Instructors' perspectives on personal learning environments in higher education: Unravelling the threads of assemblage, agency, and pedagogic frailty

Commitment to the development of people with greater learning agency is one of the highest priorities of our time, also in formal education at every level. In this context, the development of student-centred practices, especially those designed to improve learning-to-learn competences as those aimed to develop their personal learning environments (PLE) become pivotal; and the role of instructors on its design become crucial. In this narrative study based on semi-structured interviews, we explore 20 higher education instructors' perspectives (from 5 different countries), who provide international insights regarding PLE concept and three conceptual constructs-(1) the teacher's assemblage, (2) teacher agency and (3) pedagogic frailty-, which could influence the design and development of PLE centred educational practices. The main results show how the instructor's assemblage components are mainly connected to the improvement of students' learning competences and how some limits on instructors' and students' agency restrict their pedagogical practices, promote instructors' deprofessionalization, and increase pedagogic frailty. These findings lead to consider that the instructors' assemblages influence, to a certain degree, instructors' agency, and pedagogic frailty.