Conference Agenda

Digital education platforms are in tremendous upsurge, where COVID-19 acted as a catalyst, and have increasingly found their way into the core of various education institutions. Critical education scholarship has extensively studied these developments and the intricate ways in which these platforms (re-)shape what it means to (be) educate(d) (Williamson, 2017) and how education itself is changing form (Decuypere et al., 2021). Recently, growing concerns have been expressed regarding the differential implications for teacher professionalism in an increasingly ‘platformised’ school environment, where digital education platforms are not only increasingly grounded as new forms of educational experts, but where the central role and expertise of teachers itself is equally destabilising and losing its self-evidence (Hartong & Decuypere, 2023). Put differently, what it means to be a teacher in a school, is increasingly becoming entangled with the presence of digital education platforms, shaping the pedagogical autonomy and labour of teachers, and the (potentially) perpetual need for professionalisation this implies (cf. Lewis & Decuypere, 2023; Selwyn et al., 2017).

Given these developments, it is crucial to articulate empirical accounts of the complexities of how teachers’ professionality is being reshaped, and how the teacher and teaching itself are being negotiated through platform logics, as well as the type of educational participation these platforms envision (Perrotta et al., 2021). Such accounts of platformised teacher professionalities are still largely absent in the literature (but see e.g. Landri, 2021), most significantly of all in relation to cases of non-proprietary and free and open-source (FOSS) platforms. That is to say, contemporary critical scholarship has predominantly based its critiques on the study of proprietary platforms such as Google Classroom or ClassDojo (e.g. Manolev et al., 2019), thereby largely sidestepping prominent ‘open’ alternatives such as Moodle. However, Moodle is increasingly being implemented across Europe in schools and other educational institutions as a central learning management system and learning platform to counter the contemporary dominance of proprietary actors exerting large amounts of power on education (Moodle, 2021; also Kuran et al., 2017). Fostering the four freedoms of FOSS (using, studying, altering, and improving the code ‘freely’), Moodle principally envisions teachers, firstly, as being technically capable of redesigning the open infrastructure of its platform and, secondly, as willing to open up their teaching practice by collaborating with other teachers internationally (https//moodle.com/about/open-source/). At present, we lack understanding of how this enforces different responsibilities and foci within teachers’ professionality.

To address this gap, this paper closely engages with the embedded Moodle infrastructure of one school, so as to understand how teacher professionalities (i.e. what it means to teach and be a teacher, and what is required to sustain this) are shaped through the platform. The objective of this study is primarily to analyse the educational consequences of such platforms regarding teacher professionality beyond often-mentioned privately induced logics. That is, this study focuses on the changing nature of pedagogy, responsibility, autonomy, and care, in the teacher’s professionality. By focusing on a platform that in essence still has to be designed by local schools because of Moodle’s open and customisable nature, we aim to go beyond a critical attitude that considers digital platformisation as a general external development affecting education in largely problematic ways. Rather, we approach Moodle as a case through which we can conceptualise the context-specificity of school platformisation: not as a process where schools and teachers are passively affected by an external development, but as an educational process itself to which actors actively relate. This contribution consequently analyses the configuration of teacher professionalities up close through one localised school platform, and the way teachers ‘inhabit’ and enact this platformised environment (cf. Perrotta, 2023).

This paper offers an empirical analysis of learning management systems (LMS) applying predictive analytics for risk detection in K-12 school education. Conceptually, we explore the promise of predictive analytics to function across various societal domains (e.g. education, predictive policing, digital public service provision) and how LMS configure good educational futures through risk management and mitigation. The starting point for our analysis is the observation that many design features of LMS are risk-related and future-oriented, promising educators and students to achieve success in form of good grades and high graduation rates. Appealing at first sight, this promise of successful educational futures promotes narratives of precision and efficiency inscribed in LMS design (Macgilchrist et al., 2023). Overall, design of educational technologies has been increasingly studied by sociologists of education and critical software and critical data scholars (Decuypere, 2019; Jarke & Macgilchrist, 2021; Selwyn, 2022). So far, this research focuses on the ideologies and imaginaries of technology providers inscribed in the design of educational systems (Macgilchrist, 2019; Manolev et al., 2019; Rahm, 2021; Williamson, 2017). While there are prominent discussions about the role of big tech in shaping the educational domain and the business origin of analytics in education (Davies et al., 2022; Prinsloo, 2019), the centrality of risk and failure in the design of educational technologies has yet to be addressed specifically. Attending empirically to risk prediction in LMS this paper extends on such literature, questioning what and who can be defined as ‘risk’ threatening good educational futures and in which ways.

Narratives about risk and failure, however, are not unique to educational technologies, but are widely discussed in research on predictive policing (Lum & Isaac, 2016; Egbert & Leese, 2021) and digital public service provision (Allhutter et al., 2020; Büchner & Dosdall, 2021). To understand what various ways to define ‘risk’ mean for educational futures, we draw on the concept of “spheres transgression” (Sharon, 2021) to learn about the implications of ‘risk’ inscribed in technologies in other societal domains. Sphere transgression can be understood as an advantageous encroachment of one societal domain into another, making use of distributive capacities of one domain (e.g. big tech) to advance commercially, politically, and socially in the other domains (e.g. education). We argue here that analysing LMS design features we can reconstruct how educational technologies (aim to) reconfigure the organisation of teaching and learning, course design, and interaction between teachers, learners, and administrators by mitigating risks and managing failure.

The (presumable) ability of LMS to produce big quantities of data and to quantify previously unmeasurable societal processes promise educational actors to achieve greater efficiency and more control over the everyday organisation of schooling by managing various educational risks: risk of student drop-out, students failing the course, or graduating from school altogether. To explain how such technological promises are related to actual futures, scholars of technology have connected mundane acts of design, advertising, and negotiation to future-making (Watts, 2015). In these mundane acts, the core characteristics of future-making - anticipation, aspiration, and imagination (Appadurai, 2013) – materialize in form of software design and specific features. To understand and un-make the connection between LMS features of risk prediction and educational futures this paper proposes studying what forms these anticipations, aspirations, and imaginations take in LMS design.

Overall, this paper makes a conceptual and an empirical contribution based on LMS design. Conceptually, following scholars of technology studies concerned with future-making, we shift the analytical focus to the examination of software design from past to the future. Empirically, we analyse risk-related LMS design features. Specifically, we ask how risk is defined in the design of LMS using predictive analytics.

How did International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA) contracting emerge and develop? And what is the legacy of this history?

In studying the history of education data, research has focused on assessment practices (i.e. Hutt and Schneider 2018) and governance uses (Ozga 2009; Merry 2011; Moss 2014). Until recently, scholarship was less concerned with the making of data despite Science and Technology Studies underlining that science (this includes data) is politics by other means (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Latour 1987, 1999), thus begging for scholoarly investigation. This paper contributes to literature on the history of data, by rendering visible the history and legacy of a group of actors who have so far remained invisible. Although ILSAs are administered by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), they are mostly developed, implemented and analysed by ILSA contractors. Until today, contractors’ involvement has not been studied. This paper studies the emergence of ILSA contracting by looking into the first ILSAs at the IEA, which came under pressure to keep up with assessment developments in the USA in the 1980s. The paper then focuses on the development of new assessment approaches in the USA that were picked up in adult literacy assessments at the OECD. Finally, the paper analyses the development of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) contracting. To show how the legacy of this history still shapes current ILSAs, the paper analyses how PISA contracting evolved. This history shows how individuals and organizations, which had previously been collaborating in academic projects at the IEA, won the first ILSA contracts by virtue of accumulated capitals and interpersonal trust that put them at an advantage over potential ILSA contractors. What comes to the surface are government interests, emotional bonds, and personal struggles.

To analyse how ILSA contracting emerged and evolved (between 1960 and 2020), I draw on Bourdieu’s (1993) concept of field - described as a dynamic social space of struggles with its own laws of functioning and unequally distributed power - to understand how contactors relate to one another; and actors’ habitus. The paper also draws on business network approach, which recognizes the importance of networks and the position of actors and changes of position within networks (Ford and Håkansson 2013). Finally, the paper draws on Huang and Wilkinson (2013) to analyse the dynamics and evolution of trust in ILSA contracting. Huang and Wilkinson describe both cognitive and affective trust as key to understanding business relationships and behaviour. Cognitive trust can be described as the ‘evaluation of the competence, responsibility and dependability’ (2013: 456) of actors, while affective trust is described as emotional bonds and ‘the belief that an exchange partner cares about your welfare, will act positively towards it and take care to avoid harming it’ (2013: 456). Trust can be interpersonal and interorganizational (Zaheer et al. 1998).

The aim of this presentation is to deepen our understanding of high achieving students with different social backgrounds, their socially grounded motivation to perform well and how momentum in their trajectories are related to the dynamics in the student’s social network.

In a number of studies, we showed how students drives themselves to perform well in school and how the process is socially grounded and therefore also differentiated depending on their specific position in the social space (Carlhed Ydhag, et al 2021). We identified crucial aspects of support for educational success among disadvantaged students; 1) unconditional support from a significant other, 2) regularly studying together with likeminded peers and 3) support from a teacher who were engaged in both the school subject and in the student’s development (Osman et al, 2020). We showed how students from families with low education levels learned to succeed via a conversion process of their habitus (Månsson, et al, 2021). We analysed disadvantaged students’ own perspectives on significant others, who they were and what they did to support them in school related matters. It showed that the most important support came from different actors who supported them emotionally and academically. These actors can be parents, teachers or peers (Osman et al, 2021).

In this presentation we will focus on the social conditions in which the students are embedded in, what inspires them and form their strategies in relation to the specific configurations of their significant others in their social network. How do these conditions come into play when they have transitioned from upper secondary school? Hence, in the analysis, we will take into account the stability in their social network in terms of continuity or change, density and the social environment they are embedded in and in what ways was the support system consistent to socially shared expectations and mutual commitments?

In other words we will add the aspects of the students’ network’s tenacity to support them through upper secondary school and their transition from upper secondary school to university studies or labour market.

Theoretical tools

The research project departed from Coleman’s (1990) and Bourdieu’s (1986) understanding of social capital concerning educational performance. The following concepts we have used to analyse the data: ideational support, material support and bridging support. Ideational support refers to the ability of parents and other influential figures to inculcate a pro-academic norm in these students. Material support denotes the unequal material resources that advantage or disadvantage the educational experiences of different categories of students. Bridging refers to parental abilities to link their child to individuals with institutional actors serves as a medium for material and ideational support (Osman & Månsson, 2015; Prado, 2009).

In our analyses of how the students motivated themselves we used ‘habitus’ and the related term ‘illusio’, to attain greater depth in analysing meaning-making processes. Following Bourdieu’s sociology, we believe the individual’s search for recognition and belonging is socially grounded and thus not entirely based on reason (Bourdieu, 2000). In this presentation we will describe and analyse students’ motivation and rationale behind their narrative of academic success. Theoretically we will adopt Coleman’s understanding of social capital, particularly the dimensions of trust, social control, reciprocity, commitment and shared expectations in their social network.

In recent education discourse in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, we can see a renewed interest in the management of pupils’ dispositions and behaviours. This is evident in a proliferation of scientific research which links the development of social and emotional skills and character (skills) to improved academic achievement, and, by extension, better later life ‘outcomes’ and economic prosperity (Allen and Bull 2018; Bates 2017; Williamson 2017). In particular, the debate is framed and informed by knowledge from the domains of cognitive and positive psychology and concepts such as ‘grit’, ‘resilience’ and ‘motivation’. International organisations, such as the OECD and the World Bank have enthusiastically drawn on this field of research to argue for urgent reforms of education systems so that they can adequately prepare individuals and societies for the demands of the so called fourth industrial revolution (see for example Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2015; World Bank, 2017).

