Conference Agenda

This research aims to explore how Musical Digital Assets can enhance inclusive processes through listening, bringing people closer to the rich cultural heritage that characterized ancient peoples, particularly the Mediterranean populations. In this sense, Musical Digital Asset represents a frontier that improves the educational context (Turchet, 2023). In this regard, digital technologies have transformed how music educators convey knowledge, offering a wide range of resources and learning opportunities (Sibilio et al., 2023). Digital libraries, streaming platforms, and sound production tools provide an inexhaustible source of educational materials, enabling educators to customize teaching to meet the needs of users, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence, which has recently been the subject of numerous studies about music and its application in education and inclusivity (Miranda, 2021; Caramiaux & Donnarumma, 2021; Di Paolo et al., 2022).In this context, transmitting cultural heritage based on digital assets enriches users’ repertoire and promotes interactivity and active participation. Through modern technologies, users can explore and experience theoretical concepts that can be learned in a virtual museum. Digitally assisted production allows them to apply theoretical skills, stimulating creativity and problem-solving. Furthermore, integrating digital resources prepares users for the challenges of the contemporary landscape, where technological competence is often essential for professional success (McPherson & Tahıroğlu, 2020).In a practical context, the integration of digital musical heritage can occur using streaming platforms to access historical and contemporary recordings, allowing users to compare interpretive styles and analyze performance dynamics. In particular, the Mediterranean populations, have left various cultural testimonies that should be paid attention to under the artistic-musical profile. For the user, therefore, approaching, and exploring music that in some way echoes the history of that population allows for greater reflection on immaterial cultural heritage, opening new perspectives for interpretation (Li & Sun, 2023).Specialized software offers the user the opportunity to listen attentively and repeatedly to a given composition, enhancing understanding of its harmonic structures and historical features. Open-access multimedia resources that are always available to the user, not but in a virtual context, allow flexible access to materials and in-depth study of complex topics that belong not only to historiography or museology but to musicology and its possible relationship to other disciplines.In this context, Transmitting cultural heritage based on digital assets enriches users’ repertoire and promotes interactivity and active participation. Through modern technologies, users can explore and experience theoretical concepts that can be learned in a virtual museum. Digitally assisted production allows them to apply theoretical skills, stimulating creativity and problem-solving. Furthermore, the integration of digital resources prepares users for the challenges of the contemporary landscape, where technological competence is often essential for professional success (McPherson & Tahıroğlu, 2020).In a practical context, the integration of digital musical heritage can occur using streaming platforms to access historical and contemporary recordings, allowing users to compare interpretive styles and analyze performance dynamics. In particular, the Mediterranean populations, have left various cultural testimonies that should be paid attention to under the artistic-musical profile. For the user, therefore, approaching, and exploring music that in some way echoes the history of that population allows for greater reflection on immaterial cultural heritage, opening new perspectives for interpretation (Li & Sun, 2023).Specialized software offers the user the opportunity to listen attentively and repeatedly to a given composition, enhancing understanding of its harmonic structures and historical features. Open-access multimedia resources that are always available to the user, not but in a virtual context, allow flexible access to materials and in-depth study of complex topics that belong not only to historiography or museology but to musicology and its possible relationship to other disciplines.

With the aim to equip young people with skills, knowledge and competences for dealing with the challenges and uncertainties of the 21st century, educational experts have come to the realisation that this cannot be accomplished by school alone and should not be reduced to subject-specific learning. To understand and enhance students’ ability to navigate a digitally connected world and to steer this world to new futures, studies have adopted broader approaches which involve schooling and educational media and look beyond the school at further relations, practices and systems in which young people live. A decade of research from the Connected Learning Alliance (CLA) has shown that students learn most when educators give them the opportunity to follow their interests, to embed their learning in social relationships, and to connect their learning to real-world opportunities beyond the classroom (Ito et al., 2020).

Many emerging initiatives around the world have taken an ‘ecological’ approach to learning ecosystems (cf. Otto/Kerres 2023), which have been described as ‘a potential game-changer for today’s learners’ (Al-Fadala, WISE, in Hannon et al. 2019, p. i). In connecting different in and out of school learning spaces like schools, museums, libraries, youth centers under the umbrella of “educational ecosystems”, providers aim to offer young people more open and expanded learning opportunities. However, despite the thorough engagement with ecosystem research, projects mostly retain the individualist epistemology underlying mainstream educational research or focus on the communication and governance between the institutions involved (Huber et al. 2020). This stands in tension with a thorough conception of an ecosystem which emphasizes the interconnectedness and inter-relationships among biological, physical and chemical actors. In building on previous research in education we aim to adopt the conception of an ecosystem as ‘a fundamental organizational unit of the biosphere in which biological communities interact with their non-biological environment through energy flows and material cycles’ (Yu et al., 2021, p. 151). In this way, ‘ecosystem science is the study of patterns, processes, and services of ecosystems’ (ibid.).

In our presentation we will present the findings of a study of three such educational ecosystem projects in Germany which are funded by a company foundation. With a common slogan these networks offer STEAM based learning through gaming, robotic, digital production in makerspaces and youth centers or research-based learning in museum and school. Key underlying questions are how digital media technologies are embedded in these ecosystems, how they relate to traditional media and what kind of practices evolve within their contexts. One of the underlying theses of our research is that educational ecosystems can be considered as media ecosystems in which the interplay between different ‘media constellations’ (Weich 2020; 2023) is crucial. Media constellations can be conceptualized as a co-constitutive entanglement of materialities, knowledge/practices, content and subject positions. Between institutions within a given ecosystem, there might be continuities and compatibilities as well as frictions and tensions between their media constellations which can stabilise the ecosystem, helping it to thrive, but could also destabilise the ecosystem, potentially leading to rupture.

The presentation compares these three educational ecosystems with the following questions: Which goals are being pursued by the different actors in the network? Which media constellations do they create to reach their goals? What expectations, fulfillments and disappointments do the actors experience? And which frictions and tensions can be observed in these spaces?

Based on ethnographic research we aim to provide deep insights into how these educational ecosystems are developed, what they offer for participating youth and most importantly what young people make of these opportunities.

Digital education is a central aspect of schooling in the dynamic process of deep mediatization (Hepp 2020). With the Digital Education Action Plan (European Commission 2020) and the DigComp (Vuorikari et al. 2022) and DigCompEdu (Redecker 2015) frameworks, the European Commission provides a differentiated approach to the implementation of digital education and its conditions in the European Union. Against this backdrop, the Covid-19 pandemic has massively disrupted schooling conditions worldwide (Al Mazrooei et al. 2022; Bond 2021). Under the influence of the pandemic, face-to-face teaching was limited to varying degrees in all countries, and as a result, teaching and learning was largely conducted at distance (Vincent-Lancrin et al. 2022). Digital technologies have been widely used to implement such time and space flexible learning, making students` use of technologies a basic requirement for teaching and learning. This was accompanied by a further development of the technical infrastructure in schools, which was supported by financial measures from the respective countries (Lindblad et al. 2021). Thus, the Covid-19 pandemic may have had a lasting impact on the conditions for digital education in schools. For example, by raising awareness among teachers and school decision-makers about the pedagogical and didactic potential of digital technologies, the requirements of media literacy, and by further developing the technical infrastructure in schools. It is important to examine these considerations with a particular focus on primary schools, where the basics of digital education should be acquired so that secondary school curricula can build on them (European Commission 2020).

Overall, there is a lack of representative data on how digital education is organised in primary schools in order to comprehensively promote media and IT literacy with the goal of achieving a self-determined, socially responsible, and creative technology use. For Germany, however, quantitative data shows the conditions for digital education in primary schools have hardly changed since the pandemic. Their technical infrastructure has improved slightly, but hardly noticeable (forsa 2021). Furthermore, there is indication that subject-related media use remains low. For example, the “Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)” for 2021 shows that only 16.7% of German primary school students use digital media to research and read information for at least 30 minutes per school day in German classes (Lorenz et al. 2023, 210). This is significantly below the international average. These results indicate that the conditions for the implementation and realisation of digital education in German primary schools have not improved significantly since the pandemic. Against this background, the project presented in the paper examined the experiences and perceptions of various stakeholders regarding the current state of the implementation of digital education in German primary schools and the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic. As stakeholders in digital education school principals, representatives of teachers' associations, and school administrators were interviewed in focus-groups in the project.

The paper analyses the results of the study based on the research question of how stakeholders assess the development of digital education in German primary schools since the Covid-19 pandemic and what challenges and opportunities they perceive for its implementation. The results confirm the assumption of a slightly positive - but now partly declining - development of conditions for digital education in German primary schools since the pandemic. On an individual school level, the challenges that inhibit this development lie in media-related skills and attitudes of the teaching staff, in teacher cooperation in the context of media-related school development as well as the technical infrastructure of the school. At the structural level, there are challenges in clarifying responsibilities and setting guidelines, along with bureaucratic and data protection requirements.

This paper aims to contribute some reflections on the relationship between digitization in higher education and employees' experience of mastery, participation, and inclusion. The paper presents results from a survey on how university staff use and experience the institution's digital solutions, such as Canvas, Teams, Inspera, Panopto, Zoom, Microsoft 365, Leganto, and KI-chat services/language robots, etc.

The intention of the survey is twofold:

- To get an overview of the training needs of staff with research and teaching responsibilities related to digital tools, in order to better target training and support

- To gain a better understanding of which factors (gender, age, language, views on teaching, employment conditions, etc.) may be significant for the individual's mastery of digital tools, and for the experience of digital inclusion at various arenas and levels.

- Identify inclusion and exclusion processes and develop innovative measures to create good conditions for diversity.

Other central guidelines are found in the Norwegian government's high ambition level for digitization and educational quality in the university and college sector. This includes strategies for competence development for employees and leaders (Ministry of Education and Research 2021, p. 27, 28). The Corona pandemic, combined with expectations from the students, has also led to expectations of more flexible digital solutions and educational offers.

Such developments reflect how Norwegian and Nordic university and college employees (and employees in the labor market more generally) find themselves in the middle of what many call "the digital turn" (Fossland, 2015, p. 11; Buhl, Dille and Kårstein, 2023). Increasing digitization involves demands for increased digital competence; to be able to master, understand and apply technology in the activities they are involved in (Henderson et al., 2017; Selwyn, 2016). The Nordic network for adult learning points out that decision-makers responsible for digital education and competence development for adults have an explicit focus on and strategies for digital mastery and inclusion (Buhl, Dille and Kårstein, 2022, p. 11 and 17).

In this context, more emotional aspects of digitization and restructuring are also central, something Hargreaves (1998) emphasizes: "Important as all this reform work is, many of those who initiate and manage educational reform, or who write about educational change in general, ignore or underplay one of the most fundamental aspects of teaching and of how teachers change: the emotional dimension" (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 835).

With these issues in mind, the present paper addresses the following research questions: 

- What do employees experience as opportunities and challenges with various technological solutions - and why?

- What significance does this have for the experience of inclusion and how they master their work?

- Are there correlations between employees' experiences and factors such as age, gender, first language, views on learning and teaching, etc?

- What do the employees think the institution can do to contribute to digital mastery and inclusion?

Adopting a systems theory approach (Luhmann, 1995) as well as a socio-cultural approach (Wertsch, 1998), on learning and communication the research questions are investigated in terms of individual experiences of meaning, relevance and disturbances within different situated and digital practices, and communication systems. To be able to discuss digital inclusion and exclusion in higher education, we also draw on theories about this (Pietilä et al., 2021; Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2016).

