Conference Agenda

With the advancement of digitization, opportunities for the individual support of students are increasingly opening up. Digital media can help to better take into account students' individual prerequisites, needs, interests and inclinations, learning preferences, and differences in performance in the classroom (e.g., Holmes et al., 2018; Petko et al., 2017; Brühwiler & Vogt, F., 2020). Although previous research points to these potentials, the use of digital media for individual support has not yet been widespread in Germany (e.g., Gerick et al., 2017). This leads to the assumption that the implementation of individual support with digital media requires a lot of preconditions and opens up the question of the conditions for success at different levels. This is where a research project in Germany comes in.

The research project aims to identify conditions for success in individual support with digital media from the multidimensional perspective of school actors. A model of school development and school effectiveness with digital media (Eickelmann & Drossel, 2019) is used as a theoretical approach. Individual support is located on the process level and it is assumed that conditions for success can be identified on the school input level as well as on the process level.

In the context of this research project, individual support is understood to be all pedagogical actions within the framework of school teaching-learning processes that are carried out with the intention of supporting the learning development and process of all individual learners by identifying and taking into account their specific (learning) prerequisites, (learning) needs, (learning) paths, (learning) goals, and (learning) opportunities, based on Kunze (2008) and Behrensen and Solzbacher (2012).

Against this background this contribution will focus on the following research question:

Which success conditions can be identified for the individual support with digital media?

This qualitative study explores young children’s digital media practices in a home setting in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet country. The study provides rich insights into young children’s digital media practices and their parents’ mediation strategies which have not been researched before. Practices are the ways people interact with or incorporate objects and actions into their everyday lives and are influenced by social and cultural worldviews. I draw on the definition of digital media practices from Merchant (2012, p.772) as “the ‘doings’, ‘sayings’ and ‘relatings’” that constitute the social actions of everyday life.

The ongoing changes in the education system of Azerbaijan, such as the recent embedding of digital technologies in primary education, made Azerbaijan an attractive research setting for this study. Given the considerable impact of parents on their children’s education, the role of the home context presented an exciting opportunity to explore influences on parents’ views on and involvement in their children’s digital media practices. This study responds to calls for research into young children’s digital media practices in different countries and cultures in the Global South ( Nikken, 2017; Shin & Li, 2017).

Parental involvement in young children’s digital media use plays a crucial role in positively fostering children’s digital media practices (Connell et al., 2015; Nikken, 2017; Plowman et al., 2008). Fathers are often found to play video games with their children instead of mothers who prefer reading books with them (Connell et al., 2015; Padilla‐Walker et al., 2012). In previous studies, researchers have primarily included mothers when conducting family visits (Livingstone et al., 2015). However, there is a need for more research revealing and explaining fathers’ engagement in their children’s interactions with digital media (Tang et al., 2018). Azerbaijan is a patriarchal society where most of the duties related to child-rearing are left to mothers (Najafizadeh, 2012), which heightens the importance of inquiring about fathers’ involvement in children’s interactions with digital technologies. I will explore fathers’ opinions on their children’s uses of digital technologies, as well as their involvement in their children’s digital media practices through revisiting own childhoods (Cole, 1998).

I aim to explore the following research question.

What are the ways in which fathers in Azerbaijan are involved in the mediation of their young children’s digital media practices?

My study is guided by Tudge's (2008) contextualist ecocultural theory drawing on the everyday practices and interactions among individuals, cultures, and activities (re)shaping children’s daily lives. I also draw on Cole's (1998) concept of prolepsis, which constitutes a considerable part of the theoretical framework drawn for this study. Cole’s concept has roots in the field of developmental psychology, and even though my study is far from this field and is carried out on a small scale, I find prolepsis a good fit for the study to elaborate on fathers’ involvement in their children’s digital media practices. Cole (1998) applies the concept of prolepsis to the practice of childrearing and, in this context, explains it as a process of imagining their child’s future and then channelling the child’s present to meet the expectations of this imagined future. This phenomenon is undoubtedly informed by the culture of parents, rooted in their own past experiences and upbringings, and therefore, the parents’ beliefs and the projection of the desired future for their children can often become a ‘materialised constraint’ on the present experiences of the child (Cole, 1998, p. 184). Cole (ibid) only mentioned mothers when explaining prolepsis. Scrutinizing fathers’ views on their children’s digital media uses through the concept of prolepsis can help explain why the fathers were not inclined to develop their children's digital skills early on.

Topic, objective

Inclusion research is an extensive field of research, which manifests itself, for example, in the area of professionalization of teachers and in the discussion about the basic understanding of inclusive schooling, even if the term "inclusion" itself is and remains diffuse (see, for example, the research of Nilholm & Göransson 2017; Löser & Werning 2013). However, a understudied research field that is based on a very broad understanding of inclusion is the relationship between respective prevailing understandings of inclusion and digital educational materials such as learning platforms in different cultural contexts. Digital learning platforms can be distinguished from other software solutions on the basis of their functions. According to Petko, digital learning platforms offer the possibility of managing knowledge content, and they also enable communication, e.g. through forums. There is also the possibility of setting tasks and timelines. Learning platforms also offer the possibility of conducting exams and also enable course management (Petko 2010). Thus, in the German-speaking but also international discourse, there is hardly any research literature so far that deals with the exclusive elements of learning platforms from an international-comparative perspective (see e.g. Richardson & Powell 2011; Budde, Blasse & Johansen 2017). Furthermore, it is noted that work on countries in the Global South is largely lacking, and this includes, in particular, work on the education system in Singapore (e.g., Hung, Chen & Wong 2006; Singal, Lynch, & Johansson 2018). The focus of the following study is on a comparison between Estonia, a country that can be considered a pioneer in the implementation of digital media, and Germany, which is still lagging behind in the expansion of digital offerings (Reiss et al. 2019). In addition to this binary comparative perspective, a contrast is made with Singapore, which is also considered a leader in the field of digital education (Reiss et al. 2019). The research focus brings the diversity of educational systems and values into focus and, in connection with the theme of the conference, shows potentials through the exchange of best practices.

Theory

The developments in a school and the behaviour of the people in the organisation also with regard to the selection of digital teaching materials cannot be viewed in isolation, but always in interaction with other systems such as the law, the economy and society as a whole. Only this systems-theoretical understanding makes it possible to understand and explain the actions of the individual against the background of social institutions. An essential theoretical access to the interrelationships is offered by the theory of Helmut Fend in his "New Theory of Schools" (2008). Fend points out that action in the school is consists of normative sets of rules consisting of "duties and rights", according to which persons orientate their actions (Fend 2008, p. 172).

Comparisons between countries make it clear that education systems can be organised in very different ways. The federal system in Germany contrasts with a centrally controlled education system in Singapore and an education system in Estonia that is an education system that is strongly characterised by networks with the business community.

Based on the theoretical assumptions, questions are addressed on two levels

At the level of understandings of inclusion: What concept of inclusion can be found in policy documents and in group discussions with teachers and political decision-makers? Here, document analysis and interviews are used for methodological implementation.

At the level of digital teaching materials: How do teachers use digital learning platforms? What exclusive elements are there in learning platforms? Here, classroom observation is necessary, as well as qualitative content analysis of corresponding learning platforms.