In education policy debates in the United Kingdom, this discourse has mainly played out in a resurgence of character education (Jerome and Kisby, 2019; Spohrer and Bailey, 2020), promoted by Conservative- Liberal Democrat Coalition and Conservative government from 2010. These debates and initiatives have been characterised as a blend of neo-liberal thought, promoting economic growth and addressing social mobility problems, and as a return to neo-conservative to traditional values (Vincent, 2019; Spohrer, 2021). Character education goes alongside the promotion of stricter discipline, evident in the appointment of the behaviour consultant Tom Bennett and a £10 initiative to tackle 'bad behaviour' in schools (Department of Education, 2019).

A number of high-profile Academy schools in England have embraced the idea that ‘discipline’, understood as behavioural control, is conducive to learning and, consequently, leads to higher ‘outcomes’ for individuals and schools. These schools often adopt principles and practices from the KIPP Charter Schools in the US, which draw on positive psychology and adopt ‘no excuses’ approaches (Stahl, 2020). Principles and methods of teaching include direct instruction, scripted lessons,and the SLANT technique (see, for example TES, 2021).

Reading this trend against a background of neo-liberal governmentality, Ball (2017) asks whether we can witness a return to docility and to a pedagogy that is concerned with the surface of learners rather than knowing them in-depth (as advanced in so-called progressive approaches to education which are concerned with the 'whole child'). Ball connects the recent interest in discipline and character with Bernstein's notion of a ‘visible’ or ‘performative’ pedagogy (Bernstein, 2000). Taking this observation as a starting point, the paper aims to analyse pedagogic discourses in schools with a 'no excuses' approach with a view to identifying which notion of the ideal person they construct, what techniques are employed in this process and what possibilities this opens up for pupils to interact with the rules of the school and develop their understanding of self.

The ideology of lifelong learning has become an unquestionable truth which most scholars say is governed by the hegemonic discourse of economy (e.g. Olssen 2008; Fejes & Dahlstedt 2013; Kinnari 2020a). Indeed, economic emphasis is globally recognised today as intrinsic to the politics of lifelong learning (Kinnari 2020a; 2020b; Larson & Cort 2022). Further, the current entrepreneurial ethos of lifelong learning encourages individuals to become best versions of themselves to maximise human capital (Kinnari 2020a).

The present era of capitalism can be referred as ‘cognitive capitalism’. Cognitive capitalism is regarded as ‘the next phase’ for Fordist and Taylorist forms of capitalism where the productivity of the labour was related to different factors than in present capitalism. In cognitive capitalism, human resources are employees’ main assets in becoming competitive and productive (Vercellone 2005). In cognitive capitalism, lifelong learning and continuous self-development are assumed to be necessities for organisations and individuals pursuing success. In this frame, competences, potentials and personal attributes of individuals are perceived as sources of economic added value. (European Union 2018; OECD 2021.) Since a subject who constantly aims at optimizing themselves is seen to benefit not only the individual but the whole economy, people need to be guided to understand themselves as assets and to behave accordingly.

In our study, we are interested in how the norms and ideals that define current working life, continuous self-development and lifelong learning are represented in media discourse. We analyse guidelines for work and self-development represented in two main broadcasters in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat and YLE. We ask, what kinds of obligations for self-development are mediated in the descriptions of working life, how are people guided to work on themselves, and how does expert knowledge legitimise these obligations, and within them, ‘truth’ on working life and an ideal employee. In addition, we are interested in the addressed target group as well as in marginalised groups and discourses. The study is part of the research project ‘Living on the edge – lifelong learning, governmentality, and neurotic citizen’, in which unintended, even perverse, consequences of lifelong learning policy are researched.

Our theoretical approach lays on the analytics of governmentality (Foucault 1991; 2009; Dean 1999/2010; Miller & Rose 2008). According to Michel Foucault, governmentality comprises three factors: knowledge, power and truth. Every society has its ‘régime of truth, its “general politics” of truth’ (Foucault 1980, p. 131). For example, media discourses concerning lifelong learning include conceptions of humanity and society. The mechanisms and instances within these discourses establish true and false statements. Techniques and procedures legitimise the acquisition of truth, and those who have attained legitimate status are obligated to say what counts as true (Foucault,1980). Accordingly, we acknowledge the hegemonic policy discourse of lifelong learning to be guiding and framing thinking and behavior in various cultural and social fields, including work. We perceive the obligations for continuous self-development to be part of policy and government of lifelong learning, also illustrating the manifestation of a culture that emphasizes entrepreneurial mindset and individual responsibility of citizens.

Our presentation is part of an international project on ‘Forward to (Common) Roots – Pedagogical Terminology in Different Languages,’ on which we worked in several workshops and common papers. This project is theoretical and builds on efforts by intergenerational scholars from North America, Sweden, and Germany working collaboratively to reconnect and renew their understandings of education and pedagogy.

In this international project, a transcultural perspective on education will be provided by working on the terminologies of Bildung, learning, curriculum, didactic, education and upbringing, educational practice, and methodology. Specifically, this paper focuses on social and cultural diversity in relation to education and pedagogy.

In many nation-states, various forms of social and cultural diversity have been increasingly recognized and included in the core of educational values, practices, curricula, and research. However, because diversity is being defined almost exclusively as a difference in race, gender, and identity, how diversity is discussed, imagined, and implemented in pedagogical practice increasingly appears the same. What is missing is a notion of diversity as difference in the educational experience. In the United States, for example, diversity seems to be a standard or standard of uniformity, not multiplicity, and paradoxically is reduced to a rubric or checklist (defined by others, not in education) to demonstrate the meeting of pre-determined ends rather than a collective inquiry toward un-determined and what could otherwise turn out to be new opportunities for different ways of perceiving one and the same thing and to act upon that, or what we would argue to create the conditions for true diversity in teaching and learning.

For this ECER conference paper, we focus on and discuss the relationship between educational philosophy and policy regarding such diversity as acting upon people’s differences (s). Here we draw on Wilhelm von Humboldt (1854) and John Stuart Mill (1859) to consider questions of education and educational approach concerning tensions between the universal and the particular and, in contemporary times, between freedom and security. Highlighted will be philosophical connections to problems with current initiatives, including DEI or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

We ask how to address such questions of diversity, representation, and recognition in education and pedagogy. Following Humboldt and Mill, we would suggest that we should answer these questions not concerning special interests or “transient desires” but concerning what Humboldt called “ewig- unveränderliche Vernunft” (“eternal and immutable dictates of reason”).

Indeed, Humboldt and Mill together indicate a universalizing aspect concerning education and a full appreciation and aspiration for developing the powers of the individual by exposure to different learning experiences. That was a key and crucial insight on their part: a genuinely educational education, with authentic diversity, stems not from where one was born or to whom, nor to what conditions or demographics a student hails from. Instead, students are cut from the same cloth; humanity. We all should be equally afforded the dignity of access and opportunity. A universal education with particular diversifying experiences provides the means for cultivating the individual powers of each respective individual.

It is also worth inquiring about what exhortations from Humboldt, Mill, and others in the Continental Philosophy tradition translate to later work of influential pedagogues such as John Dewey. We seek in this paper to provide some of the tacit dimensions (Kraus et al., 2021) and revisit that lost translation to reimagine diversity in the present and future as more than a rubric or identity, as a different difference, a possibility for an experience that is different, and educational.

Recent years have seen a rise in interest in ‘character education’ in England, a broad church of initiatives aimed at developing positive personality traits like perseverance and resilience (Mills 2021). Character education’s advocates argue that the turn to character is an important corrective to the coldness of the purely civic test of ability (‘mere’ exam results), putting forward the idea that education should be about producing well-rounded individuals and not merely examination-fiends or drones for the workplace. Paradoxically, as Jerome and Kisby (2019) point out, advocates like former English Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (2017) also tend to stress, in a more outcomes-oriented way, that this turn to character will make young people particularly employable, since personality traits like adaptability can be understood as work-ready competences, or a kind of personal capital (Brown, Hesketh and Williams 2003).

Critics have argued that the character education movement often stems from a right-wing ethos. Ideas about education for character are highly individualist (as opposed to its more collectivist cousin, citizenship education), stressing hard work and personal ambition as routes to a better future: often meaning a route not just to personal fulfilment but, when it comes to working-class young people, a route out of working-class communities. Some character education initiatives in English higher education, like the University of Birmingham’s Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, have explicit links to right-wing philanthropic individuals and organisations (Allen and Bull 2018).

In the terms of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), I argue that we can think of the turn to character education as an increasing folding of domestic values into the educational sphere. By domestic values I mean a concern with interpersonal relationships, and with questions of character and personality, when it comes to suggesting who higher education – and specifically non-vocational and general higher education – is for. This understanding goes beyond thinking about character as a desired outcome of education, to suggest that character is here being tested for. The suitability of this or that person for a particular educational opportunity here rests, in part, upon their domestic worth, or character.

Andrew Sayer’s (2020) recent Sociology article was an important intervention in debates about character’s ‘uses and misuses’ (461), in which he argued that character can be a valuable term, notwithstanding its frequent use for conservative ends. He argued that thinking about an individual’s character is a more or less inevitable feature of human assessment (a species of his broader concept of lay normativity or everyday morality – see also Sayer 2005, 2011), and thus cannot be avoided. He argued that instead of arguing against character assessments in general, we should turn our attention to which character traits are prized. For example, he stresses that current, right-wing notions of character tend to reduce character to the ‘executive virtues’ (Sayer 2020: 464) of grit and so on, rather than moral and collectivist virtues like gratitude.

This paper builds on Sayer’s argument by demonstrating the importance of context for ascertaining whether a concern with character is appropriate or not in different educational situations. It goes further than asking which traits are prized to asking where they are prized, and how actors make decisions about the appropriateness of thinking about character in this or that setting.

The problem of violence rarely reaches center stage in philosophical and theoretical discourses concerning education. Yet violence is inherent to many – perhaps all – educational practices. Education often involves coercion, enforcement and punishing, and school education takes children away from their homes and families, submitting them to sets of rules and regulations they seldom wish to obey. At the heart of every discussion of the legitimacy of educational practices, therefore, lie the questions of whether they exert violence on the educated, what is the nature of this violence, and how its application may be prevented or at least minimized.

My talk will address these questions through the writings of Walter Benjamin, which receive growing attention in contemporary educational discourse (Lewis 2020; Johannsses & Zechner 2022). My point of departure will be Benjamin’s early and enigmatic essay “Critique of Violence” (1978 [1921]). Although education is by no means a central theme in this text, it appears in a crucial moment, as an example of what Benjamin calls “divine violence”. Benjamin presents such violence as transcending both forms of violence which originate in myth: law-making violence, which constitutes the legal order, and law-preserving violence, which protects an already-existing legal order. Against these two forms of violence, Benjamin describes divine violence as “law-destroying”: recognizing no boundaries, it strikes without spilling blood. While mythical violence, in both its functions, “is bloody power over mere life for its own sake”, divine violence is “pure power over all life for the sake of the living” (297).

How can we understand the link Benjamin draws between divine violence and education? Clearly the category of divine violence is not reserved to religion or theology, nor is God the only one to exert it; but in what sense is it manifest in education? Educational violence seems more likely to be classified as law-preserving, for it teaches to obey the law and conform to the legal order, and also as law-making, since educational institutions (similar to police practices, in an example Benjamin gives) operates through countless regulations they make within their wide operating field. I argue that Benjamin had in mind a kind of education through tradition, a transmission of knowledge and skills which allows for negotiation and transformation, by focusing on “the indispensable ordering of the relations among generations […], not of children” (Benjamin 2002a [1926]).

