform adoption is linked to efficiency, sustainability and workload reduction. However, this operational logic also produces tensions: greater dependency on external providers, concerns about datafication and profiling, and a partial transfer of institutional control to corporate infrastructures. These concerns are particularly visible in family reservations about privacy and in school actors’ awareness of the trade-off between convenience and sovereignty.

At the pedagogical level, tensions emerge around autonomy, time and the design of teaching and learning. Some teachers value “empty” platforms because they allow them to choose and organise content freely; others experience them as increasing workload and expect more structured tools. The incorporation of complementary content platforms is often seen as a practical solution when these offer pre-designed sequences and personalised pathways. Yet this also raises a central question: who shapes the learning process—the teacher, the platform, or both? Platformisation thus not only introduces tools into the classroom, but also redistributes pedagogical agency and transforms the conditions under which teachers make curricular decisions.

These tensions become even more visible in relation to online research and generative AI. Teachers recognise that students increasingly rely on digital sources and tools such as ChatGPT, while they often feel insufficiently prepared to guide critical uses of information, source verification and AI-supported inquiry. Responses range from prohibition to guided experimentation, but they remain fragmented. A key issue is the lack of collective time and institutional spaces to discuss shared criteria for digital and AI use.

In this context, adaptation is frequently reactive rather than strategic. Top-down technology provision, limited school participation in decision-making and uneven training opportunities deepen this dynamic. The Spanish case shows that platformisation in primary education is continuously negotiated through unstable balances between operational efficiency, pedagogical meaning and institutional sovereignty.