In using ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’ as a metaphor for our current use of communication technology in education, the rationale for this article is to present a fresh perspective to help situate the debate around the current use of technologies in education, especially Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on a professional educational continuum. A conceptual framework is used to explore the evolution of education and inform present teaching practice in relation to current challenges. A search of three databases, Google Scholar, EBSCOhost and Scopus was carried out to locate relevant sources utilising Foucault’s style of exploration, known as archeological historiography outlined in ‘The Order of Things: Archeology of the Human Sciences’ (1970). The exploration uncovers six key changes in the evolution of communication technologies, education and their impact on teaching. Our conceptual framework explores the political context within which education is delivered, how it is delivered and the locus of control over who is to be educated and how. Relating this evolution to Foucault’s original three epistemes and exploring knowledge-making from the past, we suggest that in this increasingly algorithm-generated knowledge-creating era, we are seeing the dawn of a fourth, Technological Episteme. Our novel lens and the implications of a new fourth episteme raise further questions and issues for research and professional exploration. The discussion and conclusion present the implications of this technological and epistemological shift for both educators and policy makers, offering pedagogical reflections on the past, which may inform policy and practice in the future.

Keywords: GenAI, education, communication, power.