Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) is at a crossroads. In an era of algorithmic governance, edtech solutionism, and assessment by automation, TEL risks becoming a tool of compliance, control, and commodification.

This manifesto reclaims TEL as a space for resistance, agency, and emancipation - a critical practice rooted in pedagogical purpose, not platform logic.

All technologies are political. TEL systems encode assumptions about what counts as knowledge, who is valued, and how learning is controlled.

Resistance begins with recognising that digital infrastructure is pedagogical infrastructure - it shapes what is possible.

We resist:

• Surveillance and behavioural analytics masked as “personalisation”.
• AI-driven assessment systems that deskill teachers and dehumanise learners.
• Platform-centric models that prioritise efficiency over meaning.

Learners are co-constructors of knowledge, not passive users or data sources.

TEL must amplify voice, foster agency, and allow for complexity, ambiguity, and dissent.

We call for:

• Co-creation and student partnership in digital learning design.
• Assessment practices that honour process, not just product.
• Tools that enable learners to shape their own learning environments.

Standardised, decontextualised assessments are increasingly unfit for a world of generative AI and performative credentialism.

Authentic, situated assessment resists instrumentalism and re-centres learning as transformation.

We demand:

• Assessment for learning, not just of learning.
• A reimagining of rigour as relevance, complexity, and depth.
• Open, multimodal, and reflective forms of demonstrating knowledge.

Openness is not just about licensing—it is about justice, equity, and access to the means of knowledge production.

We advocate:

• OERs that are inclusive, adaptable, and co-created with communities.
• Open pedagogies that disrupt teacher–student hierarchies.
• Resistance to the enclosure of public knowledge by commercial platforms.

TEL must serve pedagogy—not the other way around.

Learning design should emerge from values, dialogue, and context, not institutional defaults or vendor constraints.

We commit to:

• Human-centred design practices.
• Critical TEL audits that question not just functionality, but ethics.
• Design justice principles in digital learning environments.

Educators are more than content delivery agents—they are stewards of learning, facilitators of inquiry, and advocates for the public good.

We resist:

• Narratives that deskill educators through automation and managerialism.
• Fragmented TEL teams with no shared pedagogical vision.
• Institutional cultures that see digital learning as “support” rather than scholarship.

Resistance is not individual heroism but collective practice.

Educators, technologists, students, and researchers must work together to resist harmful logics and reclaim digital education for democracy and justice.

We propose:

• Critical communities of practice.
• Mutual support networks for educators navigating ethical dilemmas in TEL.
• Ongoing public scholarship that surfaces alternative narratives.

This is a moment of rupture—and an opportunity to rebuild.

TEL can either deepen inequality or be a tool for justice.

Let us choose to resist, reimagine, and rehumanise education—together.