Alternative Futures in the Postdigital Classrooms of the Global South

Abstract When planning a learning event, teachers will carefully craft learning tasks, while choosing specific social arrangements and selecting material and digital tools for their students. Each learning event is also often influenced by wider socio-economic and political structures in society. Postdigital learning spaces are complex, hybrid, interconnected environments, shaped by a multitude of elements. Drawing on the notions of the postdigital classroom, Latin American hybridity, and transmodernity, this article explores the experiences of New Zealand student-teachers at two learning events specially crafted as part of a study abroad programme in Brazil. Key design elements in a university seminar session and in a visit to a museum are outlined, before we analyze the student-teachers’ reflections of these two learning events. In so doing, the article refers to postdigital classrooms in two complementary ways: first, when describing the assemblage of elements that were part of these learning events, and consequential to the student-teachers’ learning journeys; second, when discussing how the programme offered opportunities for these student-teachers to reimagine education, as they considered alternative possibilities for their own practice as future teachers in future postdigital classrooms. Overall, the article reveals how the student-teachers embraced the co-existence of contradictions in Brazil and, along the way, discovered new concepts (circles of conversation), approaches (critical pedagogy), and models for Initial Teacher Education (action-oriented). The article argues that interesting lessons can be learned from educational settings in the Global South, for alternative futures in postdigital classrooms around the globe.