My talk will develop this point by appealing to Benjamin’s writings on childhood and youth (2022b [1938]), but will also link this conception of divine educational violence to the pedagogical implications of the scholastic method presented in The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1977 [1928]). Following the work of Ori Rotlevy (2017; 2020), I read Benjamin’s discussion of the scholastic treatise, which does not proceed argumentatively but rather presents the topic at hand digressively through contradictory citations and remarks, as an educational process in which the student’s mind undergoes a significant transformation. It is a spiritual exercise aimed at extracting the subject from contemplation in an attempt to school the mind in attunement with the intentionless, a manner of thought not based on the subject’s position, on the relation of a subject intending an object. Such scholastic education, I argue, fits the idea of what Benjamin calls “divine violence”.

[An earlier version of this proposal was accepted to ecer2020 – which was canceled due to covid19 – and I did not have the chance to work on it since then].

The discourse on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s theory of language has, hitherto, focused mostly on his Discourse on Inequality and the Essay on the Origin of Languages which treats of Melody and Musical Imitation. However, in his Emile, Rousseau presents significant and interesting postulations and insights regarding language, language learning and language teaching, which merit attention and analysis. The paper aims, first and foremost, to point out, explore and interpret some of these notions as they feature toward the end of Book I: (1) a universal natural language which develops as the child matures; (2) “private” words invented by children; (3) the challenge that children are faced with in their comprehension of exceptions to general rules of the mother tongue; (4) recommended methods of teaching the mother tongue. To the best of my knowledge, these themes in Emile have not been sufficiently explored, and highlighting them will hopefully contribute to the scholarship on Emile and on Rousseau’s philosophy at large.

Secondly, the discussion aims to show how Rousseau’s ideas relate to seventeenth-and eighteenth- century discourse on language education in two ways: (1) by demonstrating that Rousseau advocates the encouragement of language acquisition rather than of language imposition. This issue is important because, as Calder (2003) points out, “Eighteenth-century discourse on education is determined by two distinct currents of thought concerning methods of teaching language to a child: the imposition of language upon the child, and the more gentle practice of allowing the child to acquire language by encouraging his own initiative” (p.123); (2) by references to Amos Comenus (1592-1670) and John Locke (1632-1704) which show similarities between some of their ideas to some of Rousseau’s. Thirdly, it aims to show that many of Rousseau’s notions coincide with modern research on the subject. In this context, there are references to Donaldson (1979), Fisher and Gleitman (2002), Gleitman and Newport (1995) and Pinker (1994). Fourthly, the discussion aims to contribute to the scholarship on Rousseau’s philosophy of education by exploring how his ideas regarding language, language teaching and learning relate to his general principles of education. In this context there are, throughout the discussion, references to contemporary scholarship on Emile, such as Griffiths (2014), Laverty (2011), Lewis (2012), Mintz (2012), Lovlie (2002) and Shuffelton (2012).

The myth of Education – as all good myths should be – is powerful and pervasive. For clarity, I refer to the Sorelian conceptualisation of myth here (Sorel, 1908), rather than any recourse to the exclusively fictional or supernatural. Georges Sorel described a myth as a strong belief that, in the course of perpetuating that same myth, keeps a group, or society, together. Protecting the myth should invoke a strength of feeling, such that Sorel comes to describe the myth itself as a kind of tableau enchanteur: an enchanting, or bewitching, picture. This suggests that the myth has a hold over a group, rather than the converse. Even the critique of a myth necessarily alludes to this mythical enchantment.

From a Scottish perspective, what is alluring about the myth of education in our culture is hope and possibility – of equal opportunity, of social mobility, of a population that fulfils the four desirable capacities of successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors (Education Scotland, 2023). Education in Scotland, then, paints a picture of itself as a boon not only for the individual but for the society as a whole. It is an important caveat to note that the myth of education will be different in different societies but rarely the case that it is ever painted as something negative.

It is no wonder, then, that such a strong myth necessitates perpetuating itself not only in its natural domain – schools, colleges and universities – but also in the arena of popular culture and its associated subcultures. It is likely that many of us will be familiar with shows such as Sesame Street with its explicit educational intention woven into every episode. Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared parodies this so-called educational programming with its garish sets, charming puppetry and regular lessons. Each episode sees an anthropomorphised object spring to life to teach the main characters their respective areas of expertise. In the course of its 12 episodes, it has dealt with such lofty concepts as time, love and creativity; and less mysterious ideas like electricity and transportation.

I intend to show how this object of popular culture parodies, and therefore critiques, the myth of education in two ways, and in doing so, contributes to its permeation. First, there is an obvious, and overall, critique of (formal) education in general. The characters are housed in an environment that they cannot easily leave, as such these didactic interludes are often framed as impositions from what they would otherwise be doing. This can be effectively construed as reflective of mandatory schooling. Further to this, despite all of the lessons delivered, nothing ever changes. If Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared is considered unsettling (Pozes, 2022), it is in part due to this implicit comment against the myth of education as conducive to positive change.

Second, one particular episode (Jobs) looks specifically at the myth of education (and its relationship to the myth of work (Ellul, 1973)). It is here that symbols of formal education are used to deliver the lesson that education is important because it leads to work, even if that job is not one that brings the desired hope and social mobility that features in our tableau enchanteur. Again, this challenges the content of the myth but inevitably referring back to it because, whether we are agreeing with it or critiquing it, we are all bound up in the myth of education.

Should education serve socio-political missions, or should it be non-instrumental? In this paper I analyze a tension between two views concerning purpose in education, and I suggest a model that may help to reconcile it.

First we have social-mission approaches, subordinating education to socio-economic goals. One educational system can serve two masters or more, with inner contradictions: high-schools in countries in conflict are nationally committed to army-recruitment, encouraging obedience, are asked to "feed" high-tech industries with creative, open-minded people, and to promote academic and emotional skills of students. Additionally, education is conceived of as necessarily political (Freire1987, Lam1999) and so not only capitalist powers "use" it. educators are also expected to eliminate racism, violence, and injustice, promote democracy, and social justice.

In contrast, I recognise non-instrumental approaches, rooted in ancient traditions. Aristotle (1973) recognised pure study as an end in itself, and placed it at the top of human existence. Judaism attributes high religious and moral value to "Torah Lishma" - studying the Bible for its own sake. Islamic philosophy identifies the purposes of learning as morality and happiness – two inner purposes, not subordinated to external goals (Arar&Haj-Yehia2018).

Kant established the values attributed to non-instrumentalism, both morally and aesthetically, with the categorial imperative ordering "to always respect humanity as an end and never merely as a means" (Kant,1785/1998,38) and the definition of beauty as "delight without interest" (1790/1951,38-39); Another moment of beauty is "purposiveness without purpose" (1790/1951, 55), which mixes a subjective feeling of inner purpose, with the freedom from external objectives. Referring to education we conclude that only pedagogies in which teachers and students are respected as human subject are morally justified, and that educational processes with inner purposefulness have aesthetic qualities.

Indeed, current thinkers criticize instrumentalism in education in various forms: seeing teachers as instruments instead of respecting their professional judgement (Biesta2015), subordinating educational processes to external goals, instead of acknowledging them as emergent (Osberg&Biesta 2021), treating schools functionally, focusing on efficiency, measurements of outcomes and quality not recognising them as homes for holistic processes (Magrini,2014; Biesta,2022).

Interestingly, two thinkers who support non-instrumentalism, hold this inner tension un-explicitly within their theory. Martha Nusbaum (2010) criticizes materialism in national education-systems, oriented to technological competition and economic considerations. She suggests turning back to liberal curriculum, emphasizing humanities. However, the reason for Nussbaum’s preference, is protecting democracy, which she believes is threatened by the utilitarian approach. Nussbaum’s writing is not theoretical but practical – she defines it as a manifesto. Her book's name, “Not for Profit - Why Democracy Needs the Humanities” reflects the duality: the non-instrumental title is followed by a practical subtitle. I warmly identify with her moral and political preferences, but I must admit that her approach is not less instrumental than that of her capitalist opponents, it is just subordinated to different objectives.

Daniel Pink criticizes the use of external motivation for complex missions (like learning) and proposes to businesses and educators to allow inner motivation (i.e. supporting non-instrumentalism). However, his argument is based on the lesser efficiency of external motivation, namely, a very instrumental argument. Furthermore, in analysing the factors of inner motivation he mentions a sense of purpose, leading again to a dualistic message: Whoever is internally motivated, sees his action as subordinate to a purpose external to the action in itself.

To sum up the problem, I recognise two voices: one that "recruits" education in the service of external goals, and another that attributes value to non-instrumentalism. Furthermore, but I argue that within liberal-humanist educational discourse, these two voices are often inter-related thus creating tension, confusion or contradictions.

The question of whether it is possible to simulate thinking with machines (Turing 1950) or whether it is possible for machines to think (Minsky 1961) has been debated for several decades (Weizenbaum 1976; Searle 1980). While on the one hand, due to the identity of assembly instructions and opcodes, it is clear that the possibility of thinking machines does exist neither theoretically nor practically, the belief that computers can potentially think better than humans and that this has already been achieved in some fields is maintained. This is especially true for adherents of the data religion (Harari 2017).

The question of possible uses of systems based on artificial intelligence methods in scientific culture is also discussed (Krenn et al. 2022). In this debate, the assumption is argued that AI systems will write scientific papers in the future (Gil 2021, 13). However, no examples of AI systems acting as "agents of understanding" (Krenn et al. 2022, 767) have been reported so far. One such example was examined for this talk.

The selection of the example was motivated on the one hand by the fact that submitting papers for conferences and reviewing papers for conferences is currently a widespread part of scientific culture. At the same time - not least under the influence of the Californian ideology (Barbrook and Cameron 1996) spread by adherents of the data religion - more and more lectures, publications and external funding are demanded of scientists. This necessitates an increase in productivity, and it is an obvious option to test whether current AI systems can contribute to an increase in productivity in the area of talks, in other words, whether the problem can be solved by the means that cause it.

The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) is with more than 2.000 participants the central conference for Educational Sciences at the European level. Within the European Association of Educational Research (EERA) more than 40 national associations are organised and more than 30 various networks cluster the topics for the ECER.

Conferences in scholarship are seen as main enabler of intellectual exchange and socialisation within the disciplines, which legitimate as well new research fields (Gross & Fleming, 2011). Thereby, the conferences offer the platform for the global interaction of academic networks (Wagner, 2008).

However, the academic study of education derives from different national and cultural research traditions and, thus, from different disciplinary understandings and a wide variety of theoretical and methodological approaches (Keiner, 2006; Knaupp et al., 2014). The EERA's networks aim to provide a forum for this diversity, which is described in the expression and goal of the "European Educational Research Space" with its culturally specific intellectual and social practice among educational researchers (Lawn, 2002).

Studies of the ECER point out, that the participants have came mainly from a few countries with little presence in large parts of Europe. Participants from the UK in particular, as well as from Western and Northern Europe in general, dominated the conference, supplemented by higher participation numbers from the host countries (Kenk, 2003).

Keiner and Hofbauer (2014) verify this and state that participation in subsequent years was unevenly weighted, but also pointing to the multinationality of participants, which is not reflected in high numbers. While the collaboration is increasingly observed in the sense of co-authorships in publication practice (Aman & Botte, 2017), the transnational collaboration at educational conferences is so far unclear.