In this paper, we make a contribution by designing an evaluation model aimed at assessing the utilization of digital resources tailored for students with special needs. The topic of our study corresponds well with the theme of the conference in Education in an uncertain age in terms of shedding light on inclusive education both in terms of meting the needs of pupils, students, parents and students guidance in an Erasmus plus project DIgIEdu4SEN, Building a Digital Education Environment for Learners with Special Education Needs, an ongoing project.

Inland University is one of 12 contributions from all over Europe in the project and was given the responsibility to develop both piloting and evaluation o digital educational content and quality assurance of the Erasmus plus project.

Designing an evaluation tool to assess the use of digital resources presents a multifaceted challenge, requiring a comprehensive understanding of students' diverse learning profiles, collaboration with stakeholders, and the integration of mixed-methods methodologies. This abstract explores the complexities involved in developing an evaluation tool for digital resources in special education, highlighting key considerations, methodologies, and implications for promoting inclusive and equitable education in an uncertain world.

Research question:

What considerations should be taken into account in the design of evaluation tools to assess the utilization of digital resources for students with special needs, and how do these tools influence learning outcomes and experiences?

Objectives

1.Identify key considerations in evaluation tool design:

• Examine existing evaluation tools used to assess the utilization of digital resources for students with special needs.
• Identify key considerations, such as accessibility features, usability, adaptability, and alignment with diverse learning needs.
• Analyse expert opinions and best practices in the field to determine essential components for effective evaluation tools.

2.Assess impact on learning outcomes and experiences:

• Investigate the relationship between the design of evaluation tools and learning outcomes for students with special needs.
• Examine how different evaluation tools influence engagement, motivation, and overall learning experiences.
• Measure the effectiveness of evaluation tools in promoting inclusive learning environments and fostering positive learning outcomes.

3. Evaluate practical implementation and feedback mechanisms:

• Assess the feasibility and practicality of implementing various evaluation tools in educational settings catering to students with special needs.
• Gather feedback from educators, students, and stakeholders regarding the usability and effectiveness of these tools.
• Identify areas for improvement and recommendations for the development and refinement of evaluation tools to better support the diverse needs of students with special needs.

These objectives aim to comprehensively explore the considerations in evaluation tool design, their impact on learning outcomes and experiences, and the practical implementation aspects, thereby contributing to enhancing the educational support for students with special needs in digital learning environments.

State of the art and theoretical framework

A review of seven educational technology journals, 1970-2011 shows that the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) can have a positive impact on the learning outcomes and experiences of students with special needs. The article notes that ICT can provide students with special needs access to a wider range of learning resources and opportunities, as well as support for their individual learning needs. The authors argue that the use of ICT can promote inclusion and equal opportunities for students with special needs, and that it is important to continue to develop and evaluate ICT-supported learning interventions for this population. This argument highlights the potential benefits of using digital resources for students with special needs and underscores the importance of developing evaluation tools to assess the utilization of these resources (Starcic & Bagon, 2014).

The rapid digitalization of society over the past decades has fundamentally changed how children and adolescents socialize, study, and play. Subsequently, children and adolescents’ use of digital technologies has increased rapidly, facilitated by the ever-evolving mobile accessibility and computing power of new digital technologies. Further, the current cohorts of children also experienced key developmental and socialization stages during the COVID-19 pandemic which led children and adolescents, by circumstance and necessity, to engage in higher levels of digital engagement. Such marked and rapid increases in both access and use of digital technologies, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused growing concerns in parents, researchers, educators, and clinicians alike as to what effects such technologies may have on children’s development and educational outcomes.

Overall, the current literature on the effects of digital use and child and adolescent educational outcomes is mixed. Some studies indicate that adolescent digital use, particularly texting, hampers children’s literacy outcomes (Kemp and Bushnell, 2011) and that early mobile phone ownership negatively impacts academic development (Dempsey et al., 2019). However, other studies found positive effects (Plester et al., 2008) or no associations (Verheijen, 2013). Some literature has examined the potential negative impacts of adolescent digital use on academic performance via cognitive functioning, including cognitive overload or multitasking (May and Elder, 2018), distraction and diminished attentional abilities (Ward et al., 2017), and memory and learning patterns (Loh and Kanai, 2016). Additionally, Lissak (2018) identified that the effects of digital use on academic performance may be indirectly channeled through reductions in sleep duration and quality, leading to problems of time displacement or sleep disruption.

As a whole, results on associations between digital use and academic and educational outcomes remains unclear, and further research on these associations with current cohorts of children remain essential to understand how today’s digital environments are affecting how children learn and develop. Further, while there have been a multitude of studies that have investigated the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s educational outcomes (Coles et al, 2023), few studies have examined how effects of digital use on child outcomes differ from other cohorts of children who did not experience the pandemic during the critical stage of childhood and early adolescence.

This study crucially aims to address some of the above gaps in knowledge. This study utilizes high-quality multi-cohort data to examine 1) how children at different stages of development are using digital technologies and 2) how these children’s digital use is associated with perceived academic ability (from both children and teachers). To do so, we utilize the most recently collected wave from the Children’s School Lives (CSL) study collected in April 2023, when the participating cohorts of children were age 8 and age 12/13. Preliminary analyses include descriptive statistics and OLS regression modelling, however, further analyses will incorporate more diverse regression modelling, longitudinal models as well as standardized testing data (not yet available) to compare perceptions vs realities of chidlren's academic ability.

This study focuses on exploring teachers' media literacy (hereinafter, ML), including their competencies and practices of ML in the classrooms in Kazakhstan. In the 21st century children increasingly use digital tools and are exposed to different unfiltered media messages daily, wherein they have access to the Internet at home and communicate media messages regularly (Murray, 2021; OECD, 2020). The major concern is that a substantial number of children access media platforms in breach of age limitations and many of them actively use social media (Setyarini et al., 2023; Hill, 2022). This, in turn, requires teachers to develop ML competencies, so as to support their students’ ML who are largely susceptible to media influence (Reimers, 2009; Bystray et al., 2023). Studies also indicate that teachers’ ML competencies, socialisation and intercultural interaction are key to integrating ML into curriculum (Korona, 2020; Skantz-Åberg et al., 2022; Villacrez-Cuadros et al., 2023). Although the support for the development of teachers’ ML competencies has grown in the recent decade, few educators seem to use it in curricula development and lesson planning.

Teachers are identified as the most significant factor in enhancing students’ learning outcomes (Ingvarson et al., 2005). Teachers’ understanding of ML has a significant effect on the effectiveness of their teaching (Simons et al., 2017; Rohs et al., 2019; Saptono, 2022). Therefore, ML merits a place in teacher education, as it encourages an understanding of culture, connects educators, institutions, and society (Schwarz, 2001). In a similar vein, the studies highlight the importance of integrating language and ML into teacher education to facilitate socialisation and intercultural communication (Felini, 2014; Meehan et al., 2015; Schwarz, 2001).

Teachers’ ML competencies

The definition of media literacy as social phenomena focuses on technical, cognitive competencies and sociocultural pragmatics (Yeh & Swinehart, 2020). The technical competencies include functional skills as access, create, navigate, order, and distribute social media content (Daneels & Vanwynsberghe, 2017). Cognitive competencies refer to understanding, assessing, and critically analysing social media content for credibility and application (Daneels & Vanwynsberghe, 2017, Christ & Abreu, 2020). Socialcultural pragmatics provides awareness about social and cultural norms of behaviour, values, beliefs, language usage and discourses in media contexts (Yeh & Swinehart, 2020). Tandoc et al. (2021) claim that there could be four types of competencies such as technical, social, privacy related and informational in which social media literacy functions. Lately three themes were identified as teachers' perspectives of media literacy: assessing the validity of media messages, interacting with media, and safety issues (Von Gillern et al., 2024).

Teacher practices of ML

Inquiry is a strategy for implicitly teaching media literacy concepts that enables learners to “construct” new knowledge for themselves by adjusting new data with their prior knowledge (Brunner & Tally, 1999). This constructivist approach is complemented by media decoding, which means analysing and evaluating the messages conveyed by various forms of media (Scheibe & Rogow, 2011). Evidence-based practices are those which ensure high rates of proficiency and have a record of achievement that is valid and true (Gambrell et al., 2011). Critical inquiry is the core of constructivist media analysis, which means the ability to analyse media by asking key media literacy questions (Mason, 2016). Using the combination of inquiry and reflection is used extensively and is considered the basic way of integrating media literacy into any curriculum, constructivist media decoding strategy suggests the engaging acquisition of media literacy competencies (Scheibe & Rogow, 2011).

The aim of this study is to explore teachers’ media literacy in secondary schools in Kazakhstan. The study was structured around the following research questions:

1. What is the state of teachers' media literacy competencies?

2. How do teachers practise media literacy in their classrooms?

Digital infrastructure as a media environment must be understood as embedded in social processes and spatial structures. Considering measures aimed at digitalisation of schools at the knowledge and infrastructure level and practices teachers and pupils develop in building digitally enhanced environments in the classroom, questions about changes to teaching situations arise. Situational analysis (Clarke et al., 2022) allows research on the complexity of spatial-material and communicative-discursive networks. Taking digitally extended learning environments as an example, combinations of situation-analytical mappings prove helpful in depicting interactions of social actors and nonhuman actants (Clarke et al., 2022, p. 12) and their positioning in constructing teaching and learning situations.

Digital artifacts and their implementation and integration in classroom practices are at the core of recent discourses in education. Measures of saturating institutionalised pedagogical contexts (School, University) with digital technologies. In the European context the examples of Austria, Germany and Switzerland (BMBWF, 2018; Educa, 2021; KMK, 2021) show measures aiming at three levels:

• Expansion of digital infrastructure (equipping schools, school staff and pupils with digital devices) and its management (creation of administration units and platforms)
• Redefinition of new knowledge structures for teaching (competency frameworks, curriculum reforms)
• Restructuring of teaching through teacher training and further education regarding the use of digital teaching/learning materials and corresponding models of teaching and learning

This meets structural indicators of curriculum, teachers, assessment and a so-called “digital education ecosystem” (Eurydice, 2023) for digital change at the European level. Initiatives to digitalize institutionalized pedagogical spaces provide specific infrastructures. These infrastructures are inscribed with certain ways of acting and convey particular ways of knowledge construction into classroom situations. Also, digital devices like smartphones as always available technological artefacts shape everyday classroom practice not planned by administrative measures. The ways teachers engage with the learning environment and use options of providing and communicating the use of digital media could be planned (cf. Petko, 2020; Schmid et al., 2020). In this process, “a specific teaching and learning environment” (Petko, 2020, p. 115) is constructed. There is still little research on spontaneous situations that arise in the classroom without having planned the use of technical devices in advance.

Discourses of progress associated with digitalisation promote assumptions of teaching situations being “improved” by digital artifacts (Selwyn, 2022, p. 26f). The paper discusses how educational research may be inspired by Science and Technology Studies. Technical artifacts are analysed as part of knowledge construction (Wyatt, 2008) and teaching is understood as an institutionalized and professionalised “situation” (Terhart, 2009, p. 103) of normative character (Hollstein et al., 2016, p. 44) in the classroom as a socially and communicatively constructed space (Christmann, 2022; Knoblauch & Steets, 2022). The paper aims at developing an informed position by discussing technological determinism (Wyatt, 2008) and how it is enacted in the ways teachers select and position technology and technological artefacts in the classroom. Therefore, the guiding question of the paper is how digital artefacts are used in classroom situations and how they are situated as artefacts in the course of knowledge construction.

