The Paradox of Managed Autonomy: Response to ‘Agentic Online Learning: How University Staff Make Their Work Matter’ (McDonald et al. 2026)

Abstract

In their article on how higher education teachers experience online learning, McDonald et al. ( 2026 ) bring into view something the online education literature has too often set aside: the person behind the course. This attention to identity builds on a line of work developed by members of the same research group on how learners negotiate competing identities within open and online higher education (Brunton et al. 2019 ). Their study rests on in-depth interviews with three purposefully selected staff members at an Irish university: Matthew, a programme chair for an online degree; Clare, a tenure-track instructor designing and teaching an online graduate research methods module; and Anne, a postdoctoral instructor developing a self-guided digital resource for religious education. Analyzing these interviews with a discursive psychology approach, the authors identify two overarching discourses, that involvement in their work existentially mattered to staff, and that staff and their work existed in a reciprocal relationship, which they then divide into five sub-discourses: a sense of purpose, a sense of identity, coping with challenges, self-investment, and a tension between acting as ‘shepherds’ or ‘originators’ of work concepts (McDonald et al. 2026 ). The result is a careful, generous account of how academic staff give purpose and identity to their work in online spaces. We read their paper with real appreciation. It resists the temptation, common in instructional design and educational technology research, to treat staff as variables to be optimized or as passive conduits for canonical pedagogical theory. Matthew, Clare, and Anne emerge as people, not data points, and their commitments to access, to research literacy, and to spiritual searching are taken on their own terms.