This paper explores the participation at the ECER conferences and the collaboration at the submissions in relation to the country of the affiliation. Thereby, it describes the development of the ECER submissions at the conferences from 1998 to 2019, which allow to observe longer-term trends. Addionally, the submissions are analysed on a bigger regional picture by regional and continental assignment. The so-called "host country phenomenon" (Kenk, 2003, p. 618) is considered and examined for longer-term mobilisation effects in the following years and preferred international collaboration patterns are analyzed.

Complexity in the education sector, as well as continuing societal transformation, and the diversity of interdisciplinary and mutually influencing thematic areas within the field, all call for a reflection on methodological approaches to assess, represent and analyse evidence. Research syntheses offer one opportunity to investigate such dynamic research processes. This panel contributes to this complex issue by interrogating how diversity can be processed through methods of research synthesis in the field of educational technology. In this context, diversity relates to the scope of topics in digitising, as well as methods that are internationally applied to the research field of digitalisation and education. Furthermore, the topic of digitalisation implies an inherent form of diversity, as it does not only affect one single area in isolation, but rather impacts and influences all aspects of society, leading to various approaches of how to understand and study digitalisation.

Since the 2000s, research syntheses have reached a growing significance in social sciences generally (Booth et al., 2016; Petticrew & Roberts, 2006) but also within educational research in particular (Gough et al., 2017; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2020; Bedenlier et al., 2023). One reason for this is that by conducting research syntheses, scientists aim to systematically categorise a constantly growing body of literature. In this panel, we will take digitalisation in education as an example to discuss how far the method can be used to assess a dynamic research field – given a research situation that is highly international, interdisciplinary, heterogeneous (diversity of research designs) and often diffuse (unclear body of literature sources). Such a state of research seems typical for literature on transformation processes in general.

The panel will also query the complexity of assessing such research fields with profound methods and categorizing them qualitatively. A further methodological challenge emerges from the handling of a topic that has global application, like many current transformation processes, but is nonetheless shaped by cultural contexts and regional or national developments. For example, an investigation of factors that influence digitalisation in schools cannot do without international best-practice experience. At the same time, conditions of schools and school systems vary greatly within and across countries. These constellations require both an intensive treatment of international discourses and of local contexts, as well as a critical reflection on the benefits and challenges of translation and transfer of research, including bias within research syntheses.

The panel contributions focus on reviews of digitalisation in education from varying perspectives and will consider a range of review types (Sutton et al., 2019), discussing their advantages and challenges: (1) a series of critical reviews which systematically assess and then categorise and discuss literature, (2) a review of reviews, wherein statements from selected reviews are synthesised, (3) a rapid living review, where systematic methods are used within a shorter time frame, and the corpus is updated regularly to reflect extant literature. All three papers reflect international research and were conducted by scientists based in Norway, Germany and Australia. Within the field of digital education the thematic scope from the three examples ranges from different digital teaching aids, tools and resources to questions of management and organizational structures.

Moreover, all the three contributions will investigate the role reviews might play in societies that are characterised by diversity and dynamic transformation processes. To pursue this issue, a discussant from the United Kingdom will finally reflect the examples to assess the role of research syntheses in the context of knowledge societies and Open Science.

Education in an increasingly digitalised world represents dynamic social developments and a rapidly developing field of research in which new innovative concepts, technologies and transformation strategies are continuously being tested. Researchers are therefore finding it challenging to keep track of the latest findings and ongoing trials and to identify current research desiderata. Research syntheses, e.g. in the form of critical reviews, can make an important contribution to summarising the state of research on a clearly defined topic in a structured way and thus making it useful for science and practice (Wright & Michailova 2022). Critical reviews, like other research syntheses, involve a systematic search, description and analysis of the literature available in relation to a specific research question. They focus primarily on conceptually grasping the research field and can thus contribute to further theory or model building in the field (Wilmers et al. 2020; Grant and Booth 2009). The focus is on a detailed search of existing literature, a narrative classification of this literature in the research context and an assessment of the significance of the literature with regard to its contribution to answering a respective research question, as well as the identification of research desiderata. Critical reviews are characterised by rather broad questions and can be used to synthesize studies qualitatively (Wetterich & Plänitz 2021). The presentation is based on a critical review of curriculum development in the school sector in the context of digitalisation. The search resulted in 2444 titles. Content, theoretical, empirical and methodological criteria were considered for the inclusion of a publication (Siddaway, Wood & Hedges 2019). Following further exclusion criteria on a formal (e.g. non-matching literature type or other language than English or German) and on a qualitative level (e.g. matching the research question or meeting basic scientific standards), 29 publications were finally included in the critical review. These included studies collected primary data using interviews, questionnaires and document analyses. In order to systematically assess the studies and their contents in the review, a theoretical framework was used as the underlying construct (Newman & Gough 2020). In this contribution, we would like to discuss the potentials and challenges of the methodology of critical reviews in educational research, particularly in the field of education in an era of digital change. This implies specific challenges such as dealing with an unpredictable number of literature findings or handling very heterogeneous sets of literature.

Grant, M. J. & Booth, A. (2009). A Typology of Reviews: An Analysis of 14 Review Types and Associated Methodologies. Health information and libraries journal 26 (2): 91–108. Newman, M. & Gough, D. (2020). Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application. In O. Zawacki-Richter, M. Kerres, S. Bedenlier, M. Bond & K. Buntins (eds.) Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application, 3–22. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Siddaway, Andy P., Wood, Alex M. & Hedges, Larry V. (2019). How to Do a Systematic Review: A Best Practice Guide for Conducting and Reporting Narrative Reviews, Meta-Analyses, and Meta-Syntheses. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 747–770. Wetterich, C. & Plänitz, E. (2021) Systematische Literaturanalysen in den Sozialwissenschaften: Eine praxisorientierte Einführung. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Wilmers, Annika et al. (2020). Reviews zur Bildung im digitalen Wandel: Eine Einführung in Kontext und Methodik. In A. Wilmers, C. Anda, C. Keller, M. Rittberger (eds.), Bildung im digitalen Wandel. Die Bedeutung für das pädagogische Personal und für die Aus- und Fortbildung, 7-29. Münster, New York: Waxmann. Wright, A. & Michailova, S. (2022). Critical literature reviews: A critique and actionable advice. Management Learning. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211073961

The use of digital learning aids, resources and tools in education consists of several different research fields encompassing a wide range of research designs, contexts, and perspectives (Lai & Bower, 2019). As part of a project commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate of Education, we aimed to scope the field as broadly as possible by conducting a systematic review of systematic reviews by answering the question: What is known about digitalization in compulsory education? (Munthe et al., 2022). We followed the PRISMA-guidelines (Page et al., 2021) in searching, screening, and coding the included articles. We had a total of 262 included international systematic reviews, which we synthetized thematically in our research report, targeted to the Directorate, and directed to school stakeholders, teachers, policy makers and researchers. In our presentation we will lift advantages and challenges in conducting and using review of reviews as a method to scope the field of digitalization in education. According to Gough et al. (2017) reviews of reviews able broader approaches than individual systematic reviews and they can be relevant for decision-makers to save them to assimilate multiple systematic reviews themselves. They can also be timesaving by enabling the processing of many primary studies in the same review. The included systematic reviews in our study included totally thousands of primary studies. Reviews of reviews thus enable sustainable use of research resources by systematizing and synthetizing the existing research and highlighting the research gaps. The deeper approach can be challenging with review of reviews. In our study, the results showed the huge potential of digital resources to transform learning processes in classrooms and contribute to students learning. However, a majority of the included systematic reviews pointed out it is not self-evident, and a successful transformation mostly handles the role of the teacher, without deeper discussions about teachers pedagogical and didactical choices. A deeper understanding about the role of the teacher was not possible with our approach. Another challenge handles the quality of systematic reviews, and the quality check of the primary studies included the reviews. In our study, only a few systematic reviews documented the quality check of the included primary studies. A challenge also lies in the time-consuming investigation of potential overlap of included primary studies. Unfortunately, not all reviews provide the references of included primary studies.

Gough, D. A., Oliver, S., & Thomas, J. (2017). An introduction to systematic reviews (Second edition.). SAGE. Lai, J. W. M. & Bower, M. (2019). How is the use of technology in education evaluated? A systematic review. Computers & Education, 133, 27-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.01.010. Munthe, E., Erstad, O., Njå, M.B., Forsström, S., Gilje, Ø., Amdam, S., Moltudal, S., Hagen, S.B. (2022). Digitalisering i grunnopplæring; kunnskap, trender og framtidig forskningsbehov. Kunnskapssenter for utdanning: Universitetet i Stavanger. Page M. J., McKenzie J. E., Bossuyt P. M., Boutron I., Hoffmann T. C., Mulrow C. D., et al. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. Systematic Reviews 2021;10:89

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers, school leaders and policymakers needed evidence quickly, in order to inform emergency remote education policy and practice. This paper reports on a rapid review of 89 K-12 studies from around the world, undertaken following the first 7 months of the pandemic. Owing to the frequently changing landscape of the pandemic, a rapid review was chosen over a more extensive systematic review, as this allowed for streamlining and omitting aspects of the reviewing process to enable quicker dissemination (Hamel et al., 2020; Tricco et al., 2020). The rapid review was still undertaken using a transparent and replicable search strategy (Gough et al., 2012), but the number of databases searched was limited to four and a formal quality assessment was not undertaken, although any studies that did not include explicit details of participants with clear empirical data were excluded. This review was also intended to be a living rapid review (Elliott et al., 2014), updated regularly with new studies meeting the inclusion criteria, particularly through the use of machine learning via Microsoft Academic Graph within the evidence synthesis software EPPI-Reviewer (Thomas et al., 2023). Whilst this was initially achievable, the sheer volume of research that has been published on teaching and learning during the pandemic quickly became overwhelming for only one researcher to keep up with, coupled with a changeover of machine learning provider within EPPI-Reviewer to OpenAlex (Priem et al., 2022). This paper will therefore discuss the benefits and challenges of conducting both rapid reviews and living reviews, reflecting on this COVID-19 example, and provide advice for conducting similar reviews in the future.

Elliott, J. H., Turner, T., Clavisi, O., Thomas, J., Higgins, J. P. T., Mavergames, C., & Gruen, R. L. (2014). Living systematic reviews: An emerging opportunity to narrow the evidence-practice gap. PLoS Medicine, 11(2), e1001603. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001603 Gough, D., Oliver, S., & Thomas, J. (Eds.). (2012). An introduction to systematic reviews. Sage. Hamel, C., Michaud, A., Thuku, M., Skidmore, B., Stevens, A., Nussbaumer-Streit, B., & Garritty, C. (2020). Defining Rapid Reviews: a systematic scoping review and thematic analysis of definitions and defining characteristics of rapid reviews. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.09.041 Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01833 Thomas, J., Graziosi, S., Brunton, J., Ghouze, Z., O'Driscoll, P., Bond, M., & Koryakina, A. (2023). EPPI-Reviewer: advanced software for systematic reviews, maps and evidence synthesis [Computer software]. EPPI-Centre Software. UCL Social Research Institute. London. https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?alias=eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/er4 Tricco, A. C., Garritty, C. M., Boulos, L., . . . Straus, S. E. (2020). Rapid review methods more challenging during COVID-19: Commentary with a focus on 8 knowledge synthesis steps. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 126, 177–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.06.029

Meet and greet the editors of the European Educational Research Journal.