It is well-documented that approximately half of the German population regularly engages in digital gaming across platforms such as computers, consoles, and mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets (bitkom 2021). The widespread appeal of video games, both nationally and internationally, inevitably attracts attention from various groups, including those with extremist ideologies seeking to exploit the medium for their own agendas (Möbus 2023; Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022). A particularly striking instance of this phenomenon is the video game "Heimat Defender: Rebellion" (2020), developed and released by "Ein Prozent" and "Kvltgames," both entities identified by The German domestic intelligence services as part of the far-right spectrum and closely linked to the Identitarian Movement, a group firmly placed within the far-right domain by the same federal authority (BMI 2021). According to the game's developers, Heimat Defender: Rebellion was purposefully designed to serve the propaganda efforts of the Identitarian Movement (Moritz 2020).

The trend of instrumentalizing video games as vehicles for explicit propagandistic messages within the context of German far-right extremism isn't particularly new. Earlier instances, such as the simplistic games "KZ-Manager" and "Antitürkentest" from the 1980s, gained traction within extremist circles. However, Heimat Defender: Rebellion marks a notable departure in this lineage. While it communicates a far-right ideology, it does not present itself as overtly extremist on the surface, particularly when contrasted with games like "KZ-Manager" (Möbus 2023). Furthermore, Heimat Defender: Rebellion was produced by a semi-professional developer and marketed within Germany (and Austria) until its prohibition, thus endowing it with a unique potential to propagate the Identitarian Movement's narratives and ideology. The game's contemporary relevance in terms of narrative, gameplay, and aesthetics suggests a capacity to engage players beyond mere provocation, possibly mainstreaming far-right ideologies through intrinsic player motivation (Möbus 2023).

Plenty of interdisciplinary publications exist which clearly state that "Heimat Defender: Rebellion" propagates dehumanizing, racist, antisemitic, and anti-democratic world views (Möbus 2023; BpjM 2020). Nonetheless, the game remains freely downloadable, thus maintaining easy accessibility for children, adolescents and young adults (BpjM 2020, 33). This is particularly alarming given the game's explicit targeting of younger demographics. Yet, comprehensive academic engagement with Heimat Defender: Rebellion, especially within the framework of digital propaganda and disinformation strategies of the Identitarian Movement, has been limited (Möbus 2023; Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022).

A well-known strategy within the digital propaganda and disinformation arsenal of the German far-right is establishing and repeating antagonizing images of individuals and groups, which are considered as the enemy. These depictions play a significant role in spreading far-right ideologies and fostering individual radicalization processes (Jesse 2011; Auer 2002). Recent academic efforts have focused on dissecting these depictions, considering the unique propagandistic potentials of various media forms, such as right-wing music, memes, and social media posts (Hajok and Leonhardt 2020; Zeyer 2017). However, explorations into depictions of the enemy within video games, particularly from the perspective of the Identitarian Movement, remain sparse (Schlegel 2023; Huberts 2022).

The aim of this contribution is to deconstruct the depiction of the enemy conveyed by the Identitarian Movement within the video game Heimat Defender: Rebellion, specifically to identify the characters represented as antagonists, thereby enabling further insights into the Identitarian Movement's ideology. The contribution will therefore address the following research questions:

• How are the enemies depicted in the video game Heimat Defender: Rebellion?
• What insights can the deconstruction of the enemy provide regarding the ideology of the Identitarian Movement?

In recent decades, technology has substantially modified how adolescents generate content and interact socially through various digital platforms (OECD, 2021). The digital era has transformed the traditional notion of textual composition (Danielsson & Selander, 2021) since, in digital environments, messages are produced by non-linear and interactive elements composed of various semiotic modes, such as images, sounds, and verbal text (Flewitt, 2011). Therefore, the digital content composition must be conceived from a multimodal perspective (Jewitt, 2003) to understand how different semiotic modes contribute to meaning-making according to communicative purposes (Bezemer & Jewitt, 2018). Multimodal composition in digital environments has been studied as Digital Multimodal Composing (DMC), defined as the production of digital content through various semiotic modes to negotiate meanings with a real or imaginary audience (Smith et al., 2021). DMC has been studied from Social Semiotic theory (Kress, 2009), which states that individuals select specific semiotic resources depending on modes’ potential—or affordance—to communicate meanings (Kress, 2009) according to sociocultural factors, discursive genre, and the relationship with the audience (Smith, 2017). DMC has also been studied under the theories of multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009) since multimodal composition processes respond to new pedagogical practices related to the digital age, design thinking skills and students' authentic contexts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Miller, 2013). Empirical studies in secondary school contexts have shown that DMC processes positively affect the development of higher-order skills (Knobel, 2017), such as creation, creativity, critical thinking, collaborative work, and problem-solving. Likewise, DMC promotes the development of linguistic skills (Vandommele et al., 2017), social skills (Mills, 2009), metacognitive strategies (Hung, 2019), digital empathy (Jiang & Gao, 2020), and metalanguage to consciously use semiotic resources in multimodal texts production (Unsworth & Mills, 2020). Although DMC practices positively impact the development of learning and skills, some studies have shown that young people do not always have the skills needed to generate content in digital environments (Bennett et al., 2008; Dalton, 2012) due to the scarcity of teaching strategies to evaluate and guide DMC tasks (Purcell et al., 2013). Consequently, it is relevant to conceive DMC processes not only as a means to achieve learning purposes but as a skill that requires the development of pedagogical strategies to help students create digital content through new ways of representation (Jocius, 2013).

Recent literature reviews on DMC tasks with secondary school students have examined students' processes and perceptions in DMC contexts (Li & Akoto, 2021), the relationship between DMC and translanguage with bilingual and multilingual students (Pacheco et al., 2022), and teaching strategies to work on DMC in the classroom (Smith et al., 2021). These literature reviews allow to know how the implementation of DMC in secondary education has been empirically analyzed; however, these studies focus mainly on language learning (L1-L2), and lees on other disciplines, such as scientific areas, in which the use of multimodality is essential to represent phenomena and elements that can hardly be explained only by verbal language (Bergey et al., 2015). This literature review aims to expand understanding of DMC processes, incorporating different school disciplinary areas. Therefore, this literature review seeks to answer the question: What do empirical studies report on DMC implementation in secondary education from diverse disciplinary areas? Knowing the practices teachers and students carry out during DMC processes will contribute to understanding the pedagogical strategies for developing multimodal language and its impact on digital literacies.

Digitalization has made increasing progress over the last two decades. The term digitalization implies a growing presence and importance of digital media in our lives and thus a whole process of change in society (Krotz, 2018; Schrape, 2021). With regard to children, the growing presence of digital media is reflected in current studies, such as the KIM and JIM studies: smartphones, computers/laptops, televisions and internet access are available in almost all households in which 6-13-year-olds and 12-19-year-olds live. In addition, almost 50% of 6-13-year-olds and 100% of 12-19-year-olds have their own smartphone (KIM study, 2022; JIM study, 2023).

The increased use of digital media leads to a different communication and social interaction. In the future, children and young people will need special skills, that help them to find their way in the digitalized world and to participate in it. They need what is often described as media literacy to deal with it in a reflective manner. Baacke divides media literacy into the four dimensions of media knowledge, media use, media design and media criticism. Consequently, according to Baacke, it is not only important to know more about the various media, to be able to use them and to master the design of or with media, but also to deal with them critically (Baacke, 2007). In the context of the use of digital media in preschools, there are controversial discussions (Fröhlich-Gildhoff & Fröhlich-Gildhoff, 2017; Knauf, 2018) about the question of from what age children should use (which) digital media (and how) and from what age media literacy can and should be promoted.

Today, it is no longer a question of whether digital media can or should be used in preschools, but rather how they are used (Reichert-Garschhammer, 2020; Roboom, 2020). The discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of using them must therefore continue in the educational context. Recently, it has been observed that the discourse is shifting towards focusing more on the risks. For example, when using digital media, there should be paid more attention to the quality of the use and also good supervision by professionals must be guaranteed (Knauf, 2024; Kontovourki & Tafa, 2020; Karolinska Institutet, 2023). The educational framework needed to promote media literacy is still relatively unclear.

In addition to good framework conditions, such as time resources and good technical equipment and infrastructure (Cohen & Hemmerich, 2019), another important prerequisite is the media and media didactic skills of the educators themselves. Study results show, that many educational professionals are still insufficiently trained in this regard (Corona-KiTa-Studie, 2021; DKLK-Studie, 2020). Although it has already been shown that educational professionals are more likely to use digital media in their work and also directly with children and young people if they consider themselves to be media literate (Tappe, 2017, 2019). It is therefore of great importance if and to what extent prospective educational professionals acquire media literacy and media education skills as part of their education or studies.

Studies carried out, that these skills are still rarely addressed in pedagogical training and student courses (Friedrichs-Liesenkötter, 2019; Kammerl & Thumel, 2016). As a university, this should be covered in future via the study modules. It is necessary to take a closer look at the basic skills that prospective educational professionals should have.

This leads to the following research questions:

1. Are there any approaches to media-didactic training of childhood education students at "Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften" (HAW) Hamburg? If so, how many and what kind of?

2. What kind of seminars do students ask for?

3. How is a specific media education seminar (animated film work) accepted by childhood education students?

Rapid changes occurring in our global world pose a challenge for higher education to advance online courses, such as Massive open online courses (MOOCs). MOOCs provide people from all over the world the opportunity to expand their education for free without any commitment or prior requirements (Colleagues & Author, 2016). Most MOOCs include short segments of video lectures arranged according to the course topics and the assessment method is based basically on closed-ended assignments. In this regard, research has focused on various aspects of learning via MOOC environments, such as: attrition and dropout rates (Ho et al., 2015), social engagement (Ferguson & Clow, 2015) and motivational patterns of MOOC enrollees (Kizilcec & Schneider, 2015). Most of these studies focused mainly on MOOC enrollees; however, little is known about cognitive and intrapersonal characteristics of MOOC completers, especially those who are registered university students (Colleagues & Author, 2019) and how these characteristics affect their learning outcomes (e.g., Author & Colleague, 2021).

Using cognitive perspective (i.e. flexible thinking; Barak & Levenberg, 2016) and motivation theory (i.e. intrinsic motivation; Bandura, 2006), the current research sought to examine the effect of flexible thinking and intrinsic motivation on students' learning outcomes in a MOOC, taking into consideration a comparison with students who completed the course in a F2Fenvironment. More specifically, the current research examines relationships between flexible thinking and intrinsic motivation at the beginning of the course (Time1) and at the end of the course (Time 2) on learning outcomes after completing a MOOC and a F2Fcourse. Further, the study examines the mediating effect of intrinsic motivation between flexible thinking at Time 1 and learning outcomes at Time 2.

Barak and Levenberg (2016, p.74) defined flexible thinking in education as “open-mindedness to others’ ideas—the ability to learn from others, manage teamwork, listen to multiple perspectives, and handle conflicts; 2. adapting to changes in learning situations—the ability to find multiple solutions, solve unfamiliar problems, and transfer knowledge to new situations; 3. accepting new or changing learning technologies—the ability to adjust to advanced technologies and effectively use them for meaningful learning”

We argue that completers demonstrating flexible thinking at the beginning of the MOOC will have flexible thinking at the end of the MOOC (Hypothesis 1a) and F2F course (Hypothesis 1b).

Intrinsic motivation refers to the inherent satisfaction to be engaged in activity for its own sake. Intrinsic motivation involves an inherent gratification prompted by the feeling that learning is interesting and enjoyable (Glynn et al., 2011). We argue that completers demonstrating intrinsic motivation at the beginning of the course will have intrinsic motivation at the end of the MOOC (Hypothesis 2a) and the F2F course (Hypothesis 2b).

