Apple Classroom and subjectification – an exploration of the tension between control and unpredictability in the Irish post-primary classroom

This paper examines how Apple Classroom reshapes pedagogical relations in Irish post-primary classrooms by constraining the conditions under which students may appear as subjects. Drawing on Biesta’s notion of subjectification as the unpredictable emergence of the new, and Han’s account of psychopolitics as a digitally mediated form of self-surveillance, the paper argues that classroom-management software narrows the space for educational freedom while presenting itself as a neutral tool of personalisation. A walkthrough analysis of Apple Classroom reveals how its design privileges monitoring, behavioural prediction, and efficiency, thereby reframing learning as transparent activity rather than relational encounter. The result is a pedagogical environment in which the relational risks that enable subjectification are foreclosed. The paper concludes that sustaining educational freedom requires a reappraisal of teacher authority – not as domination, but as the responsive, interruptive presence that makes possible encounters in which students may emerge as subjects rather than managed learners.