In times of ever-increasing numbers of publications and easier accessibility, e.g. through Open Access publishing, the overview of existing research and secured knowledge can be lost (Brooth et al., 2016). Systematic reviews are a suitable method to synthesize research knowledge in a criterion-guided and transparent way and to provide a structured overview of the research field under investigation. Thus, with systematic reviews reliable findings can be bundled and at the same time the need for further research can be identified. The transfer of synthesized knowledge takes place in the course of evidence-based policy advice (Pawson, 2006) as well as by reflecting the results back to the research community (Gough et al., 2017). As a part of the Open Science movement, systematic reviews objectively select and combine available studies and thus promote the accessibility of scientific knowledge to the interested public.

Originally invented in the field of medicine (see evidence-based medicine; Sackett et al., 1996; Thoma & Eaves, 2015), systematic reviews are increasingly being implemented in educational research (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2020). However, there is the challenge of transferring the methodological approach to the studies conducted in educational research. Whereas in medicine most studies are based on randomised control group trials with a similar research design, the strength of educational research lies in its plurality of empirical approaches, both from a qualitative or quantitative paradigm. But how can a structured and criteria based synthesis based on such a heterogeneous background of studies be achieved? The symposium addresses the challenges to this transfer of the method in the preparation of a systematic review. Furthermore we will discuss how methodological guidelines and quality standards for systematic reviews in the field of educational research can be implemented.

The four papers in the symposium show how a systematic aggregation of studies in a research field can succeed and focus on challenges to the respective methodological steps. They stem from different disciplinary fields of educational research (sociology, psychology, and educational sciences) and contribute to an international perspective, covering literature from various countries and publication languages. The first presentation concentrates on the challenges in the process of the literature search and identification of relevant studies for a systematic review. Examining the case of Germany, the paper deals with the question how educational inequality can be reduced and addresses educational barriers in formal, non-formal and informal learning contexts. The second paper covers the theme of digitalisation in cultural education – based on a literature search at an international level. The authors take a look at the support of selection and categorization of literature using text mining methods. The third paper presents a systematic review of social inequality in educational attainment from preschool to higher education that covers the state of research from the German-speaking area (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). The presentation focusses on the collection of relevant information (coding) as well as the synthesis of evidence by means of research maps (gap maps). The fourth paper deals with the language bias in international systematic reviews in the field of educational technology. The trilingual team of authors presents a mapping review based on existing systematic reviews including the languages of English, Spanish and German.

Children, adolescents and young adults from socially disadvantaged families face educational barriers in the acquisition of competences or the access to learning opportunities (Hadjar & Gross, 2016; Maaz & Dumont, 2019; among others). While there is broad research on how and where educational barriers occur and arise, fewer studies exist on how disadvantages in education can be compensated or prevented in Germany. Also, researchers have mainly investigated the overcoming of educational barriers in formal education settings (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2020, p. 79). Most importantly, comprehensive systematic reviews on overcoming educational barriers do not exist for Germany. Our aim is thus to systemise research on processes, measures and programs for overcoming educational barriers in different learning environments ─ formal, non-formal and informal ─ in Germany. We will include studies concerning educational inequality from birth up to the transition to post-secondary education (age range 0-27). We will consider empirical qualitative and quantitative longitudinal and cross-sectional studies from the social and educational sciences and related disciplines. We focus on educational barriers which are (re-)produced or increased, e.g., by the social or ethnic background, gender, physical or mental impairment (Wenzel, 2008, p. 430). We intend to identify measures which prevent such mechanisms of exclusion and which consequently promote diversity. For the intended review, we need to consider a broad range of criteria of finding and selecting relevant studies (Newman & Gough, 2020). Resulting challenges in the literature search and screening processes will be the focus of the presentation. Central questions are: How can we generate a systematic search strategy to produce a resource-oriented outcome? How to deal with technical restrictions of the literature database? How can we define selection criteria so that different reviewers follow a unified screening procedure? How to document screening decisions in a detailed and transparent way? The paper will illustrate innovative automated solutions to these questions. The literature found with search terms related to ‘overcoming educational barriers’ was post-hoc filtered for search terms related to social inequality and social background using R (R Core Team, 2020; package stringr, Wickham, 2019), which allowed for a more economic search procedure. An electronic questionnaire guides the reviewer through the screening process and documents each decision. These new methods facilitate and systemize literature search and screening processes. As an outlook, we will present first results and discuss implications for educational research.

Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung (Hrsg.). (2020). Bildung in Deutschland 2020. Ein indikatorengestützter Bericht mit einer Analyse zu Bildung in einer digitalisierten Welt. W. Bertelsmann Verlag. Hadjar, A. & Gross, C. (Hg.) (2016). Education Systems and Inequalities. Bristol: Policy Press. Maaz, K., & Dumont, H. (2019). Ungleichheiten des Bildungserwerbs nach sozialer Herkunft, Migrationshintergrund und Geschlecht. In O. Köller, M. Hasselhorn, F. W. Hesse, K. Maaz, J. Schrader, H. Solga, C. K. Spieß & K. Zimmer (Hrsg.), Das Bildungswesen in Deutschland: Bestand und Potenziale (S.299-332). utb. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Newman, M., & Gough, D. (2020). Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application. In O. Zawacki-Richter, M. Kerres, S. Bedenlier, M. Bond & K. Buntins (Hrsg.), Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application (S.1-22). Springer Nature. R Core Team (2020). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Version 4.0.2. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL: https://www.R-project.org/. Wenzel, H. (2008). Studien zur Organisations- und Schulkulturentwicklung. In W. Helsper & J. Böhme (Hrsg.), Handbuch der Schulforschung (2. Aufl.) (S. 423-447). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Wickham, Hadley (2019). stringr: Simple, Consistent Wrappers for Common String Operations. R package version 1.4.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=stringr

Systematic reviews are an essential tool to obtain an overview of interdisciplinary research fields. However, they are often hampered by broad search strings leading to many false negative results. Such literature searches can lead to several 100,000 papers and manual screening and categorization are no longer feasible. In such cases, text mining can support screening and categorizing of large literature corpora. In our study, we used a corpus of n > 250,000 papers from a literature search on international research on digitalisation in arts, aesthetic and cultural education (D-ACE). After cleaning the exported texts (title, journal, keywords, abstracts), we applied an iterative procedure of predictive modeling and prioritized screening (as described in detail by Christ et al., 2021), followed by topic modelling. Predictive modelling was utilized to avoid having to screen all texts. Finally, topic modeling of the included papers was performed to determine content and size of hot topics of research on D-ACE. Across iterations, the inclusion rate decreased from 85.8% to 1.8% in the 17th iteration. In total, n = 3,846 papers (including n = 1786 from the training set) were included. Most of them were from authors from the USA, followed by authors from the UK, Taiwan, Australia, Spain, Canada and Germany. The publication rate has increased at an accelerated rate since 2012, which did not differ for the affiliation country or continent of the authors. The included papers were first analyzed via topic modelling to determine the latent research topics within the corpus, followed by a more specific analysis of investigated cultural activities. In total, k = 31 latent topics were covered in the included papers. Hot topics included “formal education and learning”, “serious games and gamification of learning”, “popular games and engagement”, “user experience and interface design” and “effects on personality and behavior”. Focusing on the investigated cultural activities resulted in k = 17 topics containing all major facets of cultural activities i.e. music, literature, visual arts, performing arts and games. With k = 8, a majority of topics related to video games. The distribution of articles in the topic models did not differ according to the affiliation countries or continents. Overall, predictive modelling and priority screening turned out to be well suited for efficiently identifying hot topics of international research during preparation of systematic reviews. Implications for further development of these methods as well as for conducting systematic reviews and original work are discussed.

Christ, A., Penthin, M., & Kröner, S. (in revision). Two decades of research syntheses on digital cultural education: A tertiary review. Christ, A., Penthin, M., & Kröner, S. (2021). Big data and digital aesthetic, arts, and cultural education: Hot spots of current quantitative research. Social Science Computer Review, 39, 821-843. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0894439319888455 Kröner, S., Christ, A., & Penthin, M. (2021). Stichwort: Digitalisierung in der kulturell-ästhetischen Bildung–eine konfigurierende Forschungssynthese [Digitalization in aesthetics, arts and cultural education – a scoping review]. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 24, 9-39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-021-00989-7

Social inequalities can be found in various aspects of educational attainment at different points in the educational biography, from early childhood education to higher education. There is a positive effect of a privileged parental background on participation in institutionalized early childhood education and care (e.g., Stahl & Schober, 2018), academic-track attendance at secondary school level (“Gymnasium”, e.g., Dumont et al., 2019) and university entrance (e.g., Reimer & Pollak, 2010). Social background effects can also be found in children’s and adolescents’ competencies (e.g., Linberg et al., 2019) and their later degrees (Becker, & Meyer, 2019). Still, the existing research needs to be synthesized in order to assess the entire evidence base. This is where the present systematic review sets in. For the first time, the available research on social inequalities in educational attainment in predominantly German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria & Switzerland; included publication languages German, English, French) was systematized for the a) pre-school level, b) primary and secondary school level as well as c) higher education and d) vocational training for a period of 20 years (2000-2020). The aspects of educational participation, competencies and grades were included as well as educational qualifications. The present systematic review follows the methodical steps of 1) an extensive literature search, 2) a two-step criteria-based literature selection (screening) and 3) coding of relevant information (Gough et al., 2017). A total of 33,662 literature references were identified using online database searches (FIS Bildung, Google Scholar, ERIC, DNB and educational sector specific databases) and screened regarding the studies’ relevance for the research question and their scientific quality. 568 studies could be included in the coding process. The general results show that social inequality is persistent throughout all educational sectors (Bachsleitner et al., 2022). The strongest evidence can be found for the primary and secondary school level based on n= 318 included studies. The present study manages thus to combine robust findings on social inequalities in educational attainment and highlight further research potentials. Furthermore, conclusions can be drawn about the field of inequality research itself. The evidence on social inequality effects will be presented using gap maps, which provide a way of illustrating the found evidence. The methodological procedures for quality assurance as well as the challenges of a broadly based systematic review will be outlined.

Bachsleitner, A., Lämmchen, R., & Maaz, K. (2022). Soziale Ungleichheit des Bildungserwerbs von der Vorschule bis zur Hochschule. Eine Forschungssynthese zwei Jahrzehnte nach PISA. Waxmann. Becker, R. & Mayer, K. U. (2019). Societal change and educational trajectories of women and men born between 1919 and 1986 in (West) Germany. European Sociological Review, 35(2), 147–168. Dumont, H., Klinge, D., & Maaz, K. (2019). The many (subtle) ways parents game the system: Mixed-method evidence on the transition into secondary-school tracks in Germany. Sociology of Education, 92(2), 199–228. Gough, D., Oliver, S., & Thomas, J. (2017). An introduction to systematic reviews (2nd Edition). Sage. Linberg, T., Schneider, T., Waldfogel, J., & Wang, Y. (2019). Socioeconomic status gaps in child cognitive development in Germany and the United States. Social Science Research, 79, 1–31. Reimer, D., & Pollak, R. (2010). Educational expansion and its consequences for vertical and horizontal inequalities in access to higher education in West Germany. European Sociological Review, 26(4), 415–430. Stahl, J. F., & Schober, P. S. (2018). Convergence or Divergence? Educational Discrepancies in Work-Care Arrangements of Mothers with Young Children in Germany. Work, Employment and Society, 32(4), 629–649.