Flexible thinkers are open to new experiences, adapt to new situations, and easily generate new ideas (Barak & Levenberg, 2016a). They adjust to varying circumstances and work well in a climate of uncertainty (Bransford et al., 2000). Further, completing a MOOC is a great challenge as it involves the understanding of complex contents; MOOCs support diverse populations, as each population can contribute to the knowledge and experience of the others (Colleagues & Author, 2018). Thus, we argue that completers’ flexible thinking (Hypothesis 3a) and intrinsic motivation (Hypothesis 3b) at Time 2 will affect their learning outcomes at Time 2 more in MOOC environments than in F2F environments.

Learning outcomes relate to students' achievement in the final course assignments.

We argue that completers with flexible thinking at the beginning of the course may affect their learning outcomes at the end of the course through their intrinsic motivation (Time 2) only in MOOC environments (Hypothesis 4).

Why Are Online Learners Invisible? Self-presentation of International Students in Online learning—A Case Study of Asian Students at German Universities

Against the backdrop of international higher education, one characteristic of Asian students’ online learning is their invisibility. Culture is an important influence on this behaviour, and this study makes use of Goffman’s dramaturgical theory to analyse Asian students’ invisible online learning at German universities. A qualitative research method was applied to explore those students’ online learning experience. The manifestations of Asian students’ invisible online learning included the mystification of personal learning, weakened classroom interaction and dissociated classroom presence. The reasons that influence online learners’ invisibility include changes in the outside, interference from the back, the stage fright of actors, audience exit, and disbandment of the team. This study suggests that university teachers should improve their teaching abilities and help students build a diverse online learning community.

This study borrows Goffman’s dramaturgical theory to analyse Asian students’ online learning interactions at German universities. Goffman is interested in making sense of human interaction from a sociological perspective, and with this in mind, the special human interaction – students’ invisible interaction, including their learning behaviour, learning willingness, and learning recognition – during online learning is framed here from the perspective of Goffman’s theory.

The TEgoDi concept (Teacher Education goes Digital) emerged from the need to enhance the digital media skills of teacher students, contributing an innovative dimension to teacher education (Müller et al., 2021). The integration of digital media-related competencies becomes paramount as educators need to navigate the potentials and limitations of digital media in pedagogical practices (McGarr & McDonagh, 2019). TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) findings underscore the urgency, with only 53 percent of teachers regularly incorporating technology into teaching, and fewer expressing a desire for further education (Schleicher, 2020). Post-graduation, many students feel inadequately prepared for effective digital media use in teaching, emphasizing the need to consider subject-specific teaching–learning processes (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).

Digital media-related competencies encompass a spectrum of knowledge, skills, and dispositions required by teachers to adeptly design teaching-learning processes (Falloon, 2020). In response to the need for a holistic and integrated approach, TEgoDi adopts a project-oriented strategy rooted in theories of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 2008) and authentic learning (Herrington & Herrington, 2006). This approach is embedded within a teacher education programme, where prospective teachers engage in two projects: a media-based teaching project and a media development project (Müller et al., 2021). To facilitate students' competence development, various support structures are integrated, including regular feedback based on online learning analytics, self-assessments, and tutoring. A key factor of sustainability and success of the TEgoDi project is the curricular anchoring of the media projects. In this way, the media projects get the chance to be perceived not just as an add-on, but as integral part of teacher education. The TEgoDi approach has been implemented since 2023, and both media projects will be anchored in the study and examination regulations and new module handbooks across the curriculum from 2025.

Although it is not yet compulsory, the integration of media projects into the courses is encouraged. To this end, a transitional statute has encouraged the facilitation of media projects in existing courses for trialling. The TEgoDi's media project implementation is currently in a pilot phase and is being evaluated ongoing basis. The formative evaluation follows the iterative development procedure (Allen & Sites, 2012), which encompasses three major development loops. Each loop is evaluated using feedback from students and lecturers and tutors from the TEgoDi project. Our presentation focuses on the final phase of the evaluation, in which early adopters integrate the described media projects into their courses and assess both the process and the outcomes. As we evaluate the TEgoDi's media project implementation in its pilot phase, our presentation addresses the following key research question providing insights into the effectiveness of the TEgoDi concept in teacher education:

How do two pioneering media projects in teacher education influence the development of competencies among students, and to what extent do various supportive structures, including regular feedback based on online learning analytics, self-assessments, and tutoring, contribute to this process?

In our presentation, we will address this crucial aspect of teacher education going digital. Through the exemplary good-practice examples, the challenges and their handling are illustrated, and outlook address the necessity of media projects and lessons learned. Achieving comprehensive integration involves embedding the projects in all study disciplines, which was accomplished through the adaptation of module handbooks and study examination regulations. Interdisciplinary workshops were pivotal in developing common minimum standards, ensuring the acquisition of media pedagogical competencies by prospective teachers across all study programs. Further details on the evaluation methodology are outlined in the subsequent section.

In recent decades, the levels of political engagement of EU youth have declined (Kitanova, 2020). Norris (2003) suggests that this apathy is caused by the youth’s significant disillusionment with the political system. While there are various means by which people can express their political and social views to advocate for desired change (Norris, 2003), the choice of these means depends on their perceived success rate concerning the desired outcome (Šerek et al., 2012). In the vast majority of European countries, young people can’t vote until the age of 18, and while their political representation is nominal, they need to rely on older generations to represent their interests, which can be overlooked (Vochocová & Rosenfeldová, 2023).

However, studies indicate that young individuals may embrace unconventional or novel means of involvement in the socio-political sphere (Ross, 2021; Šerek et al., 2012). This study explores the transformative potential and challenges of youth activism, specifically online activism, as a way of exhibiting democratic mindsets and attitudes as envisioned in Dewey’s conceptualization of democracy (Hytten, 2016).

Activism can be understood as a wide array of actions instigated to promote political causes, environmental protection, human rights, or anti-war efforts (Klar & Kasser, 2009). Furthermore, students representing Generation Z are the first to grow up in an era of universal internet access and widespread use of social networking sites, such as Instagram, X, and Facebook. These platforms have become their space of everyday activity and where they learn about and engage with various socio-political issues (Bakker & Vreese, C. H. 2011; Vromen et al., 2015; Jakubowski, 2021). Therefore, social media, where visual images possess inherent political implications and play a central role in negotiating, consolidating, and naturalizing major cultural narratives and social norms (Melek & Müyesseroğlu, 2023), have the potential to counteract the decreasing engagement of youth in political activities (Hobbs, 2016).

While offline civic engagement can place limitations on young people due to resource constraints or parental and school restrictions, the online environment emerges as a space where they can participate actively and independently through a myriad of activities, including expressing opinions, engaging in discussions, sharing information, and mobilizing for collective action (Machackova & Šerek, 2017). This could be seen with the worldwide rise of youth environmental engagement, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the recent Free Palestine protests. In Poland, social media was used for communication, networking, and mobilization of Polish women against the proposed total ban on abortion in 2016 (Korolczuk, 2016). This form of social action has also been adopted by young Polish climate activists from the ‘Wschod’ organization and, most recently, campaigns organized by young Polish activists to encourage youth participation in the 2023 parliamentary elections.

However, researchers express concerns about the external efficiency of online civic participation, the presence of misleading or false information, and the actions of groups disseminating extremist attitudes (Machackova & Šerek, 2017). Moreover, Jakubowski (2021) observes that online personalities often project their preconceived views onto their audiences, a tendency that may primarily apply to young individuals seeking opinions rather than information. Therefore, it is important to better understand the potential and the challenges of this new form of democratic participation from the perspective of its young users.

This proposal is rooted in the ongoing multimethod research project STUDACT, with a particular focus on the Polish case study. It aims to understand how Polish youth utilize social media to gain knowledge, comprehend, and engage with local, national, and global issues. How do they understand activism and online activism? How do they perceive their individual roles and their potential influence on local and global matters through active and reactive online activism?

Theoretical framework and research questions

Over the last decades, technology users gathered in interaction creating a digital society, which emerged due to intense digital connections. In this designated context, the concept of digital citizenship is referring broadly to norms of appropriate, responsible behaviour regarding technology use, particularly in engaging in social and civic activities (Ribble & Bailey, 2007). Due to being raised in a digital society that has provided new opportunities for education, social interaction, and even employment, students were considered digital natives who hold all technology-related knowledge and skills, including digital citizenship. However, digital citizenship is a complex construct which needs to be addressed. Recent studies show that an individual’s extent of experience using the Internet is not a factor that affects the level of knowledge and practice of digital citizenship among undergraduate students. One of the aspects that are being developed in civic education in the era of digital citizenship is civic literacy (Al-Abdullatif et. al., 2020). Several empirical studies on digital citizenship in higher education have been conducted in recent years (e.g., Al-Zahrani, 2015; Kara, 2018); nevertheless, coherent digital citizenship education in the university curriculum is most probably seen as a ‘natural’ outcome of efforts invested in developing students’ digital competences and, thus, is rather neglected in policy papers and programme contents. Given the profound changes undertaken by universities for better preparing students for future societies, it is reasonable to assume that digital citizenship will further enrich the meaning of digital competence development and fully enter the academic debate on transversal competences in higher education. While education programmes in this area are focused more on increasing students’ digital skills, public concern regarding the potential risks to youth online has prompted a quick response to provide internet safety education. This process is more than a mean to an end, hence the building blocks of developing digital citizenship must be clarified to develop sustainable programmes that support digital citizenship development. Also, there is evidence that young people’s online behaviour depends on their own narratives, stories, and experiences of digital life (Black et al., 2022). Nonetheless, the most compacted results show that personal values, such as self-transcendence and security, have a vital role in influencing digital citizen participation (Palacin et al., 2021). Deeper understanding of personal values influence on digital citizenship could provide direction or create incentive mechanisms and grasp user experiences in digital communities (Palacin et al., 2021). Moreover, other studies showed that social factors such as identity (Mitchell, 2016) and social status (Wang & Xing, 2018) impacts youth digital citizenship.

This present study aims to identify and analyze the explanatory factors of digital citizenship, as perceived by university students in different European cultural contexts. Four dimensions were followed in exploring the potential determinants of digital citizenship: digital experiences (Internet Political Activism, Technical Skills, Critical Perspective, and Networking Agency), cultural orientations, individual and social identity, and civic attitude. Therefore, the questions we sought to answer are: What are the individual digital experiences that underlie digital citizenship? What are the values that support digital citizenship? What are the effects of social identity and social status? To what extent cross-national variations can be observed?

The proposed paper delves into the realm of uncertainty in two ways. First, uncertainty, by the means of education (Biesta 2014) and human action (Arendt 1958), refers to the lack of complete knowledge or predictability when making decisions. It encompasses various forms of ambiguity, doubt, and unpredictability that can significantly impact human thinking and action (Mazzone & Elgammal 2019). Second, by focusing on complex machine interactions, our research seeks to illuminate the ways in which humans engage with AI systems in order to approach the complexity of the underlying digital infrastructure (Williamson et al. 2023) and its implications for images and imaginaries of complex machine systems.

In our research, we are exploring contexts and practices that inhabit moments of uncertainty when humans interact with complex machine systems in various playful and creative ways. We do not want to completely eliminate the potential of human uncertainty by focussing on machine systems, we rather try to acknowledge the notion of everlasting indeterminacy in human machine interaction. Therefore, we take uncertainty as starting point to reconstruct images of AI on the one hand and ultimately shape the conditions and constraints of educational processes on the other hand.

