More than Code: Learning and Affect in the Digital Age

The expansion of international frameworks for digital competences, such as DigComp 2.2 and 2.3, has promoted a functional and instrumental view of technology use in education. However, these approaches tend to render invisible the ethical, affective, and political dimensions that shape the digital ecosystem. This article proposes a critical reconceptualization of digital literacy as a situated pedagogical practice, articulated with notions such as virtual habitatVirtual habitat, cognitive justice, and digital humanismDigital humanism. Drawing on a documentary analysis of 25 specialized sources and a preliminary corpus of 4,000 interventions in academic forums with university teachers in postgraduate programs, the study examines the limits of algorithmic personalization, educational standardization, and the forms of controlControl exercised by digital platforms. The findings show that digital competence frameworks lack sufficient ethical and symbolic grounding, and that teacher subjectivity and the pedagogical bond emerge as axes of resistance to educational technocracy. Inspired by perspectives such as the ethicsEthicsof careEthics of care, hospitality, and narrative design, the study proposes the Axiological Device as a narrative and situated mediation that makes it possible to integrate reflection, affectivity, and educational justice into digital culture. Examples of application are proposed in university teacher training and in situated pedagogical practice, where digital literacy is not reduced to technical skills but enables scenarios of co-creation and pedagogical care. Although the research is ongoing and the analytical categories are still in the process of consolidation, it projects an educational horizon in which critical digital literacyCritical digital literacy opens pathways for imagining habitable digital futures. In the future, technology does not substitute for humans; rather, it enhances its ethical, political, and transformative complexity. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.