In recent years, the interest in and use of secondary research to synthesise evidence in education has grown considerably. While systematic reviews often aim to analyse a large corpus of studies, educational technology research often focuses on very specific and locally targeted contexts, with nationally or linguistically defined communities (Marín et al., in press). As such, in their methodological development and adaptation to educational research, evidence syntheses have not yet sufficiently taken into account and reflected key aspects such as research context and the language of publication (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2020). This implies potential biases with regard to the associated visibility, validity and discoverability of results. This paper addresses these content-related and methodological challenges through a mapping review of reviews (Sutton et al., 2019), by exploring how (non)English-language primary studies have been synthesised in educational technology research. Search strings were developed in English, Spanish and German, and were used to search in the databases ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, Dialnet, FIS Database and Google Scholar, yielding 7,275 items in the initial search. A sample of articles was drawn from the corpus, using methods for estimating sample size in the social sciences. 446 educational technology systematic reviews, published since 1983 in article, conference paper, chapter, or report form, in English, Spanish or German, were analysed using a pre-defined coding scheme. Among other aspects, the languages of publication of the primary studies and the reasons for or against the exclusion of certain languages were coded. The coding scheme can thus be used to demonstrate how existing systematic reviews deal with primary studies in different publication languages, and the extent to which bias exists with respect to consideration of English-language and peer-reviewed articles (e.g., Jackson & Kuriyama, 2019). Of the 446 systematic reviews, only 17% included studies in more than one language, and a further 42% did not provide any information about the language of inclusion (n=75). Multilingual searches were even less common, with only 8% of studies (n=35) searching for publications in more than one language, and only 7% (n=30) included articles with different languages. The findings of the review, including consideration of its own limitations (e.g., exclusion of reviews published in languages other than English, Spanish or German, choice of databases), are situated within the evolving methodological discussion of educational systematic reviews (e.g., Chong et al., 2023) and reflected against the larger context of educational publication structures (Beigel, 2021).

Beigel, F. (2021). A multi-scale perspective for assessing publishing circuits in non-hegemonic countries. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 4(1), 1845923. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1845923 Chong, S. W., Bond, M., & Chalmers, H. (2023). Opening the methodological black box of research synthesis in language education: where are we now and where are we heading? Applied Linguistics Review. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2022-0193 Jackson, J. L., & Kuriyama, A. (2019). How often do systematic reviews exclude articles not published in English? Journal of General Internal Medicine, 34(8), 1388–1389. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-04976-x Marín, V. I., Buntins, K., Bedenlier, S., & Bond, M. (in press). Invisible borders in educational technology research? A comparative analysis. Educational Technology Research and Development. Sutton, A., Clowes, M., Preston, L., & Booth, A. (2019). Meeting the review family: Exploring review types and associated information retrieval requirements. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 36(3), 202–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12276 Zawacki-Richter, O., Kerres, M., Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., & Buntins, K. (Eds.). (2020). Systematic Reviews in Educational Research. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27602-7 Victoria I. Marín acknowledges the support of the Grant RYC2019-028398-I funded by MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 and FSE “El FSE invierte en tu futuro”.

In this fast-paced world, digital competence is of greater importance. One of these areas of literacy, media and information literacy (MIL), has come to the forefront at the academic and everyday levels. Information literacy is the recognition of information, it includes finding, evaluating, using it, and selecting between information. In addition, the credibility and reliability of information are becoming increasingly important examinations, the ethical rules, as well as the question of how we communicate, in what form, and how we share information on social media. Information literacy has evolved from a library- and/or librarian-oriented concept into a multidisciplinary field, and is no longer limited to the social sciences, but covers 27 scientific fields in the Scopus subject classification. New literacy areas include digital literacy, media literacy, business information literacy, content knowledge, workplace information literacy, and scientific literacy. The set of perspectives that we actively use when we come into contact with mass communication systems and the messages that reach us we interpret is media literacy; accessing, analyzing, and producing information ability, the basic goal of which is critical autonomy about all media.

The MIL emphasizes a critical approach to literacy to enable people to answer questions critically about what they have read, heard, and learned. It needs to appear at all levels of education. The 21st-century knowledge society requires new literacy skills and critical awareness. The emerging generations must learn critical thinking and conscious use to become digital citizens and reinvent themselves on the information superhighway. MIL is a tool curriculum that integrates information, media, and digital literacy.

In many cases, however, we have experienced that media and information literacy rarely appears in educational programs or the minds of teachers, whether we are talking about public education or higher education. MIL is given a less important role in the curricula, therefore it is necessary to develop this basic competence during higher education studies, regardless of the field of study.

Media and digital literacy are increasingly recognized as the basic competence of a 21st-century citizen, but academic training is still far from fully fulfilling this emerging need. Previous research asserts that successful integration of media and information literacy in higher education must be based on close collaboration between librarians and faculty, strategic anchoring and visualization in curriculum, syllabi, course objectives, and examinations, and alignment with the university's mission. must be formed. Today, we can hardly single out a higher education course in which this competence is consciously displayed.

There is a growing movement worldwide to develop media and information literacy curricula (UNESCO) and to train teachers in media education, but these efforts are limited, and there is a risk that the faster-growing, better ones will cooperate. funded, and less critical education and information technology companies. It is essential to develop a critical response to the new information and communication technologies that are embedded in all areas of society. Media and information literacy is dynamic and spread across many disciplines, so interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches would be needed to implement it effectively in diverse and complex information and learning environments. According to UNESCO experts, information literacy should be included in education curricula at all educational levels. In higher education, the following requirements were formulated for information literacy:

• determining the nature and extent of the required information and wording
• efficient and effective access to the necessary information
• critical evaluation of information and its sources
• effective application of information individually or in groups for a goal
• knowledge of economic, legal, and social problems related to information, and ethical application.

The question how users interact and use websites, databases and other portals available online is as old as the internet itself (Zheng & Peltsverger 2015). To answer this question, website administrators used data collection technologies that record the use of a website early on, which can be grouped under the term web analytics. According to the still common definition by the Web Analytics Association from 2008, “Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage”. In contrast to qualitative user research, web analytics is less laborious and costly to execute. More importantly, it does not confine the data collection to a limited period but continuously generates data about usage (Palomino et al. 2021). Web statistics reveal, for example, how often users visit an online portal, which pages are particularly popular, how long visitors remain on the sites, and which paths they have taken across the website (Kaushik 2007). The analysed data is measured against pre-set key performance indicators which are directly tied to the main objective of the website and combined with the business strategy (Hassler 2019, Jyothi 2017) This approach provides web operators with not only insights into user behavior, but also areas for development in their web product, such as missing content or usability issues. Although web analytics is most commonly employed in online marketing, it is also utilized in education in the area of digital information and reference systems as offered by libraries, educational institutions, or research facilities.

A number of papers provide information on the use of web analytics in these settings. Some papers are concerned with operational issues such as data protection (Quintel and Wilson 2020, Chandler & Wallace 2016) or the inventory of web analytics usage in institutional contexts (Redkina 2018, Böhm &Rittberger 2016), whereas others describe usage scenarios for specific web portals based on web analytics (Perifanou & Economides 2022, Keil et al. 2015). Regardless of the findings of these studies, various research objectives for the field of web analytics remain in the context of educational portals. In the technological domain, work on how to measure specific indicators would be useful. Furthermore, it is critical to investigate how cross-portal insights into the use of information systems can be obtained and what benefits this might offer for user research. Studies detailing optimization cycles would be valuable regarding the management field, for instance by approaching the subject with contrasting case studies for various organizations. In the subject of open research data, questions about the prerequisites for making web analytics data available for subsequent use arise.

In my paper, I would like to address some of the questions raised above and underpin them with the case study at DIPF| Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education. DIPF operates a number of infrastructures for educational research and practice and the general public, including the German Education Server, which provides edited and curated online information, the “Education Research Portal” offering literature databases, as well as the "Research Data Centre for Education," which processes research data for re-use." DIPF monitors and evaluates the use of these infrastructures through web analytics. To implement web analytics efficiently across portals and thereby gain insights into the web use behaviour of stakeholder groups in education, I propose that web analytics research become an open research practice. Sharing web analytics data, transparent descriptions of data collecting techniques, and an open and collaborative culture are required for expanding research beyond case studies. By offering insights into web analytics practice at DIPF and showing cross-portal collaboration, I aim to exemplify open research in action.

Open Access (OA) publications are increasingly established in Educational Sciences. The Open Science Monitor of the European Union points to 23,7 % of Open Access journal publications in Educational Sciences (Open Science Monitor, 2009-2018). An online survey conducted in 2012 describes a fundamental change in publication behavior since some years (Bambey 2016: 275).

The publishing world has responded to the changing demands with new business models. In order to enable free access to the literature, publishing fees (APC) were introduced for the lost revenue from subscriptions (Rummler, Schindler 2018; Schimmer et al. 2015). In the so-called hybrid business models, the subscription model has been combined with APC, which has opened up additional sources of revenue for publishers.

The new model of publication-based funding runs the risk of missing one of the goals of OA, namely the radical reduction of costs in publishing, and of the large academic publishers continuing to make disproportionate profits (Asai 2020). Rather, there is a danger that the serial crisis of the 1990s will turn into a new APC crisis (Khoo 2019; Herb 2017).

In order to facilitate a transition from the subscription model to the APC model and the associated shift in budgets, transformation contracts (e.g. DEAL) have been concluded at national level, under which so-called publish and read fees are paid until the journals shift to a fully OA mode. These transformation contracts have led to a significant increase in the number of hybrid OA articles published. However, they carry the risk that they are associated with an increase in costs, especially for the HSS disciplines. Also, these contracts are only available to large publishers and exclude the breadth of smaller publishers (Schindler, Rummler 2018; Ferwerda et al. 2017).

A number of studies have been conducted that focus on OA status or the route to OA (e.g. Piwowar et al. 2018; Melero 2018; Wohlgemuth et al. 2017, Picarra et al. 2015). If the financial aspects are covered, mostly data driven approaches, based on available and processable data are used (Jahn et al. 2022, Stern 2017). The lack of a reference base of journals established in the research community, used as poulation, is evident. Approaches that do not follow a thematic or disciplinary approach have only limited explanatory power.

This paper examines the status of the OA transformation for core journals in the defined field of educational research in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. A differentiated presentation of the availability in Fully OA or Hybrid OA Journals as well as Green OA self-archived articles in OA Repositories is given.

In addition, the diversity of business models offered by the publishers is examined, assessing their efficiency in tearms of transformation as well as their impact on public funding.

In order to be able to make a reliable statement on the status of the OA transformation, this paper focuses on a concrete publication output of the educational research community. The bibliometric analysis carried out focuses on on a defined set of journals with high relevance for the discipline, published by publishing houses located in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Space matters to education. Physical spaces and material resources affect how teachers teach and students learn. Reflecting the diversity of users and uses, relations between school premises and education have proven extremely complex, with few direct causal links between physical elements and learning (Woolner et al., 2007). Spaces, nevertheless, facilitate or constrain activities and behaviour (Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2011; Stadler-Altmann, 2016), reflect educational cultures and often entrench educational values. Design and redesign, accordingly, may serve to enhance the alignment between space and pedagogy (Frelin & Grannäs, 2021), reflect new values and encourage innovative practices (Woolner et al., 2018).

Enthusiasm surrounds innovative learning environments or ILEs (OECD, 2013). The evidence base has been recognised by significant decision-makers, such as municipal bodies, national governments, the OECD and the World Bank (Grannäs & Stavem, 2021), and mandates for open, flexible school facilities are manifested (Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2011). The potential contribution of educational practitioners and their pupils to the adaption and redesign of conventional and innovative facilities, however, is often neglected (Bøjer, 2019: 45). A participatory approach to developing school space is frequently recommended (Blackmore et al., 2011), but uncertainties remain about how to carry it out.

