Post-pandemic student engagement: Towards techno-humanistic reflexivity

This opinion piece examines how student engagement is understood and practised in contemporary higher education, where technological innovation and humanistic values increasingly intersect (see Bond et al., 2020). It approaches the concept through a techno-humanistic lens, arguing that recent conceptualisations of engagement, grounded in socio-cultural perspectives, draw on humanistic principles, such as self-actualisation, creativity, and personal growth, realised through relational interactions and collaborative learning. In contemporary educational environments, these principles are enacted and mediated through digital technologies, enabling students to engage both collaboratively and independently. Noddings (2013) illustrates how human-centred principles of care and responsibility can guide educational relationships, providing an ethical framework that can be extended to digitally mediated learning. This framework resonates with UNESCO’s (2021, 2022) framing of education as a public good, linking individual development to broader social responsibility. Viewed through this techno-humanistic lens, engagement can be understood as a reflexive, contextually mediated practice in which human agency and technological mediation interact to shape meaningful learning that supports individual development while fostering broader social responsibility. This perspective highlights that prevailing understandings remain incomplete without recognising the intertwined humanistic, technological, and ethical conditions shaping post-pandemic student engagement.