Conference Agenda

1. Introduction

Digitalization has become a fundamental force reshaping knowledge acquisition, knowledge production, and information sharing within educational experiences and educational organizations. Digital technologies are often presented as tools that expand opportunities for expression, participation, access, and visibility. However, it has become increasingly evident that these opportunities are not distributed equally among educational actors. Instead, digitalization tends to generate new forms of constraints and exclusion for certain groups. Pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics are positioned in digital environments not only as individuals, but also through their professional identities, academic titles, and institutional roles. As a result, practices of expression and participation in digital spaces are shaped less by individual choice and more by organizational norms and power relations. Visibility, voice, and participation in digital environments are therefore not evenly distributed, but are structured through the intersection of identities, statuses, and institutional positions.

In this study, digital silence is conceptualized as a multi-layered phenomenon in which individuals refrain from expressing themselves in digital platforms despite having technical access, due to organizational culture, structural pressures, perceptions of digital surveillance, and symbolic power relations. While the concept of organizational silence has been widely examined in the field of educational administration as the deliberate withholding of ideas and opinions from organizational processes, digitalization has reconfigured and reproduced these silence practices in new contexts. From a critical social theory perspective, digital spaces are not merely technical communication environments but social arenas in which power relations, norms, and regimes of invisibility are continuously reproduced (Foucault, 2000; Castells, 2010; Zuboff, 2019). Within this framework, digital silence is understood not as an individual attitude but as a structural phenomenon shaped by digital capitalism, surveillance practices, and institutional control mechanisms (Zuboff, 2019; Couldry & Mejias, 2019). Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1991) concepts of symbolic violence and habitus, digital silence can also be interpreted as a form of compliance and consent produced through the internalization of domination. Digital space thus emerges not simply as a facilitator of communication, but as a field in which norms, values, and power relations are reproduced.

The theoretical axis of this study is grounded in intersectionality, which emphasizes that individuals’ experiences are shaped not by single identity categories, but by the intersections of multiple social positions (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991).. This approach highlights how inequalities are produced through the simultaneous operation of multiple axes, such as gender, status, and professional position. In the context of educational organizations, intersectionality provides a powerful analytical lens for understanding the digital experiences of pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics.

This study aims to explore how digital silence is understood and experienced by pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics within educational organizations.

In line with this overarching focus, the study is guided by the following research objectives, which structure the empirical inquiry from participants’ understandings and experiences to organizational dynamics and intersectional differentiations:

1. To explore how digital silence is defined by pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics, and to identify the contexts and conditions under which it becomes salient in educational settings.
2. Building on these definitions, to examine the lived experiences of digital silence among pre-service teachers, teachers, and academics across different digital platforms;
3. Drawing from participants’ narratives, to analyze the processes through which digital silence is constructed, sustained, or negotiated within educational contexts;
4. Moving from processes to consequences, to identify the perceived outcomes and impacts of digital silence on professional practice and participation in educational environments;
5. Finally, from an intersectional perspective, to analyze how intersecting social and professional positions—such as gender, academic rank, and professional experience—differentiate digital silence behaviors and experiences in digital platforms.

Europe’s low‑carbon transition is driving rapid growth in STEM‑related and energy‑sector careers, with policy initiatives such as the UK’s Green Jobs Delivery Group (Gov.uk, 2024) and the European Commission’s Net Zero Industry Act and Green Deal (European Commission, 2023) projecting substantial increases in green jobs to support renewable energy, decarbonisation, and sustainable infrastructure. Yet disabled young people remain systematically excluded from these pathways, despite being among the populations most affected by the social, economic and environmental consequences of the transition (Pearson et al, 2021).

Exclusion in schools begins early as the structures guiding Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, alongside persistent practices of mainstream and alternative provision exclusion, fragment access to the STEM learning trajectories required for participation in emerging green‑skills sectors. Globally, SEND classification, behaviour‑based removal from classrooms, placement in segregated educational settings, and reduced access to accredited STEM qualifications cumulatively limit disabled learners’ opportunities to engage with the very subjects that underpin future low‑carbon labour markets (Bruyère & Filiberto, 2013; Buettgen et al., 2024). These policy‑based barriers are well‑documented within our wider project and reflect national patterns in which disabled pupils are disproportionately affected by inequitable, punitive or restrictive schooling policies (Lazar et al, 2024).

A similarly powerful mechanism of exclusion operates through representational practices. Disabled young people scarcely appear in the visual communications produced by NGOs, schools, or STEM‑intervention providers promoting green‑skills futures (Hodkinson, 2016; Jensen et al, 2023). This representational exclusion limits the symbolic belonging of disabled youth, institutional expectations, and cultural imaginaries that shape outreach, recruitment and curriculum design across the green‑jobs pipeline (Watts Belser, 2020). The absence of disabled bodies in visual narratives implicitly conveys the message that the low‑carbon transition is not for, with, or about disabled young people. Done et al (2025) conceptualise (un)just transitions by emphasising that justice in energy futures must account not only for technological and economic inclusion but also for the harmful effects of educational, procedural and symbolic marginalisation.

