Educational Digital Sovereignty and EdTech Platform Capitalism: Rethinking Innovation, Data Governance and Artificial Intelligence in Public Education

The rapid digitalization of education has intensified the presence of large technology corporations within educational infrastructures, platforms, and data ecosystems. While digital technologies have expanded access to educational resources and transformed teaching and learning, they have also generated new forms of technological dependency, data extraction, surveillance, and algorithmic governance. This article critically examines EdTech platform capitalism and develops Educational Digital Sovereignty as a framework for democratic governance of digital education. Drawing on a critical integrative review of recent literature indexed in Web of Science and Scopus, complemented by relevant theoretical and policy sources, the study analyzes the political, pedagogical, and socio-economic implications of educational platformization. The analysis identifies three interconnected risks: educational surveillance and data extraction, algorithmic governance and the erosion of pedagogical autonomy, and digital inequalities reinforced by technological colonialism and cognitive dependency. In response, the article proposes five dimensions of Educational Digital Sovereignty: public digital infrastructures, open-source technologies and technological autonomy, democratic data governance, cognitive justice and epistemic decolonization, and community participation. The article concludes that these dimensions provide a framework for aligning technological innovation with democratic governance, pedagogical autonomy, digital rights, and the public mission of education.