Digital Augmentation of Labor in Education: Alienation of Pedagogical Activity under Platform Capitalism (Based on a Sociological Study of Teachers)

Introduction. The ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights establish the need to account for the full scope of teachers’ professional work and to ensure fair working conditions. In the context of the digitalization of schooling, this lends particular relevance to the analysis of the digital augmentation of teachers’ labor. The purpose of the study is to examine the digital augmentation of pedagogical labor as a contradictory process in which the expansion of technological capabilities is accompanied by the hidden intensification of work and the growing alienation of labor. Materials and Methods. The empirical basis of the study was a structured online survey of 812 teachers from 16 general education institutions in 9 cities of Russia. The study employed descriptive statistics, group comparisons by age and teaching load, and correlation analysis. KEYWORDS Results. It was found that the digital augmentation of pedagogical labor has acquired the character of a stable mode of professional activity. The average amount of extracurricular digital work was 145.2 minutes per day; 69.8% of respondents performed digital tasks after the end of the working day on an almost daily basis, 58.6% responded to messages after 8:00 p.m. at least three times a week, and 47.9% worked with digital systems on weekends at least once a week. For 57.4% of respondents, digital platforms were associated primarily with increased administrative visibility of labor, while 61.7% indicated that a significant part of their working time was spent maintaining the digital reporting environment. The average value of the subjective alienation index was 6.34 out of 10. Positive correlations were identified between the digital augmentation index and the subjective alienation index (r = 0.61, p < 0.001), between digital augmentation and loss of autonomy (r = 0.58, p < 0.001), and between the frequency of working after 8:00 p.m. and the experience of alienation (r = 0.49, p < 0.001). The most pronounced factor of digital labor intensification was teaching load. Conclusion. It is concluded that the digital augmentation of teachers’ labor should be regarded as a form of restructuring pedagogical activity that affects working time arrangements, control structures, and professional autonomy. The practical significance of the study lies in substantiating the need to revise approaches to regulating teachers’ workload by taking into account digitally mediated actions that constitute a substantial part of contemporary pedagogical employment.