Pedagogical Symbiosis: conceptualizing the Post-Human Learner in the age of cognitive AI

The rapid integration of generative artificial intelligence into educational settings exposes a fundamental inadequacy in existing pedagogical frameworks, which typically treat technology as a mere instrument rather than a constitutive cognitive partner. This paper introduces Pedagogical Symbiosis, a conceptual framework redefining the learner as a Post-Human entity whose cognitive processes are genuinely hybrid and distributed across biological and artificial systems. Grounded in Vygotskian mediation, the extended mind thesis, critical posthumanism, and distributed cognition, the framework proposes four principles: Cognitive Offloading and Augmentation, Epistemic Co-construction, Metacognitive Symbiosis, and Dynamic Identity Formation. A developmental progression informed by Piagetian, Vygotskyan, and Eriksonian stage theories supports these principles. Unlike TPACK and SAM, which retain instrumentalist limitations, Pedagogical Symbiosis offers an ontological reorientation. The paper details practical K-16 operationalization through subject-specific curriculum applications, a Symbiotic Portfolio Assessment Rubric, and a five-module professional development structure for the "Cognitive Choreographer" teacher role. Institutional policy pathways and direct engagements with counterarguments regarding autonomy, techno-determinism, and epistemic opacity further contextualize the model. Ultimately, this paper makes a threefold contribution through ontological reorientation, an integrative framework, and practical operationalization, providing curriculum designers, teacher educators, classroom teachers, and policymakers with a robust paradigm for navigating human-AI partnerships in modern educational systems.