**6. Conclusions**

This study aimed to highlight how educationalists might (re)conceptualise digital tools and their use through a critical lens. It achieved this by specifically focusing on the development of a theoretical and analytical framework that formed the basis for a typology for identifying signs-as-agents. This typology was shown to be applicable to other educational tools and scenarios. It can be expanded further, taking into account different digital technologies in use and different social practices it is being applied to. The study has highlighted, through analysis with examples, why educationalists should rethink the concepts of 'affordances' of tools

#### *Rethinking 'Affordance', 'Agency' and 'User' from a Semiotic Technologies Perspective… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99699*

and 'agency' because digital agents are also present as human users/agents carry out their semiotic work. This focus highlights a shift in emphasis from a human centric, individual agency towards a systems-based understanding of agency in which the human systems (e.g., motor system) together with the digital system, form a part. Furthermore, the focus highlighted why the notion of 'designers' and 'design intentions', rather than end 'user' is perhaps a more relevant concept for a more holistic and critical understanding of how semiotic work is produced/created in educational social practices. Importantly, the study has shown how and why this process is a negotiated process with other designers' intentions, not a purely productive or creative endeavour of a human user.

This paper, as a critique, broadly focused on 'patterns', 'designs' and 'shaping' [28] which are key notions in Critical Digital Literacies. The patterns under focus were exchange structures (or interactional patterns), understood as turn-taking. This focus included an analysis of the 'designs' of potentially many designers and users of others' designs across time and with different social interests or intentions. This highlighted the social interests that permeate the designs and use of digital tools [26]. Furthermore, signs-as-agents can be understood as an extension of their human designers (as agents) highlighting the role of signs as 'proxy agents' [5] for designers. Signs understood as extensions of their designers also underscores the notion of designers' interests or intentions being 'distributed', echoing Distributed Cognition Theory [9]. Furthermore, the ability of signs-as-agents to *act on* and *be acted on* by teachers and learners highlights the distributed agency that both human and digitally manifested intentions are capable of.

In addition, the results highlighted how the 'shaping' of both learners' and teachers'semiotic work can occur, as well as the use of/shaping of pre-designed digital tools and their accompanying signs-as-agents. The ways of 'shaping' human semiotic work were shown to be extremely diverse, understood through an analysis of human oral and typed turns.

The chapter sought to add to pre-existing theoretical and analytical tools for educationalists to understand and approach digital tool use from a more critical stance. In doing so, the author proposes that the process of identifying and uncovering signs-as-agents, can contribute to the development of Critical Digital Literacies for Education. This could include looking beyond notions of creation and empowerment to notions that are centred on awareness, design intentions and teachers' and learners' abilities to identify and negotiate with those intentions.

Finally, the central contribution of this chapter is a typology of signs-as-agents. Specifically, it has emerged and been developed in order to critique how digital tools shape how we *act* in educational social practices, rather than how we *think*. The typology and underpinning theoretical framework potentially supports 'expanding' the critical digital literacy research agenda' [27]. This typology can serve a critical literacies agenda towards digital tools in education that Knight, Dooly and Barberà [18] call 'Critical Digital Literacy Pedagogies' (CDLP). CDLP was a proposal conceived to expand Critical Digital Literacies specifically to pedagogy. CDLP can be understood to include, amongst other things, identifying fake news (e.g. The National Literacy Trust, UK's teaching and learning resources, https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/fake-news-andcritical-literacy-final-report/) as well as uncovering ideologies or undemocratic discourses in digital content (e.g. see the DISCO project – Embedding a Democratic Culture Dimension in Teacher Education Programmes (EDCD-TEP) focused on embedding the Competences for Democratic Culture in Primary Teacher Education Programmes, 2021 [23], https://pjp-eu.coe.int/en/web/charter-edc-hre-pilot-projec ts/embedding-a-democratic-culture-dimension-in-teacher-education-programmesedcd-tep). The proposal for CDLP could conceivably unite analytical tools that aim

not only to expose power relations in relation to content and how people think but also in relation to power relations with other digital signs-as-agents and how people (inter)act and negotiate with them.

Regarding future research, the typology could be applied in order to support a much wider analysis of digital tools by teachers and researchers. In doing so, the typology can be added to and developed further. Furthermore, while this chapter has focused on tools and scenarios that involve human responses to signs-as agents while speaking, reading and/or typing as social practices, greater attention could be made to human initiations. For example, the use of QR codes in Mobile Assisted Learning as well as the use of human voice activation with digital tools which would encompass more modes and signs than exist in the current version of the typology.