One of the keys to successful alignment of practice, culture and school facilities, is to ignite awareness and initiative among practitioners and learners regarding their everyday physical environment and its possibilities. Although experience shows that designs for schools, cannot simply be transported between nations, approaches to planning and designing can be exported and used successfully in contrasting contexts (Woolner & Cardellino, 2021). Our ongoing research collaboration, DRAPES, and, specifically, our recent Erasmus+ project Collaborative ReDesign of Schools or CoReD (https://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/), aimed to do just that, bringing together values, needs and pedagogical intentions when planning physical changes in schools or adjusting the arrangement and application of existing spaces. Guidance and tools were needed for school users to contribute to the design and redesign of their physical learning environments. The aim of this symposium is to share experiences gained from our research and development of six analytic tools for collaborative and participatory reflections on educational settings and redesign of schools, focusing particularly on how tools, initially developed in one European country (Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom), were adapted and used in differing national and school contexts, deepening our understanding of how each tool can be applied in diverse ways and settings.

Our overall goal has been to give practitioners the means to engage effectively with their own settings and practices to improve the fit between teaching, learning and space, as well as communicate our results to a global audience. The key idea has been to develop tools sufficiently structured for practitioners to pick up and use, but flexible enough to adjust for different design stages and educational settings. Fully developed, user-friendly tools, with instructions in six languages, are now maintained on a project website, supported by 26 case studies as well as cross context syntheses of how the tools work best and elaborated principles and guides for collaborative redesign of educational settings. The presentations report sections of these efforts including case studies, cross case synthesis and conclusive guidelines for tools developed and tested in the project. We also seek to problematise the successes noted of the tools, questioning how they function as supports for thinking, and enablers of collaborative discussion of design by specialists in education rather than architecture. We also consider these collaborations within the limits that wider national and political contexts put upon the opportunities for practitioners to take control of the design and use of school space.

Class observation is a main instrument for understanding teaching and learning processes in schools when the results of observations are analysed and reflected based on the theory of teaching and learning (cf. Helmke 2012; Meyer 2010). In particular, to understand the relationship between pedagogical activity and architectural space design, these questions need to be considered: - How do teachers use space for teaching? (cf. Stadler-Altmann 2016, 2019) - How do pupils use their rooms for learning? (see Woolner & Stadler-Altmann 2021; Stadler-Altmann 2015) The tool Cartographic Observation can be used to graphically illustrate lesson observations. This allows the movement patterns of teachers and students to become visible. At the same time, the interactions between teachers and students are recorded to document what happened in class. This combination provides a different view of classroom activities and is therefore of interest to both educational scientists and architectural designers. In our presentation we will introduce Cartographic Observation (Horne Martin 2002) as a research tool and explain how this tool was used in the CoReD research project. Therefore, we will use case studies from Italy and Portugal. The case studies have been conducted in pre-schools on the one hand and in basic schools on the other. Consequently, in addition to the international comparison, an analysis can also be made between the tool’s use in different educational institutions and respective pedagogical contexts. Additionally, results can also conclude on the tool’s ability to be implemented with lessons from different subjects, and with students from a wide age range. By comparing the tool’s use and outcomes in these case studies, we can show the benefits of the instrument. We will also describe possible applications in pedagogical practice and open further research perspectives on the basis of our research results. The comparison of the analyses from the perspective of educational science and architecture is particularly attractive.

Helmke, A. (2012), Unterrichtsqualität und Lehrerprofessionalität. Diagnose, Evaluation und Verbesserung des Unterrichts. 4. Aufl., Seelze: Kallmeyer. Horne Martin, S. (2002) ‘The classroom environment and its effects on the practice of teachers’, Journal of Environmental Psychology 22: 139-156. Meyer, H. (2026), Was ist guter Unterricht? 15. Aufl., Berlin: Cornelsen Stadler-Altmann, U. (2019), Pedagogical Research in regard to School Design Processes. A fragmentary overview developing pedagogical inspired principles for both planning and designing school buildings, in: Weyland, B.; Stadler-Altmann, U.; Galletti, A.; Prey, K., SCUOLE IN MOVIMENTO. Progettare insieme tra pedagogia, architettura e design, Franco Angeli Open Access, pp. 14-23. Stadler-Altmann, U. (2016) (Hrsg.), Lernumgebungen. Erziehungswissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Schulgebäude und Klassenzimmer [Learning Environments. Educational perspectives on school buildings and classrooms – bilingual publication], Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich. Stadler-Altmann, U. (2015), The Influence of School and Classroom Space on Education, in: C. Rubie-Davies, J. M. Stephens, & P. Watson (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Social Psychology of the Classroom, London: Routledge, p. 252-262. Woolner, P.; Stadler-Altmann, U. (2021), Openness – Flexibility – Transition. Nordic prospects for changes in the school learning environment, in: Education Inquiry. DOI 10.1080/20004508.2021.1957331

The building of new schools in the city of Stockholm is and will be extensive. The new schools are built with innovative learning environments, featuring configurations of spaces in various sizes, with requirements for flexibility but also cost efficiency. Because new knowledge is required about how these innovative learning environments function, a large-scale post-occupancy evaluation study was carried out using the pedagogical walk-through tool, with focus on the inhabitants and the aim to revise the municipal school building program. A selection of students and mainly teaching staff in four newly built schools participated. The focus was on the physical environment and its strengths and weaknesses in relation to the pedagogical practice. Four previously identified key locations were investigated: team learning spaces, entrances, dining rooms and sports halls. Twelve pedagogical walk-throughs were carried out with a total of 51 adults and 31 students. Each walk-through took about two hours, and the participants initially filled out an individual assessment protocol based on possible activities in each space, positive and negative impressions, and suggestions for improvements. The individual assessment was followed by a focus group conversation that was recorded. The data analyses were informed by previous research studies, and the collected individual and group statements sorted into six categories: Flexibility, flow, interior design, sound environment, social environment, and visual environment. Important strengths and weaknesses regarding the physical learning environment and conditions for the environment to function well were identified. Spatial relationships, for instance, and in particular, the placement of doors, were considered important. Most or all spaces were intended as learning spaces and the need for social spaces for students had been underestimated, especially for older students. Different configurations of space, furniture, lighting, and technology were seen as more or less flexible, but careful consideration of the organization of flow of students and materials deemed especially important in these innovative learning environments, to avoid problems that make pedagogical practices harder to carry out. The results will inform future school building processes in Sweden and elsewhere.

Frelin, A., & Grannäs, J. (2021). Designing and Building Robust Innovative Learning Environments. Buildings, 11(8), 345. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11080345 Frelin, A., & Grannäs, J. (2022). Nya lärmiljöer: Från vision till pedagogisk verksamhet i två innovativa skolor. Sveriges Kommuner och Regioner. Frelin, A., Grannäs, J., Sundholm, M., & Van de Meulebrouck, T. (2022). Pedagogisk utvärdering av skolmiljöer. Gåturer i fyra skolbyggnader i Stockholms stad. Gävle University Press. Sigurðardóttir, A. K., & Hjartarson, T. (2016). The idea and reality of an innovative school: From inventive design to established practice in a new school building. Improving Schools, 19(1), 62–79. https://doi.org/10.1177/1365480215612173 Sigurðardóttir, A. K., Hjartarson, T., & Snorrason, A. (2021). Pedagogical Walks through Open and Sheltered Spaces: A Post-Occupancy Evaluation of an Innovative Learning Environment. Buildings, 11(11), 503. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings11110503 Woolner, P. (2018). Collaborative Re-design: Working with School Communities to Understand and Improve their Learning Environments. In R. Ellis & P. Goodyear (Eds.), Spaces of teaching and learning: Integrating perspectives on research and practice. (pp. 153–172). Springer. Woolner, P., & Cardellino, P. (2022). Learning Environment Design and Use. Buildings, 12(5), 666. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12050666

Survey on Students School Spaces (S3S) is a tool that aims to redesign and re-rehabilitate school spaces through an inclusive process, by integrating student feedback in the co-design of learning environments (Coelho et al., 2022). Acknowledging the need to align school and pedagogy, S3S was developed for the alignment between student use and appropriation and their school spaces. This is achieved by a bipartite procedure of an initial students’ online survey and a subsequent focus group in the form of an on-site walkthrough of students within the mentioned spaces (S3S’s tutorials and materials: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/tools/school-spaces). The survey reaches a more extensive array of students who use the school premises, and the walkthrough can detail more specific circumstances of student’s occupation of these spaces. The tool can, ultimately, provide information and ideas on students’ feelings, experience and activities that can feedforward physical changes in the school, by means of a bottom-up and participatory design process. S3S was implemented in three ssettings – Eugénio de Castro School and Rainha Santa Isabel School in Portugal, and Ponteland High School in the UK, three schools with very different conditions, construction dates and building types. In Portugal, the intention was to co-design adaptations to premises (built in 1972 and 1999) that were recognised to have limitations due to both age and design. In some contrast, the UK school was newly constructed and S3S was chosen by senior leadership as a means to conduct a student-focused post occupancy evaluation. Overall, the use of S3S in these schools proved that it is user-friend and flexible and can be adjusted to each school’s needs and expectations. Even though it was largely motivated by the school leaders, it can be mediated by teachers and/or students, according to the schools’ communities and their dynamics. As we will show, it can consider small or large-scale rehabilitations, either with moveable or more permanent physical improvements. We will also consider how the opportunity provided to students by S3S can be limited by constraints, evident in the case studies, including the control by teachers of the process and delays at the municipal level in implementing refurbishments. Yet, set against these limitations, we report actual changes that have occurred in these schools, or that are anticipated in the future, validating the tool as an enabler of co-redesign, perhaps in seemingly minor ways, and a catalyst for a more profound sense of ownership and empowerment of students.

Coelho, C. (2017). Life within architecture from design process to space use. Adaptability in school buildings today – A methodological approach. PhD Thesis. Departamento de Arquitetura da Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Universidade de Coimbra. Coelho, C.; Cordeiro, A.; Alcoforado, L.; Moniz, G.C. Survey on Student School Spaces: An Inclusive Design Tool for a Better School. Buildings 2022, 12, 392. https://doi.org/10.3390/ buildings12040392

Space matters to education. Physical spaces and material resources affect how teachers teach and students learn. Reflecting the diversity of users and uses, relations between school premises and education have proven extremely complex, with few direct causal links between physical elements and learning (Woolner et al., 2007). Spaces, nevertheless, facilitate or constrain activities and behaviour (Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2011; Stadler-Altmann, 2016), reflect educational cultures and often entrench educational values. Design and redesign, accordingly, may serve to enhance the alignment between space and pedagogy (Frelin & Grannäs, 2021), reflect new values and encourage innovative practices (Woolner et al., 2018).

Enthusiasm surrounds innovative learning environments or ILEs (OECD, 2013). The evidence base has been recognised by significant decision-makers, such as municipal bodies, national governments, the OECD and the World Bank (Grannäs & Stavem, 2021), and mandates for open, flexible school facilities are manifested (Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2011). The potential contribution of educational practitioners and their pupils to the adaption and redesign of conventional and innovative facilities, however, is often neglected (Bøjer, 2019: 45). A participatory approach to developing school space is frequently recommended (Blackmore et al., 2011), but uncertainties remain about how to carry it out.