Therefore, we want to outline the extent to which people need to be prepared for explanations and know about interaction, in order to benefit from them in a mode of explanation. By addressing the triangle of uncertainty, creativity and exploration, we also hope to get insights to which extent creative methods and visual cues can be leveraged to teach AI concepts and foster digital literacy among learners. The research can be divided into three parts (exploration, creativity and uncertainty) that equally contribute to the overall question: how to address uncertainty in order to enhance human modes of understanding, images and imaginaries of complex machine systems?

As digitalisation progresses, young people’s media use is increasing (Albert et al., 2019, Anderson, Faverio and Gottfried, 2023, Feierabend, S., Rathgeb, T., Kheremand, H., & Glöckler, 2023). The lives of young people today are increasingly mediatised and are shifting to social media platforms. Studies on media use show that young people also come into contact with negative topics such as hate speech on these platforms (Albert et al., 2019, Feierabend, S., Rathgeb, T., Kheremand, H., & Glöckler, 2022; Forsa, 2023). In this context, media education research focuses on questions about the perception and evaluation of hate speech (Albert et al., 2019, Feierabend, S., Rathgeb, T., Kheremand, H., & Glöckler, 2022) as well as the question of how educators can address hate speech in an educational context and help to prevent it (Marolla-Gajardo & Castellví-Mata, 2023, Seemann-Herz et al., 2022).

So far, we have little knowledge about who is engaging in digital hate and for what purpose, and what strategies might be helpful in dealing with the phenomenon. This is the starting point for the research work presented in this paper, which has generated valuable findings for media education research.

Eight interviews with feminist net activists were conducted using a qualitative research design. The research questions focused on the activists’ feminist self-image and their experiences with digital violence. The focus was on the question of whether they accept being silenced or whether they have developed strategies and resources that they can draw on when dealing with digital violence.

An exploration of the basic feminist attitude of the activists was carried out through theoretical references to feminist discourses such as the social construction of gender (Gildemeister & Wetterer, 1992; Goffman, 1977; Kessler & McKenna, 1978; Hagemann-White, 1984), deconstructionism (Derrida, 1987; Kahlert, 2000; Butler, 1991), queer theory (Hark, 2009; Jagose, 1996; Woltersdorf, 2003) and intersectional feminism (Crenshaw, 1989, 2013; Winker & Degele, 2009; Yuval-Davis, 2013). The descriptions and analyses of the haters were embedded in the discourse field of antifeminism (Lang & Peters, 2018; Planert 1998; Schutzbach, 2018), especially in current publications on antigenderism (Dağlar-Sezer, & Beaufaӱs, 2021; Ganz & Meßmer, 2015; Hark & Villa, 2015; Henninger & Birsl, 2020; Maurer, 2018; Schmincke, 2018). In order to pursue their goals as effectively as possible, coalitions and alliances are often formed between different groups (Blum, 2019; Lang & Peters, 2018; Strube, Perintfalvi, Hemet, Metze & Sahbaz, 2021).

The results of my study revealed that the haters are part of the anti-feminist spectrum and are characterised by racist, sexist and trans-hostile attitudes (Roß, forthcoming). Antifeminist actors are well organised and try to ban feminist voices from the digital space (Blum, 2019; Dafaure, 2022; Huang, 2023; Roß, forthcoming). Networking between groups is crucial to the effectiveness of antifeminist violence (Drüeke, 2016; Lang & Peters, 2018; Roß, forthcoming).

As the study participants all have displayed a queer and intersectional understanding of feminism, it can be assumed that this is relevant to the experience of anti-feminist hostility. It was found that the activists are particularly affected by digital hatred when they themselves are read as non-white and fall outside the heterosexual norm in terms of their gender identity or gender orientation (Roß, forthcoming).

When young people become victims of digital hatred due to their gender identity, gender orientation or ethnicity deviating from the “norm”, it is possible that organised antifeminists are behind the digital hostility. In contrast to the respondents in this study, who have developed numerous strategies for dealing with anti-feminist violence and have a feminist network to fall back on, young people are much more vulnerable.

What can we learn from research into memes as a pedagogical phenomenon in democratic or participatory contexts? The primary aim of this scoping review is to map the current knowledge about the pedagogical value of memes in participatory and democratic contexts. As secondary research question, the papers also asks what democratic and participatory understandings the field of research is grounded in.

According to Shifman (2014, pp. 39-42) memes are a form of communication between people or groups of people, often digital, and often consisting of visual or audiovisual media. Moreover, memes are commonly understood to be humoristic in nature; the humoristic aspect of memes has also been linked to democratic and participatory functions (Anderson & Keehn, 2020), and the possible value it may have for educators. This further raises the questions of whether we know more about the pedagogical value of memes in the context of democracy and participation, and how this research can be summarized and what gaps may exist in the literature.

Further theoretical perspectives can be found in Durham Peters (2020) philosophy of media, adopting the view that media is not only a tool for mediation in our different social systems, but a part of these systems themselves; the theory on memes can be expanded to define memes also as messages in themselves, meaning that they are part of our environment and carry meaning both by mediation of something and existing in themselves as part of the system.

Memes as a form of communication has in recent years become more widely researched. With perspectives ranging from memes as a political tool in specific elections (Ross & Rivers, 2019), to memes as form of identity formation in grassroots movements among marginalized groups (Burton, 2019), there is still a need to get an overview on memes as a pedagogical phenomenon in a democratic and participatory context. This paper shows the preliminary results of a sample of research in that context.

The need for this overview is based on the lack of reviews on this topic of research, particularly with regards to the pedagogical value of memes as a democratizing phenomenon. Apart from summarizing the current knowledge, another aim is to reflect upon the future of research on the topic, and what questions might need to be asked moving forward.

The paper is part of the authors Ph.d.-project.

In recent years, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained recognition for their potential to enhance teacher education and general educational settings, as evidenced by studies such as Röwert & Kostrzewa (2021), and institutions like BMBF (2022) and UNESCO & Commonwealth of Learning (2019). While the term "Open Educational Practices" (OEP) often refers to activities involving OER, the concept, as pointed out by Bali et al. (2018) and Bellinger & Mayrberger (2020), encompasses a range of openness approaches that extend beyond or even operate independently of OER. This includes open pedagogical-participative learning scenarios using social media tools for collaborative knowledge creation. An understudied aspect in the OEP discourse is the challenges and side effects that student engagement can have.

This paper explores the challenges of OEP in addressing diversity issues, focusing on the 'Diversity goes Digital' project at TU Darmstadt as a case study. The project was initiated in response to an increase in discriminatory discourse in media spaces (Bünger and Czejkowska, 2020), where perceived differences from the dominant society (Attia et al., 2015) trigger hostility towards democratic values that educators strive to impart. This landscape includes debates on anti-genderism, rising right-wing populism and persistent racism. A key objective of the project - appropriate to the goals of Council of the European Union (2023) - was to contribute to diversity-oriented media education in teacher training and foster media literacy within a diverse, democratic society.

A central didactic approach was to enable students of teaching at vocational schools and high schools to engage in a product- and practice-oriented examination of societal orders of difference in the school context. This approach aimed to help them learn to critically examine themselves in relation to both analog and digital processes of 'doing difference' during lesson development. Furthermore, the focus was on ensuring that these future educators would neither ignore nor stigmatize the diversity of lifestyles in school practice, which is crucial for fostering an inclusive and reflective educational environment (FRA Report 2020). Therefore, students created explainer videos on topics such as heteronormativity and racism. Choosing video creation as an approach was based on its potential to engage students in simplifying complex subjects in an engaging and accurate manner (Wolf, 2015). This exercise was intended not only to help students better understand the concepts but also to develop effective communication skills essential for educators. However, these videos, shared on YouTube, faced significant right-wing populist backlash against both the students and educators.

After introducing the project, the presentation shifts focus to analyze the right-wing populist responses encountered. The leading questions are:

• Who is authoring the observed comments, and to what extent can a digital community and infrastructure be identified behind these coordinated responses?
• What disinformation strategies are evident in the patterns of comments that aim to problematize the topics of the videos and discredit the authors and educators?

The objective of this section is to highlight the potential reactions such educational projects might face, preparing stakeholders for similar challenges. This analysis contributes to supporting the European Union's perspective (2022) on tackling disinformation and promoting digital literacy through education and training.

Networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

Media and in particular digital media play an important role within the discussion unfold around the professionalization of practitioners in adult education as a heterogeneous target group (e.g. Rohs & Bolten 2017; Breitschwerdt et al. 2022). On one hand the focus of this debate is the identification of different necessary skills and knowledge resources adult educators have to develop in order to deal with the challenges and opportunities of a digital world. On the other hand, the research interest lies in the analysis of formal, but especially informal and non-formal learning processes in order to develop these skills and knowledge resources (ibid.). Looking at the documents of current EU education initiatives in this context (e.g. Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020), digitalization is stylized as a turbulent, dark, and opaque sea in which adult education actors are called upon to navigate the European society as a global competitive player (Bellinger & Dehmel forthcoming – 2024). Consequently, adult education is an extremely heterogeneous field whose stakeholders can hardly be reduced to a common denominator, while at the same time European education policy attaches enormous strategic importance to it. Against this background, the associated professionalization processes of adult educators to acquire (digital) media related skills and knowledge resources become a very complex and simultaneously crucial element in order to ensure a successful “education in an age of uncertainty” in European society.

While the discussion about the necessary media related skills has now progressed very far and has produced a variety of knowledge based on empirical research (e.g. Schmidt-Hertha et al. 2020), there is surprisingly still an important gap in the question of what “media” actually are from the perspective of adult educators. Of course, most – if not all! – studies on media related professionalization define a concrete concept of media from media theory on which the analysis is based on. However, this is always a procedure that is naturally made by researchers with a view on adult education practice and practitioners. As far as we know, there have been no studies yet that explicitly deal with the latent ideas and associations that practitioners in adult education themselves have towards the question what media can be. This question seems to be particularly important because these ideas and associations frame their specific efforts of media related professionalization and an in-depth analysis will help to understand them better.

Our submission aims to fill this gap and will analyze excerpts from interviews with various planning and teaching adult education staff as further explained in the methods section. We deliberately base our study on a heterogeneous sample in order to do justice to the diversity of adult education. First, we will examine which latent perceptions and associations of the interviewed practitioners regarding the concept of media are concealed in the qualitative data material. Secondly, we reflect on our research results against the background of educational media theory. In doing so, we focus on theoretical deliberations that suggest a broader view on media beyond technologies as entities that decisively shape the way we perceive the world and how we relate to the world (Bettinger 2021). In the third step, we relate our media theoretical findings back to the discourse on media related professionalization in adult education and consider what significance they have with regard to a successful “education in an age of uncertainty” in perspective of EU adult education policy (e.g. Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020).

The educational landscape has undergone fundamental changes in recent years due to the rapid development of digital technologies. One innovative technology gaining increasing importance in this context is Virtual Reality (VR) technology. With the capability to immerse learners in interactive learning environments, VR technology offers unique opportunities to expand and enrich traditional learning approaches (eg. Burdea & Coiffet, 2003; Butt, Kardong-Edgren & Ellertson, 2018; Herrington & Tacy, 2020).

In the realm of career orientation, the study conducted by Spangenberger and Freytag (2020) suggests that the utilization of Virtual Reality (VR) technology can serve as a valuable complement, enhancing various facets of the career orientation process. This technology facilitates immersive and authentic experiences, offering participants profound insights into diverse professional domains. Moreover, VR technology establishes a secure environment for the evaluation of intricate tasks and scenarios, enabling individuals to assess their aptitude for technical and manual professions, as well as explore diverse career pathways. This is particularly beneficial for refugees who are not yet familiar with the German job market and available options.