Without intervention, the green transition risks becoming a vehicle for socio-economic regression, entrenching the marginalisation of disabled learners by excluding them from the most resilient sectors of the 21st-century labour market. Furthermore, this study addresses representational silence within NGO and educational materials. By tracing how these resources fail to visualise disabled people in STEM roles, the research exposes a form of symbolic annihilation that discourages disabled youth from developing a scientific identity. This work is a necessary first step in ensuring that the clean energy mission is truly inclusive by design rather than by afterthought. By focusing on both structural (policy) and symbolic (visual representation) domains, this study will inform future research related to equitable green‑skills development, including further exploration and identification of practical levers through which education systems, NGOs and policymakers can address the barriers currently restricting disabled young people’s participation in low‑carbon futures.

Borderline intellectual functioning (BIF) refers to a heterogeneous population characterized by cognitive difficulties, generally reflected in an IQ range of 70 to 85, accompanied by limitations in adaptive functioning that affect daily life, social participation, education, and employment (Salvador-Carulla et al., 2011). Despite its prevalence, BIF remains poorly defined and weakly recognized within formal diagnostic, policy, and educational frameworks, leading to marginalization in both mainstream and disability-specific systems (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2017). Individuals with BIF experience limited access to support and accommodations, leaving them at high risk of educational exclusion, social isolation, and mental health challenges (Orío-Aparicio, López-Escribano et al., 2025).

This study examines the educational experiences of adults with BIF through an inclusive qualitative research design. The research aimed on understanding the life experience of people with BIF, and in this communication we focus specifically on how participants experienced schooling and the factors that shaped their learning, inclusion, and sense of belonging. Therefore, this paper presents results specifically related to education, highlighting how school experiences intersect with violence, mental health, identity formation, the role of diagnosis, support needs, and life aspirations.

Data were generated through semi-structured group interviews with twenty-five participants, co-facilitated by one academic and lived-experience researchers with BIF. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data, ensuring that lived experience researchers informed theme development and that patterns of shared meaning were constructed collaboratively. This inclusive methodological approach aligns with social models of disability, which frame barriers in education and society as structural rather than individual deficits (Shakespeare, 2010). By centering participants’ voices, the study captures first-hand accounts of schooling and highlights the complex interplay between individual challenges and social structures.

Analysis revealed several interrelated themes with clear educational relevance. Participants described pervasive experiences of violence in school, including peer bullying (“I was bullied, it was awful, I didn’t want to go to school”) and negative teacher attitudes (“my teacher in fourth grade said there was no point trying because I wouldn’t achieve anything”), which contributed to long-term mental health consequences (“I was alone during breaks, it affected me emotionally and mentally”). Receiving a diagnosis was perceived positively, as it facilitated access to specialized educational supports and recognition of individual needs, and contributed to identity formation and belonging within adapted learning environments (“I improved socially in special school, I made friends”). Participants also highlighted challenges in developing a positive self-concept, noting that academic struggles shaped their perception of competence (“I kept failing, I thought maybe I was stupid”). Limited access to effective supports was emphasized, with adaptations often insufficient or poorly implemented (“they gave me a weak adaptation; it didn’t help me at all”). Despite these difficulties, participants expressed aspirations to continue learning in supportive environments (“I would like to study a vocational training of support worker, but with proper adaptations and support”).

Findings underscore the critical role of inclusive research methodology in capturing authentic educational experiences of people with BIF. By foregrounding lived experience, this study highlights the structural and relational barriers that constrain educational participation and demonstrates how inclusive approaches can inform strategies to enhance accessibility, belonging, and empowerment in schools. These results contribute to a European perspective on inclusive education, emphasizing the intersection of disability, pedagogy, and social justice, and reinforcing the principle of “nothing about us without us” in educational policy and practice thanks to its methodology and findings (Charlton, 1998).

In response to a growing number of students facing barriers participating in mainstream lessons taught in German (i.e., language of instruction), policymakers in Austria introduced segregated language-support measures in 2018/19: German Language Support Classes (GLSC; 15 hours per week of pull-out instruction) and German Language Support Courses (GLSCO; 6 hours per week of pull-out instruction) (BMBWF, 2024). These German language support measures reflect a monolingual tradition that prioritizes the dominant language over others, a pattern also seen in other European countries (Gogolin, 2021). Consequently, Austrian schools fail to leverage students’ diverse linguistic resources, as German continues to dominate the school system and serves as the key language for academic achievement (Schwab et al., 2024).

Despite these policies, students with migration biographies bring diverse linguistic repertoires and lived multilingual experiences, even as their first languages are often confined to the private sphere (Duarte, 2019; Martini & Torregrossa, 2023). It is therefore crucial to examine how students in a monolingual school perceive and describe their multilingualism. This paper analyzes the self-representations of students attending GLSC and GLSCO by examining their language portraits, an educational and research tool used to make individuals’ linguistic repertoires visible (Busch, 2021). The study addresses two questions: how children visually represent their multilingual repertoires through language portraits.