Schooling after the platform surge: professional teacher agency as a post-platform dynamic in post-pandemic Chile

Chile, a regional pioneer in education technology, offers a distinctive lens for examining post-platform dynamics in schooling after COVID-19. The pandemic accelerated the platformisation of education, consolidating tools such as Google Classroom and WhatsApp as infrastructural and pedagogical defaults. While these technologies enabled continuity during prolonged school closures, they also intensified pre-existing inequalities and deepened dependencies on proprietary systems. Drawing on six focus groups with 51 middle school teachers from diverse socioeconomic and geographic contexts, this article examines professional teacher agency as a post-platform dynamic in Chilean schools. Rather than treating post-platformisation as a linear stage beyond platforms, the study conceptualises it as a set of situated practices through which educators negotiate, appropriate, and contest platform logics in their everyday work. These practices show how digital technologies are re-embedded in classrooms in ways that preserve pedagogical authority, sustain relationships of care, and manage emotional and organisational strain. Findings highlight the ambivalent role of mobile phones, often the only available device in low-income schools, as they simultaneously enable teaching and intensify tensions around control, surveillance, and workload. By foregrounding teacher agency, the article contributes to post-platform research and calls for governance and pedagogical approaches grounded in equity, digital sovereignty, and care.