While the use of VR in educational and professional contexts has been extensively researched, the application of VR technology in literacy courses with a focus on career orientation has not been specifically addressed.

In 2023, within the framework of the "Educational Year for Adult Refugees with Limited or No Language and Literacy Skills" (BEF Alpha) project, VR technology was introduced into the context of career orientation at two selected educational institutions. This implementation underwent scientific monitoring, and some of the findings will be presented in the upcoming session.

BEF Alpha courses are designed to provide adult refugees in Germany, who have limited language skills, with the means to attain a solid understanding of the German language and acquire a foundational education necessary for successful integration into the society. This initiative is funded by BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) and involves a collaboration between the federal government and the state, and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The target group of BEF Alpha courses are refugees between the ages of 20 and 35. About half of the participants are either people who have not previously attended school, or they are only literate in their native language. BEF Alpha aims to provide the refugee participants with sustainable competencies to manage their integration into society and their entry into the workforce. In 35 weeks (28 lessons per week), participants receive literacy and language training, basic digital education, as well as everyday life skills and basic civics education, and career orientation (Koppel, 2020).

The presentation centers on the domain of career orientation facilitated by Virtual Reality (VR) technology within the BEF Alpha program. The primary inquiry is framed as follows: "What success factors and design principles contribute to the proficient implementation of VR technology in adult career orientation, with a specific emphasis on literacy and basic education?"

To address this query comprehensively, the presentation will commence with theoretical perspectives, followed by an exploration of practical insights derived from the 2023 implementation of VR technology within the BEF Alpha program. Specifically contextualizing within the realm of career orientation and emphasizing literacy and basic education, the presentation aims to identify and discuss key success conditions and design principles emerging from the utilization of VR technology. These insights are intended to shed light on how VR technology enhances engagement and effectiveness in the career orientation process for adult learners. Furthermore, the findings will offer valuable guidance for educators, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to integrate VR technology into similar educational contexts.

As researchers in the field of media education and adult education, we were invited to support the implementation process of a local open learning centre for all - called DoLE. The aim was to support the implementation process actively with our educational expertise in self-directed learning (Faulstich & Grell 2005) and to gain reliable insights through evaluation. Therefore, we followed an action research approach. The local "Volkshochschule" (a traditional, non-commercial adult education organisation providing adult education in all regions of Germany) was in charge of the process; three academic staff members were part of the board and our core group. The board engaged ten new learning coaches paid on an honorarium for the work with the learning community. The qualification plan and process for the learning coaches to support open learning
started before we participated in the process. The centre's implementation began in 2022; as researchers, we supported the process from April to October 2023. Following a participatory approach, we discussed and negotiated all our plans for support and the evaluation with the board. All our notes and memos were part of the research process. We had monthly 3-hour meetings and a continuous exchange (in terms of content and organisation) between TU (academic staff) and DOLE project management. We conducted a participant observation during a training course for the learning coaches (May 2023). Central data collection took part during a participatory evaluation workshop (June 2023), focussing on the hindrances and challenges of the learning coaches. A full documentation of the workshop was shared with the coaches afterwards.
The research questions (developed with the board of the centre): What are the main challenges and potential hindrances in implementing an attractive centre for open learning? What are the perspectives of the learning coaches towards the process and its success?

Currently, the Spanish public education system relies heavily on digital educational platforms of technology corporations, in a global context of digitization of education accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This process is characterised both globally and locally by the monopolisation and outsourcing of the provision of educational technologies and by a great lack of knowledge about the consequences of their use for schoolchildren. In this context, despite their potential reluctance, families are forced to authorise the use of corporate digital platforms in the school (Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2020) to prevent their children from being excluded from access to a resource increasingly used in schools and, therefore, from the very right to education.

In legal terms, advances are identified such as the right to personal data protection in the European legislation and the imposition of sanctions for breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU are identified (Voigt & Von dem Bussche, 2017). However, despite the obligation of governments to protect their population from potential abuses regarding the improper use of personal data, Amnesty International claims that private suppliers of digital services have been left to be "virtually self-regulated" (2019). In addition, the European Court of Justice declared the transatlantic Privacy Shield agreement invalid, finding that there is no guarantee that data leakage and commercialization between the EU and the United States can be prevented.

In this global scenario, the data of the educational community become the commodity of exchange for the corporations that provide digital services to the education systems. UNICEF demonstrates that children are more susceptible to digital marketing techniques, more likely to become consumers and dependent users of these technologies, and therefore, more manipulable (Williamson, 2017; Cobo & Rivera-Vargas, 2022). Hence, children are much more vulnerable to "surveillance capitalism" (Zuboff, 2019) because they are more exposed to the violation of rights of privacy, protection and personal information and reputation. This is in addition to the reproduction of gender inequalities and the intersectionalities of apps associated with these corporations that, for example, make girls and boys who use them receive advertising or see sexist and racist roles reproduced in their search engines.

It also affects their right to education, as the public system is commodified and the public administration loses control of the pedagogical methodology and educational content on these digital platforms. Evidence shows that this dependence on transnationals is undermining pedagogical and digital sovereignty at the global level, allowing these corporations to develop their commercial objectives in an educational and public space, imposing their ideologies, for example through the increased use of social networks linked to "gamification" in education, where technology holdings link their other platforms and digital resources (Sancho-Gil, Rivera-Vargas & Miño-Puigcercós, 2020).

In this context, the project "Digital platforms and datification in primary education in Spain: child protection in a context of educational digitalization" arises (MICIN, PID2022-137033NA-I00), whose main objective is to explore and analyse the socio-educational effects of the use of digital platforms and data storage and management on child protection in primary education in Spain. From there, it is expected to provide evidence that will contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge and social debate around the platformisation and datification of primary education.

Digiproted is organised into four phases. This paper will present the preliminary results of the first of them, where normative and political texts related to the protection of children in digital contexts at international, European, national, and regional levels are being analysed.

In the post-COVID 19 pandemic context, important debates arise about the current and future cultural, political and economic impact of the use of digital platforms on the protection and privacy of children and young people (Morozov, 2018; Snowden, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). . In this sense, national and regional public administrations in Spain have approved laws that directly address the protection of minors in the digital environment, as well as the guarantee of their digital rights. These documents recognize the fundamental role of the family in promoting the responsible use of technology. In addition, digital education programs have been developed for children, adolescents and their families. Along the same lines, foundations, NGOs and observatories promote different initiatives to protect children and adolescents in the digital context and raise awareness about the responsible use of technology. In the academic field, a body of scientific literature seems to be growing focused on the digital socialization of young people from an intergenerational perspective, as well as research groups aimed at studying the relationship between families and technologies.

In this framework, the research project "PlatFAMs: Platforming Families - tracing digital transformations in everyday life across generations" (CHANSE Cofund 2021 PCI2022-135025-2) aims to explore the integration of digital platforms into routines and daily dynamics of contemporary families in five European countries (Norway, Estonia, United Kingdom, Romania and Spain). Within the framework of the development of the first phases of this project, all participating countries carried out research on the use and regulation of digital platforms in families. This article offers the results of this work in the Spanish case from an intergenerational perspective, addressing the actions developed by national and regional public administrations, as well as the initiatives promoted by foundations, NGOs and observatories. It also examines the contributions of academia in this context. A content analysis of 24 documents including regulations and digital reports is carried out to identify concepts related to the use and regulation of digital platforms. This review provides detailed information on the measures adopted to promote the digital rights of children, adolescents and families, highlighting the diversity of approaches and resources deployed by the different actors in Spanish society. From the approval of laws to investment in the modernization of the educational system, efforts and tensions are observed to address the challenges and opportunities presented by digital development in the country. According to this framework, the objective of communication is to relate the views of the regulatory framework, scientific knowledge and civil society organizations on digital platforms in families.

Educational systems are the product of analogical and virtual relationships between several actors, interacting with each other in different contexts and at different levels. With the digital age and after the COVID-19 situation, the relationships among the different components of the school – starting from peers and teachers – need to be intentionally aligned and designed to achieve citizenship outcomes (Khan & Obiakor, 2020): political engagement, in fact, is changing with the pervasiveness of information flows through digital technologies, creating new opportunities for political participation (ICCS, 2023).

This project aims to explore, according to a qualitative-quantitative approach, citizenship education in school contexts, reflecting on the possible link between digital skills and relational aspects within the classroom environment.

The investigation starts from the reflections on the network society (Castells, 2004), the categorization of students and teachers according to the meanings of digital natives or immigrants (Prensky, 2001) and visitors or residents (White, Le Cornu, 2011), and the relative upgrade to the concept of citizenship, based on the definition postulated by Ribble (2011).

The pedagogical framework recovers the thought of the democratic school of Dewey (1915), who defines the school as a place of democratic action stressing how this environment must lead the young generations to share values, behaviors and ways of being through experience. In a world inhabited by avatars, the educational system must also recover the idea of citizenship as a concrete action aimed at the well-being of the community (Maritain, 1947); this reflection linked the training of the student and the education of the citizen, assuming the class group as a space of social belonging, guided by values such as altruism, cooperation and solidarity. These two pedagogical reflections blend in the phenomenological perspective of Bertolini (2003) and his link between schools and political education; the principal task of the school is to educate students thinking about them primarily in their civic role (today both analogical and digital), focusing on the promotion of helpful tips that can be used in classroom as well as in society.

Over the years, the legislative directions has been enriched with numerous documents about citizenship education in school (Eurydice Report, 2017; European Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, 2019). The last European Framework (DigComp 2.2, 2022) specifies the citizenship competence as “the ability to act as responsible citizens and to fully participate in civic and social life” (p. 2) and specifies the interconnection between real and virtual world, highlighting knowledge,skills and attitudes for both of these living environments. In particular, the Area 2 (Communication and Collaboration) outlines “the ability to have a critical understanding of and interact with both traditional and new forms of media and understand the role and functions of media in democratic societies” (p. 3).

The project is in line with the interest for civic education in Italy, returned thanks to Law 92/2019 which establishes the reintroduction of Civic Education as a cross-disciplinary subject, unfortunately still lacking clear references for teachers and headmasters. The interest is twofold: to understand how the school context is dealing with the training of students and teachers as digital citizens and to value if digital citizenship programs can have positive effects on classroom climate. The classroom climate is the result of the creation of a significant relational network, composed of emotional and motivational elements, as well as the co-construction of objectives (Polito, 2000).

Starting from these considerations, the work assumes that education have to think about a new idea of digital citizenship education, which lies at the interconnection between digital skills and relational competences and can also prevent bullying and cyberbullying events.

The achievement of Agenda 2030 for sustainable development with its 17 interrelated goals is strongly related to the development of social and individual health and wellbeing. In the WHO Global Framework for Well-Being and Health Promotion it is expressed as “… positive vision of health that integrates physical, mental, psychological, emotional, spiritual and social well-beings” (WHO 2022:5).

A key factor for sustainable development is the promotion of children’s and young persons’ wellbeing conceived as a “…dynamic state in which children and young people are able to develop their potential, learn and play creatively and productively, build positive relationships with others, and belong to and contribute to their community” (Cefai et al. 2021:21)

Despite political awareness of how digital transformation relates to mental health and wellbeing, negative use of digital technology still risks having long-lasting negative effects on children’s academic achievement and mental health (WHO 2022, Schleicher 2022)

In order to take advantage of the positive consequences of this digital transformation as well as to prevent and combat its negative risks in children’s and young people’s well-being, it is necessary to developed pedagogical measures “to ensure learners’ physical, psychological and social well-being while using digital technologies.” (DigCompEdu 2022 ) . This is an area where research has increased, and different conceptions of digital well-being has emerged (Dennis, 2021; Gudka et al, 2023; Gui et al, 2017; Smits et al, 2022; Roffarello et al, 2023). Reseach into digital well-being in an educational context is scarce (cf. Cao & Li, 2023) and evidence-based measures to enhance digital well-being is limited.

