Conference Agenda

Diary methods offer a unique window into the shifting moments that shape everyday life. They capture fluctuations in thoughts, emotions, and actions that often disappear in memory recall, a strength recognised across several fields (Bolger, Davis & Rafaeli, 2003; Ohly, Sonnentag, Niessen & Zapf, 2010). In educational research, diaries have been widely used to track how learners and educators navigate their daily practices, providing insights closely tied to participants’ real-time experiences and everyday settings (Noyes, 2004; Jacelon & Imperio, 2005). Beyond documenting events, diaries invite participants to articulate meaning, emotions, and reflections, aligning with participatory approaches where voice, writing, and experience are central and met (Cahill, 2007; Meth, 2003).

This exploratory pilot study examines how different diary formats shape what becomes possible to learn, drawing on preliminary data and on diary research traditions and a situated understanding of knowledge production, a perspective that views reflective accounts as shaped by the material and temporal conditions under which they are produced (Haraway, 1988; Latham, 2003). Rather than asking only what participants say, the study explores how format choice influences feasibility, participant engagement, and the richness and length of reflection. Although diaries are well established as tools for studying lived experiences (Alaszewski, 2006; Laurenceau & Bolger, 2005), comparative work across analogue and digital formats remains rare. Yet technological developments have expanded the diary landscape from handwritten journals to digital documents and audio-based formats, each associated with specific strengths and limitations (Filep et al., 2018).

To explore these methodological questions, this study compared five diary formats: paper diary, digital diary, smartphone dictaphone, external dictaphone, and WhatsApp voice messages, over a three-week period. Twelve participants, including ten secondary school teachers, one professor, and one postdoctoral researcher, recorded daily reflections on their professional and learning/teaching experiences. The analysis, as outlined by Braun & Clarke (2008), focused on three dimensions: feasibility, user experience, and data richness.

Across formats, the diary functioned not only as a tool but also as a medium shaping participants’ reflections. Paper diaries encouraged more intentional and structured writing but required sustained effort. Digital diaries offered ease and flexibility but sometimes led to shorter, more functional entries. Audio formats, whether through dictaphones or WhatsApp voice messages, tended to generate more spontaneous and emotionally nuanced reflections. Yet, transcription inevitably transformed and filtered these expressive qualities. These preliminary findings echo earlier observations that diary formats shape what participants disclose, how they disclose it, and how researchers interpret it (Meth, 2003; Noyes, 2004).

The study offers preliminary methodological insights into the intertwined nature of medium and message. Within this pilot study, format choice appeared to influence which voices were more prominently expressed, how participants engaged with the research process, and the richness of data that became accessible. Because the analysis focuses on format-related conditions rather than context-specific outcomes, these insights are relevant for diary-based research across diverse educational systems and non-formal learning contexts, including those found across European and international settings. As education research increasingly draws on diverse data sources, this comparison demonstrates how diaries provide detailed and personal insights into the everyday experiences of learning and teaching. By clarifying how different formats shape reflection and meaning-making, the study contributes to ongoing methodological refinement by informing future diary-based research designs and supporting a more deliberate and reflexive use of diary methods in educational research.

The increasing interdependence of data-generating and data-processing communication technologies and socio-political change raises fundamental questions for the transformation of schooling (Bock et al., 2023; Bradbury, 2019; Hartong et al., 2021; Hillman et al., 2020; Holloway, 2020). To date research is investigating how digital technologies correspond with efficient teaching, improve performance and optimise individual learning processes (Proske et al, 2023, Gerjets/Scheiter 2019, Spiegler et al, 2023, Kaspar et al 2020). At the same time, however, related and equally relevant issues such as democratic participation, social cohesion and equitable access to education have received less attention to date. The current debates can be grouped into different areas of tension, which serve as a socio-political and research-logical framework for the argumentation in this presentation: First, , there is the tension between individualisation and solidarity. While on the one hand On the one hand, there is a tension between individualisation and, in some cases, optimisation tendencies, as exemplified by research on the potential of learning analytics (Troeger et al,2023), on the other hand, studies on fake news, democracy education or how solidarity in schools emphasise the importance of community building and solidariy cooperation (Szakács-Behling, 2022). In a post-digital school, the question arises as to how schools can remain or become spaces where pupils learn what it means to be part of a democratic community. This is even more challenging as learning processes become increasingly individualised, technically medieated and geared towards optimised outputs from individuals (Leineweber & Wunder, 2021). Second, we further frame our empirical explorations by examining the tension between targeted skills acquisition as an educational goal, for example, in the wake of the Pisa shock (Gundlach, 2003) and discussions about unknown futures (Macgilchrist et al 2019), whose shape and skill requirements are still uncertain. Schools face the challenge of ensuring basic skills while successfully supporting heterogeneous learning groups (Scholz, 2007). Studies on digital skills (ICILS, etc) serve as an incentive or pressure to act, as they highlight weaknesses in contemporary schooling and suggest reforms. At the same time, technological innovations are shifting the focus to so-called ‘future skills’ (Buchs 2025, Langhof, 2024). In addition to subject-specific knowledge, skills such as flexibility, independence, critical and constructive thinking, and collaborative problem-solving are becoming increasingly important (Buchs, 2025). These future skills require learning environments in which pupils not only acquire facts, but also act independently, reflectively and responsibly and work cooperatively.Within this context, this article focuses on schools that have identified “open learning spaces” as a potential solution to the described tensions. Against this background the contribution explores, how these open learning spaces function as an organisational structure in which digital communication and collaboration processes can be closely intertwined with individualised teaching and a school culture geared towards cooperation. The focus is on the question of how digital communication can be integrated into formal and informal school contexts and to what extent open learning spaces are a central prerequisite for this.Theoretically, this paper draws on concepts of school development (including Rolff, 2025, 1998, Maag Merki 2008, Holtappels 2010) and research on digitality in the school context, which understand schools as organisations undergoing digital transformation, and initially summarises these in an overview (Wilmers et al, 2021).