One of the keys to successful alignment of practice, culture and school facilities, is to ignite awareness and initiative among practitioners and learners regarding their everyday physical environment and its possibilities. Although experience shows that designs for schools, cannot simply be transported between nations, approaches to planning and designing can be exported and used successfully in contrasting contexts (Woolner & Cardellino, 2021). Our ongoing research collaboration, DRAPES, and, specifically, our recent Erasmus+ project Collaborative ReDesign of Schools or CoReD (https://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/), aimed to do just that, bringing together values, needs and pedagogical intentions when planning physical changes in schools or adjusting the arrangement and application of existing spaces. Guidance and tools were needed for school users to contribute to the design and redesign of their physical learning environments. The aim of this symposium is to share experiences gained from our research and development of six analytic tools for collaborative and participatory reflections on educational settings and redesign of schools, focusing particularly on how tools, initially developed in one European country (Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom), were adapted and used in differing national and school contexts, deepening our understanding of how each tool can be applied in diverse ways and settings.

Our overall goal has been to give practitioners the means to engage effectively with their own settings and practices to improve the fit between teaching, learning and space, as well as communicate our results to a global audience. The key idea has been to develop tools sufficiently structured for practitioners to pick up and use, but flexible enough to adjust for different design stages and educational settings. Fully developed, user-friendly tools, with instructions in six languages, are now maintained on a project website, supported by 26 case studies as well as cross context syntheses of how the tools work best and elaborated principles and guides for collaborative redesign of educational settings. The presentations report sections of these efforts including case studies, cross case synthesis and conclusive guidelines for tools developed and tested in the project. We also seek to problematise the successes noted of the tools, questioning how they function as supports for thinking, and enablers of collaborative discussion of design by specialists in education rather than architecture. We also consider these collaborations within the limits that wider national and political contexts put upon the opportunities for practitioners to take control of the design and use of school space.

Diamond ranking of statements was an established thinking skills activity (Rockett and Percival 2002: 99) that began to be used with images as an education research tool (e.g. Woolner et al., 2010; Clark, 2012; Niemi et al., 2015). Building on use of this activity to facilitate discussions about learning environments specifically (Muzir, 2017; Woolner, 2018; Sigurðardóttir, 2018; Stadler-Altmann 2021), CoReD included diamond ranking of images as one of the suite of tools to enable school users to understand their school spaces. The activity invites educational practitioners to take nine images, of either their own setting or chosen from image libraries of spaces in other schools, and arrange them according to criteria such as ‘good place for learning’/‘poor place for learning’. Over the CoReD project, diamond ranking was used in a range of schools, from kindergartens to secondary institutions, in Denmark, Sweden, Italy and UK. These premises were extremely varied, ranging in age from recently built to 50 years old to over a hundred, including some renovated buildings, and based in urban, suburban and rural areas. It was used with, and by, teachers, other staff and students, with a range of intentions. The activity was carried out in various ways, some using generic images and some using photographs of the particular school, with different ranking criteria, including using differing criteria to rank one set of images (suitability for instruction; suitability for concentration). In most cases, the activity was intended to be the first stage in longer-term redesign processes, but the rankings were used in differing ways, either to highlight and discuss concerns or to begin to explore possibilities and initiate design ideas. Across this diversity of uses, participants reported that the diamond ranking activity was engaging, and it is evident, from recordings and observations, that it supported discussion about the design and use of educational space. Therefore, in this presentation, we will consider the reasons for its success, looking at usage of the tool and feedback we received from participants. Although it is possible to argue that for diverse people, intentions, and settings, diamond ranking ‘works’, we will discuss how an activity that is so structured and ‘easy to do’ (comment from 11-12 year old student), enables school users to see school space differently. This will include considering the flexibility of the organisation of the activity (choice of images and ranking criteria) and the particular power of photographs to convey experiences.

Clark, J.(2012) Using diamond ranking as visual cues to engage young people in the research process, Qualitative Research Journal 12(2):222–237. Muzir, A.(2017) School buildings maintenance in Malaysia: Current practices, key challenges and implications. PhD thesis, Newcastle University. Niemi,R., Kumpulainen,K., and Lipponen,L.(2015). Pupils as active participants: Diamond ranking as a tool to investigate pupils’ experiences of classroom practices. European Educational Research Journal, 14:138–150. Rockett,M. and Percival,S.(2002). Thinking for learning. Stafford: Network Educational Press. Sigurðardóttir, A.K.(2018). Student-centred classroom environments in upper secondary school: Students’ ideas about good spaces for learning vs. actual arrangements. In Benade, L.; Jackson,M. (eds). Transforming Education: Design & Governance in Global Contexts. Singapore: Springer. Stadler-Altmann, U.(2021) Pictorial and Spatial Image Learning – Using diamond ranking to understand students’ perception of learning environment, Proceedings of the 3rd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Image and Imagination. Woolner, P.(2018) Collaborative Re-design: Working with School Communities to Understand and Improve their Learning Environments. In: Ellis, RA; Goodyear, P (eds). Spaces of teaching and learning: Integrating perspectives on research and practice. Singapore: Springer. Woolner,P., Hall,E., Clark,J., Tiplady,L., Thomas,U. and Wall,K.(2010). Pictures are necessary but not sufficient: using a range of visual methods to engage users about school design, Learning Environments Research 13(1):1-22.

Educational transformation is known to be challenging (Woolner et al., 2018) and require the participation and collaboration of the users in the development processes (Bøjer, 2019; Woolner, 2018). This paper will discuss the making and use of a tool for collaborative school development, ‘Stories of Educational Spaces’ (SES) (https://www.ncl.ac.uk/cored/tools/ses/). The tool was developed as part of the project ‘Collaborative Re-design with Schools’ aimed at creating activities and resources to raise the awareness about and involve educational professionals and school users in physical school space, its use and design. In the workshop-based tool SES, the participants use storytelling to explore the past, present, and potential future of selected spaces in a specific school environment. The participants work in smaller groups where they are asked to narrate stories and complement them with photographs or drawings. At the end of the workshop, the stories and images produced are the outset for a joint discussion in a larger group. With the activity of tracking and imagining the archived, lived and future architectural and educational (hi)stories of a building, the tool may serve several purposes: raising awareness and developing competences of the pedagogical use of the physical environment; creating a shared place affiliation among the participants; laying the ground for adaptive re-use of existing buildings or architectural elements in local and self-driven development projects; and collecting inputs for both smaller and larger renovation projects of existing buildings (Aytac et al 2016; Burke & Könings 2016; Wall et al 2019). The paper presents the core thinking in the development of the tool and the first experiences with its use (in Iceland, Denmark, and UK) leading to further reflections and re-adjustments. It focuses on the task of storytelling as a fundamental element in the tool (Lewis, 2011), connecting spaces, places (Ellis & Goodyear, 2016) and people with the past, present and future through real and imaginative (hi)stories. Through this, the tool facilitates collaborative engagement by acknowledging people’s starting points, connecting various aspects of a school environment, and facilitating the exploration of ideas and possibilities (Woolner, 2018). The paper also discusses how the differentiated use of the tool in three specific cases, taking place in three countries on different educational levels with different groups of participants (teachers, students etc.), has influenced the approach to and handling of the tool.

Aytac, O. (2016). Adaptive reuse as a strategy toward urban resilience. European journal of sustainable development, 5, 523-532. Burke, C. & Könings, K.D. (2016) Recovering lost histories of educational design: a case study in contemporary participatory strategies, Oxford Review of Education, 42:6, 721-732. Bøjer, B. H. (2019). Unlocking Learning Spaces: An examination of the interplay between the design of learning spaces and pedagogical practices Institute of Visual DesignThe Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation]. Copenhagen. Ellis, R., & Goodyear, P. (2016). Models of learning space: Integrating research on space, place and learning in higher education. Review of Education, 4(2), 149-191. Lewis, P. (2011). Storytelling as research/research as storytelling. Qualitative inquiry, 17(6), 505-510. Wall, T., Rossetti, l. & Hopkins, S. (2019). Storytelling for sustainable development. In: leal filho, w. (ed.) Encyclopedia of sustainability in Higher Education. Springer International Publishing. Woolner, P. (2018). Collaborative re-design: Working with school communities to understand and improve their learning environments. Spaces of teaching and learning: Integrating perspectives on research and practice, 153-172. Woolner, P., Thomas, U., & Tiplady, L. (2018). Structural change from physical foundations: The role of the environment in enacting school change. Journal of educational change, 19(2), 223-242.

The School Development Evaluation Tool, SDET, was developed in the beginning of our new millennium and revised a few years back (Reykjavíkurborg & Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands, 2018), having served as an instrument of municipal policy aiming for flexible school practice, collaboration and individualised learning, as well as framework for studying teaching and learning at the compulsory school level (Gerður G. Óskarsdóttir, 2014). The revision was based on findings from such a study, as well as insights from external evaluations of compulsory schools in Reykjavik. Six strands in the tool represent features to review and develop. Organisation and leadership; policy, evaluation and development; learning environment; teaching practices; student learning; and parental involvement. Each strand entails issues to examine on a five-point scale towards a future vision of schooling. The first stage of the scale reflects constrained practices that prevailed most of the 20th century, while the fifth stage reflects individualised and collaborative learning, democratic practices and communities of learning, with intermediary stages delineating developmental steps towards that vision. The tool is laid out to enhance professional discussions among teachers and school leaders as they attempt to determine how and why they want to move forward in their administrative and developmental efforts focusing on student-centred or individualised learning (e.g. Jonasson & Land, 2012) as their point of departure. That entails differentiated tasks for students, the autonomy of students to influence their own learning, and student collaboration. The tool also reflects visions of the democratic school (Edelstein, 2008) and the school as a professional learning community (e.g. Louis and Stoll, 2007). Issues and strands underline the complexity of school development (Sigurðardottir et al., 2022), as well as the importance of coherence among school practice components (Fullan & Quinn, 2016). The physical environment must be reviewed in context with school culture, school organisation, and pedagogical approaches, bearing in mind manifold aspects of student learning (e.g. Gislason, 2010). Our study relates three cases where school staff reviewed their respective school buildings with potential adjustments and changes in mind. The tool was used at two lower secondary schools in Sweden, and one primary and lower secondary school in Iceland. All three schools were seen as of traditional design and considering alterations. The three case studies were somewhat limited in execution and scale, but served to show that the SDET tool can ignite and stimulate professional discussions in the early planning phase of redesign of school facilities.

Edelstein, W. (2008). Hvað geta skólar gert til að efla lýðræði? Hæfni og færni í draumalandi. [What can schools do to enhance democracy? Skills and competences in a land of dreams.] In Bjarnason et al., Menntaspor. Forlagið. Fullan, M. & Quinn, J. (2016). Coherence. The right drivers in action for schools, districts, and systems. Corwin. Jonassen, D. & Land, S. M. (eds). (2012). Theoretical foundations of learning environments. Routledge. Óskarsdóttir, G. Ó. (ed.). (2014). Starfshættir í grunnskólum við upphaf 21. aldar. [Teaching and learning at the beginning of the 21st century.] Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan. Reykjavíkurborg & Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands [Reykjavik City & School of Education, University of Iceland]. (2018). Matstæki um þróun skólastarfs í anda hugmynda um einstaklingsmiðað nám, lýðræðislegt og nemendamiðað skólastarf og lærdómssamfélag. [School Development Evalution Tool]. Reykjavíkurborg and Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands. Sigurðardóttir, A. K., Hansen, F. B. & Gisladottir, B. (2022). Development of an intervention framework for school improvement that is adaptive to cultural context. Improving schools, 25(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/13654802211051929 Stoll, L. & Louis, K. S. (eds.). (2007). Professional learning communities. Divergence, depth, and dilemmas. Open University Press