In the light of this context, this research workshop aims to discuss scientific knowledge on digital wellbeing with a focus on educational research, policies and school practices for developing frameworks and strategies to address digital wellbeing in school contexts.

This discussion will concern the following research questions:

• How is digital wellbeing defined in a Swedish and international research educational context?
• How is digital wellbeing characterized in Swedish and EU-policies in the educational area over time?
• How is digital wellbeing understood in a school context by students, school staff and parents/caregivers?
• Which similarities and differences are found between these different actors’ perspectives on digital wellbeing?
• Which are the implications of these similarities and differences for the development of digital wellbeing in different school contexts?

Increasingly rapid and disruptive technological and socio-ecological changes drive contemporary discussion about the uncertainties of our presents and futures, in society and education. In education, policy makers are responding with pedagogical concepts and frameworks. For example, both the OECD (Häggström & Schmidt, 2021; OECD, 2019) and the European Commission's ‘GreenComp’, include futures literacy. (Bianchi et al., 2022).

Various megatrends drive uncertainty, e.g. pandemic, war, human catastrophes. Here, we focus on two inter-linked mega-trends, which raise questions of how we want to live in the present and future: 1) sustainable development and education for sustainable development (ESD); and 2) the rapid expansion of digital technologies. The negotiation of past, present and future has always been inscribed in pedagogy (Koller, 2020; Thompson, 2019). A struggle for futures comes to a head in pedagogical contexts such as education for sustainable development and media education, which have similarities in their premises and didactics (Grünberger, 2022; Rau & Rieckmann, 2023; Selwyn, 2023). A further commonality is the question of uncertain futures.

This symposium explores aspects of uncertainty in a world characterised by digital technology, with regard to ESD in Europe, drawing on data and experience from Teacher Academy Project-Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS). Our research and analysis is anchored in a shared theoretical basis in social-constructivism, and in particular critical-constructivist perspectives on social learning with a foundation - in the broadest sense - in critical theory. For this, we draw particularly on Habermas (2021) for insights into the normative foundations of critical theory, Fuchs (2020) for insights into criticality, capitalism and media study, Vienni-Baptista et al (2023) for communication in transdisciplinary work, and Gradinaru’s (2016) revisioning of Anderson on imagined community.

The three papers presented here offer distinct and complementary perspectives on digital technology and ESD. The first, "Coping with Uncertainty in Education for Sustainable Development in a Digital World", discusses this question on a general level. PAPER 1 introduces the topic and leads on questions for educational practice and in school. The characteristics of transdisciplinary, open learning communities for strengthening and transforming education in times of uncertainty are analysed in PAPER 2 "Digital media and open learning communities for international sustainability teacher education". Our central focus is the question of how educators’ transdisciplinary relationships across boundaries of academic disciplines, institutions (pre- and in-service teacher education, primary and secondary schools, civil society), and nations, facilitated in part through digital media, have fostered improvements and even transformations in sustainability education. The specifics of "open educational resources'' and “open educational practices” (OPAL, 2011) are examined in PAPER 3. We emphasise in particular the power of critical reflection to prompt agency for sustainability and the status of TAP-TS LTPs as Open Educational Resources (OERs). We also discuss the LTP’s inherent 'beta nature' – all are work-in-progress and are offered as proposals rather than prescribed as ‘solutions’ to teachers and other educators taking part in TAP-TS events and activities. In this way we foreground the TAP-TS aim of enabling learners to participate more fully in a post-digital society.

Following the three contributions, the discussant will formulate a critical view and moderate the discussion with symposium participants with a view to furthering analytical insights within and between papers. In the course of the discussion, a collaborative online pinboard will be used to secure the results, allowing all participants to comment. The results will be taken into account in the further development of the TAP-TS project and will help the project to navigate its way towards the planned goals.

Much has been said in recent years about living in a world of uncertainty. In addition to wars and growing inequalities, we believe that two trends in particular play a central role for the question of future development and pedagogical approaches to that: firstly, the urgent question of sustainable development in our societies, as is discussed around the SDGs (United Nations, 2015) or the EU GreenComp-Competence Framework (Bianchi et al., 2022). And, secondly, the question of what ethical choices we need to make in the present regarding future digital technological developments (e.g. the development of Artificial Intelligence, Discriminating Data and the question of a global internet coverage) (e.g. Chun, 2021; Crawford, 2021; Weich & Macgilchrist, 2023). In addition to addressing these pressing issues, it is also difficult to adopt a decolonizing perspective that allows these central questions to be discussed from a global perspective (c.f. Moyo, 2018). This challenge is compounded when the issues are discussed with children, who are already involved in these future issues in terms of participation (Grünberger, 2023). The proposed presentation explores the question of pedagogical guidelines for dealing with uncertainty, conflicts and paradoxes in the context of education for sustainable development and digitality. Central theoretical foundations can be found in the discourses of media education, media studies, political education, education for sustainable development and educational research with a decolonial perspective. The argumentation is based on these discourses. The presentation focuses on the relationship of learners and teachers while coping with uncertain topics. Also the presentation focuses on learning and teaching scenarios and materials in this context. This is not only a central question for media education and ESD but also a question of school development, because the handling of knowledge, time, space and roles in the school context has changed in recent years and continues to develop due to uncertainties. Teachers are no longer the guardians of scientifically legitimized knowledge; they are becoming learning companions and co-learners and co-researchers. Together with the learners, they navigate through divergent knowledge and collaboratively discuss the question of future developments in a digital era.

Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U., & Cabrera, M. (2022). GreenComp The European sustainability competence framework. Publications Office of the European Union. Chun, W. H. K. (2021). Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition. The MIT Press. Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, politics, and the planetary costs of artificial intelligence. Yale University Press. Grünberger, N. (2023). Participation as a Key Principle of Education for Sustainable Development in the Postdigital Era. In A. Weich & F. Macgilchrist (Hrsg.), Postdigital Participation in Education (S. 13–34). Springer Nature Switzerland. Moyo, L. (2018). Rethinking the information society. A decolonial and border gnosis of the digital divide in Africa and the Global South. In M. Ragnedda & G. W. Muschert (Hrsg.), Theorizing digital divides (S. 133–144). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. United Nations. (2015). Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations Sustainable Development. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ Weich, A., & Macgilchrist, F. (2023). Postdigital Participation in Education: An Introduction. In Postdigital Participation in Education: How Contemporary Media Constellations Shape Participation (pp. 1-10). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Sustainability education is vital for the urgent transition to more just and sustainable futures, but also an inherently complex, uncertain and challenging pedagogical proposition. This complexity is apparent in the 17 “integrated and inseparable” Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015); and in distinct and diverse narratives around sustainability and sustainability education in political, academic and popular discourses (Tikly, 2023). ‘Universal’ definitions and frameworks must be negotiated in relation to particular socio-ecological contexts (Brockwell et al, 2022). Moreover, as formal education is deeply implicated in socio-ecological crises (Orr, 2004), realising the potential of education for sustainability involves moving beyond ‘improvement’ to transformation of education (UNESCO, 2021). Transdisciplinarity, which refers to approaches and processes which occur between, across and beyond traditional academic and social boundaries, including academic disciplines, but also professions, cultures, groups, fields of action, social worlds, nations, and media (Kondratjuk, 2023), is necessary for transformation in education (Mittelstraß, 2002). In this paper, we focus on transdisciplinarity in the context of the Erasmus + Teacher Academy Project –Teaching Sustainability (TAP-TS). The TAP-TS Consortium of 11 teacher education organisations, across 7 European countries, includes schools, universities, a government agency, an educational enterprise, and a civil society organisation. The project aims to foster social learning, including transformation, through transdisciplinary engagement across disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries. Digital technologies are both a thematic focus of TAP-TS, through the module ‘Sustainability and Digitality’ and a medium for transdisciplinary learning environments and interactions, for instance in the ‘Climate Crisis Resilience module. TAP-TS aims to foster European educators’ competences for sustainability education through engagement with educational materials and in online, hybrid and face to face learning events as part of an international community of practice. Community of practice is a model of social learning which recognises the complexity and particularities of distinct pedagogical contexts (Wenger-Trayner et. al., 2020). As such TAP-TS brings educators with a shared commitment to sustainability education together, recognising that educators engage with and apply learning in relation to their contexts of practice (ibid.). In this presentation, we describe various applications of digital technologies as part of TAP-TS; the extent to which these have enabled and limited social learning as part of our community of practice; and the ‘level of value’ achieved (ibid.). We draw on data from the project’s formative evaluation (KRE, 2023) that includes participant observation, document analysis, focus groups, and surveys.

Brockwell, A.J.,et al. (2022) Designing indicators and assessment tools for SDG Target 4.7: a critique of the current approach and a proposal for an ’Inside-Out’ strategy, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. Kondratjuk, M., et., al. (2023) (Eds.). Transdisziplinarität in der Bildungsforschung. Perspektiven und Herausforderungen theoretischer, method(olog)ischer und empirischer Grenzgänge. Reihe Studien zur Schul- und Bildungsforschung (ZSB). Springer VS. K and R Education (2023) Teacher Academy project Teaching Sustainability: Evaluation of year 1 activities. Mittelstraß, J. (2002). Transdisciplinarity - New Structures in Science. In Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (ed.), Innovate Structure in Basic Research. (pp. 43-54). Orr, D.W. (2004) Earth in Mind: On education, environment and the human prospect. Island Press. Tikly, L. (2023) Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures: Some Conceptual Starting Points, in: Hutchinson, Y. et al. (eds) (2023) Decolonizing Education for Sustainable Futures. Bristol Studies in Comparative and International Education. Pp. 19-48. UNESCO (2021) Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education. International Commission on the Futures of Education Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2020). Learning to make a difference. Value creation in social learning spaces. Cambridge University Press

Educating towards more sustainable ways of living requires a considerable change in what is taught and how teachers are prepared and supported to meet this change. It involves exploring the ways “different values and lifestyle choices are related to sustainable practices” (Ilstedt et al., 2017) and matching emerging understandings to engaging learning materials and appropriate pedagogies. The TAP-TS project engages substantively with this challenge at a European level. The project centres on designing, assembling, testing and validating Learning & Teaching Packages (LTPs) - sets of novel and innovative OERs that take as their start-points the EU GreenComp framework for teaching and learning for sustainability, and build towards reflective-engagements that foster values, agency, and informed life-choices. These LTPs explore how sustainability can be introduced at different educational levels and which pedagogical approaches, concepts, and educational resources could be appropriate (Rieckmann 2021). At their core is the idea of enhancing teacher agency through critical & agentic reflection (c.f. Leijen et al 2020; Papenfuss et al 2019; Lunt 2020). TAP-TS engagements (co-production, piloting and use of LTPs) rest on a vision of professional learning based in a model that is ‘deeply reflective’ (Cavadas et al 2023; Goodwin et al 2023) and ‘values-led’ (Purdy et al 2023). This paper presents the TAP-TS experience of designing and building opportunities for this systematic, reflective teacher learning. We describe in detail our work and the centrality of EU GreenComp (Bianchi et al 2022) to fostering agency through critical reflective engagement. We outline the TAP-TS Roadmap for planning deeply reflective learning experiences within project activities (involving resources, materials, and approaches). We also describe the TAP-TS ‘MaRIA’ framework being developed to guide Follow-Up activities that engage critically with TAP-TS LTPs. In this way, we hope to initiate a conversation among the European teacher education community around values-led, teachers’ reflective learning and how this can be catalysed through criticality regarding educating for sustainability and just transition. The presentation emphasises particularly TAP-TS work to prompt critical agency, and the status of TAP-TS LTPs as Open Educational Resources (OERs) with their inherent 'beta nature' – all are work-in-progress and are offered as proposals for joint explorations rather than as ‘solutions’ to teachers and other educators from across Europe taking part in TAP-TS events. In all this TAP-TS works towards enabling learners and teachers to participate more fully in a post-digital society.