The meta-process of deep mediatization has fundamentally restructured the conditions of socialization, education, and learning for young people by the nearly omnipresent embedding of digital media infrastructures in everyday life (Couldry & Hepp, 2017; Hepp, 2019; Krotz, 2017). In order to conduct a thorough investigation into the socialization processes related to media, it is recommended that researchers adopt a comprehensive perspective on the media practices and individual media repertoires (Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012) of children and young people within the context of their social relationships (Kammerl et al., 2021). It is evident that the boundaries between learning, entertainment, communication and social interaction are becoming increasingly indistinct in the context of the use of a single device, such as a smartphone or tablet (Ito et al., 2010; Mascheroni & Siibak, 2021; Potzel et al., 2024). Consequently, the categorization of media use into discrete contexts, such as "formal" and "informal" learning, has become increasingly obsolete. Instead, it is imperative to comprehend media use within the context of multifaceted relationships between the individual, social domains and technical affordances. This contribution addresses the methodological challenges that arise when studying young people’s media-related practices under conditions of deep mediatization. It aims to address the need to understand how socialization and education are shaped by ongoing social and technological transformations. In this context, traditional qualitative methods face the challenge of reproducing normative or rationalized accounts rather than capturing actual media practices of young people as they occur in situated contexts. This methodological discrepancy is especially problematic in light of the increasing significance of digital media for educational trajectories, identity formation, and social engagement (Mascheroni & Siibak, 2021; Pacetti et al., 2023; Selvakumar et al., 2023).

Empirical research on adolescents' media practices is confronted with a fundamental challenge: a significant number of pertinent practices are habitual, routinized, and only partially conscious. Therefore, (young) individuals frequently encounter difficulties in articulating their daily media consumption during retrospective interviews (Koch et al., 2021). This difficulty stems from the inherent complexity of these practices, which are intricately interwoven within tacit routines and micro-interactions that often elude explicit introspection (Hasebrink & Domeyer, 2012; Horst et al., 2016). Consequently, traditional retrospective qualitative methods face the challenge of reproducing normative or rationalized accounts rather than capturing actual media practices as they occur in situated contexts. To encounter these challenges, diaries have been utilized as a research tool in the field of media usage analysis (Lev-On & Lowenstein-Barkai, 2019; Scharkow, 2016). The completion of diaries in the study participants' "natural" environments has been shown to increase immediacy, as the process of data generation exerts a minimal invasive effect on their daily lives (Koch et al., 2021).

In light of this background, the contribution presents methodological insights from a qualitative longitudinal study, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Over a period of seven years (2018 to 2025), the study examined the media-related socialization of children and adolescents and their media repertoires within the context of the family and other social domains. In addition, the project sought to gain a practice-oriented understanding of adolescents' media use, media routines, and the actors and social domains that are meaningful for their media repertoire. The study combined established qualitative methods – such as semi-structured interviews with children, adolescents and parents – with structured media diary conducted with adolescents. In the last survey wave 2024 a digital media diary was utilized. The digital media diary was conceived as a low-threshold, mobile-based instrument that enabled participants to document their media-related activities in real time, employing brief textual entries, screenshots, videos or voice notes (Koch et al., 2021).