Goodwin, A. L., Madalińska-Michalak, J., & Flores, M. (2023). Rethinking teacher education in/for challenging times: reconciling enduring tensions, imagining new possibilities. European Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5) 1-16. Ilstedt, S., Eriksson, E. & Hesselgren, M.I.A. (2017). Sustainable lifestyles: How values affect sustainable practises. Nordes 2017 (7): DESIGN+POWER Leijen, Ä., Pedaste, M., & Lepp, L. (2020). Teacher agency following the ecological model: How it is achieved and how it could be strengthened by different types of reflection. British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(3), 295-310. Lunt, P. (2020). Practicing media—Mediating practice| beyond Bourdieu: The interactionist foundations of media practice theory. International Journal of Communication, 14, 18. Papenfuss, J., Merritt, E., Manuel-Navarrete, D., Cloutier, S., & Eckard, B. (2019). Interacting pedagogies: A review and framework for sustainability education. Journal of Sustainability Education, 20(4), 1-19. Purdy, N., Hall, K., Khanolainen, D., & Galvin, C. (2023). Reframing teacher education around inclusion, equity, and social justice: towards an authentically value-centred approach to teacher education in Europe. European Journal of Teacher Education, 46(5), 755-771. Rieckmann, M. (2021). Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Ziele, didaktische Prinzipien und Methoden. In: Demmler, Kathrin/Schorb, Bernd (Hrsg.): Medienbildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung. Kopaed-Verlag, S. 12-19.

Open Science especially recent endeavours to archive and share research data on a large scale provoked a discussion of how research, as a search for knowledge – if not: truth – deals with data as an offset of this knowledge. The Symposium reflects on practices of sharing and reusing data and asks, first, exactly what knowledge it generates and, second, where this knowledge comes from in the process of scientific work.

The first contribution discusses Open Science as a collection of related practices concerning access to data and resources as well as results and knowledge, methodologies and participatory research practices (Reichmann, 2017). This complexity evokes an epistemic discussion of the concept of open knowledge (Rubin 2021) and its implications for education and educational science against the background of a new practice of science through Open Science and its involvement in certainty and uncertainty as an epistemic question of research culture(s).

The second contribution takes on a position of quantitative methods and methodology and discusses replication crisis versus opportunities of Open Research practices for quantitative analysis. While a re-use of data opens up great and economical opportunities for the generation of reliable knowledge (Krammer & Svencik, 2021), a light is shed on methodological and scientific-theoretical challenges in the re-use of data, like comparability and consistency of the constructs recorded. At the example of pracitices like HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known; Kerr, 1998) possible threats to both value and validity of statistical hypothesis tests and thus of scientific findings are discussed.

The third contribution takes the position for qualitative research and shows how formal data sharing standards of for instance findability, accessibility, interoperability and re-usabilty like the European commission framework FAIR in Horizon Europe (European Commission, n.d.) meet challenges concerning the distribution of the way, data was collected (Jesser, 2011) as well as processed and what role participants played in making sense of it. Data sharing will therefore be regarded in the light of standards for qualitative research (Strübing et al., 2018), opening the discussion for considering the whole process of knowledge construction in Open Science practices.

In the fourth contribution Open Research practice in educational science is discussed against the background of data archiving, sharing, and re-use. Quantitative and qualitative data more and more has to meet requirements of scientific funders and journals (Logan, Hart, & Schatschneider, 2021). Data curators are introduced as players in the Open Research community supporting researchers in overcoming the discussed challenges of sharing data and in meeting Open Science standards.

Open science can be understood as a collective term for various movements (Fecher & Friesike, 2014) that advocate for a cultural shift toward openness within the scientific system (Reichmann 2017). Practices related to openness such as open access, open data, open methodology, open peer review and open educational resources not only affect the dissemination of knowledge but also the production of knowledge (see Grabensteiner and Svecnik, Grabensteiner and Heers in this symposium) and the related establishment of insights and truth. These movements in the sciences are taking place in the context of a society that is more dependent than ever on robust scientific insights to deal with the uncertainty of today's world and the crisis of truth. Against this background, questions arise such as: - What concept of knowledge do open science practices presuppose? - How important are openness and pluralism as epistemological principles in open science? (Leonelli 2022; Rubin, 2023)? - What is the relationship between openness and uncertainty? - What significance does an open view of knowledge have for education and educational science, which has the transfer of knowledge as its concern? In light of this, the concept of knowledge in the context of open science and its implications for education and educational science will be discussed from a social perspective on knowledge.

Fecher, B.; Friesike, S. (2014). Open Science: One Term, Five Schools of Thought. In Opening Science by Sönke Bartling and Sascha Friesike. Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8_2. Leonelli, S (2022): Open Science and Epistemic Diversity: Friends or Foes? In: Philos. sci. 89 (5), S. 991–1001. DOI: 10.1017/psa.2022.45. Reichmann, W. (2017). open Science between social structures and epistemic cultures. A Conceptual Complement from a Science Studies Perspective. TATuP, https://doi.org/10.14512/tatup.26.1-2.43 Rubin, M. (2023). Opening up open science to epistemic pluralism: Comment on Bazzoli (2022) and some additional thoughts. Critical Metascience. https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/dgzxa

The so-called "replication crisis" in (social) psychology a good 10 years ago showed how uncertain scientific findings can sometimes be. In many cases, it was not possible to replicate seemingly undisputed effects that had been published in high-ranking journals following peer review and taught in university studies (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). This phenomenon is not limited to psychology and resulted in the dictum ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False’ (Ioannidis, 2005) what can also be expected for educational research (Makel et al., 2021). This raises the question of how scientific knowledge can be improved and made more reliable. There are indications that Open Science, or more precisely its components Open Materials and Open Data, can make a significant contribution (e.g. Krammer & Svecnik, 2021). Open data in particular can be seen as an opportunity to generate stable findings in educational research, but it also raises a number of related questions. For example, the sequence of theory - hypotheses - data collection - analysis and conclusion required as good practice in the classic NHST paradigm (Neyman & Pearson, 1928) is disrupted by the data basis already available. On the one hand, this threatens the validity of statistical hypothesis tests and, on the other hand, encourages HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known; Kerr, 1998). Both endanger the value and validity of scientific findings. Furthermore, the re-use of data, among others, raises the question of comparability and consistency of the constructs recorded. These and other questions of gaining knowledge through empirical research are discussed in the contribution.

Ioannidis, J.P.A. (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), e124. Kerr, N.L. (1998). HARKing: hypothesizing after the results are known. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(3), 196–217. Krammer, G. & Svecnik, E. (2021). Open Science als Beitrag zur Qualität in der Bildungsforschung. Zeitschrift für Bildungsforschung, 10(3), 263-278. https://doi.org/10.1007/s35834-020-00286-z Makel, M. C., Hodges, J., Cook, B. G., & Plucker, J. A. (2021). Both questionable and open research practices are prevalent in education research. Educational Researcher, 50(8), 493-504. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211001356. Neyman, J. & Pearson, E. S. (1928). On the use and interpretation of certain test criteria for purposes of statistical inference: part I. Biometrika 20A:1/2, 175-240. https://doi.org/10.2307/2331945 Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716.

Open Science will be discussed along the methodological principles of Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2006; Grabensteiner, 2023). Research processes as communicative endeavor will be distinguished from methodically guided knowledge construction through an interlinkage of theoretical sensitivity and data collection. Data sharing practices of Open Science ask for standards, focusing on research data to be findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable, as for instance stated in the European commission framework FAIR in Horizon Europe (European Commission, n.d.). Beyond that there are criteria for scientific practices to meet standards. Strübing et al. (2018) propose appropriateness towards a specific subject matter, empirical saturation, theoretical depth, writing performance and originality (Strübing et al., 2018, p. 85f) as quality criteria. Discussing frameworks, both for data sharing and for data collection, the question arises, how data and knowledge are intertwined and in what way qualitative research practice challenges and enables Open Science simultaneously by meeting its own quality criteria. Jesser (Jesser, 2011) proposes two forms of data information to be shared and archived along with the data. First, meta-information “necessary to understand the content and structure of the dataset” (Jesser, 2011, p. 8) and second “context information”, meaning “institutional, theoretical and methodological background” (Jesser, 2011, p. 8). This enables insight into ways of data collection, data processing as well as reflections by researchers in the course of dealing with the dataset. Writing memos is already an established practice in qualitative research whereas haring them in order to make data accessible for secondary analysis is still in progress of becoming a standard. New forms of Open Science shed a light on data documentation practices, making way for qualitative research to contribute to customs of “openness” in qualitative and quantitative research. Up to the point where research participants are not only “voices” heard in the research process, but also contributors to knowledge construction. Borg et al. (Borg et al., 2012) show at the example of Co-Operative Inquiry, they develop different criteria of openness, being consensus, historicity (process of knowledge production), reflexivity (especially on asymmetries) and knowledge co-production (interaction with participants, giving something back) (Borg et al., 2012, p. 10ff). Applying those as standards in the process of data construction, shared data gain a further dimension of depth and saturation. Synopsis of standards for data sharing and documentation of knowledge construction processes shall inspire reflections on future Open Science practices considering the whole research process.

Borg, M., Karlsson, B., Kim, H. S., & McCormack, B. (2012). Opening up for Many Voices in Knowledge Construction. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-13.1.1793 Charmaz, K. C. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. SAGE Publications Ltd. European Commission. (n.d.). Open science. Retrieved 22 January 2024, from https://rea.ec.europa.eu/open-science_en Grabensteiner, C. (2023). Medienbildung im Medienhandeln. Rekonstruktion relationaler Bildungsprozesse am Beispiel von Instant Messaging in Schulklassen. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40699-8 Jesser, A. C. (2011). Archiving Qualitative Data: Infrastructure, Acquisition, Documentation, Distribution. Experiences from WISDOM, the Austrian Data Archive. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.3.1734 Strübing, J., Hirschauer, S., Ayaß, R., Krähnke, U., & Scheffer, T. (2018). Gütekriterien qualitativer Sozialforschung. Ein Diskussionsanstoß. Zeitschrift Für Soziologie, 47(2), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2018-1006

As in other social science disciplines, in educational research, there is a growing demand for more transparency throughout the research cycle (van der Zee & Reich, 2018). Data archiving, sharing, and re-use are at the center of these discussions. Against this background, more and more educational data are made available for secondary analyses. This holds for quantitative but also more and more for qualitative data. Data sharing is also increasingly important to meet the requirements of scientific funders and journals (Logan, Hart, & Schatschneider, 2021). In order to provide high-quality data with re-use potential, data curators play a crucial role. This contribution will outline specific challenges that researchers face when sharing their data. It will elaborate on how data curators can support them in overcoming these challenges. In a final part, the benefits for researchers of sharing and having data professionally curated are outlined.

Logan, J. A. R., Hart, S. A., & Schatschneider, C. (2021). Data Sharing in Education Science. AERA Open, 7, 23328584211006475. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211006475 van der Zee, T., & Reich, J. (2018). Open Education Science. AERA Open, 4(3), 2332858418787466. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858418787466