Conference Agenda

Scholars of linguistics, communication studies, literary theory, political science, philosophy, feminist scholarship, and queer studies, have done significant work on silence and other forms of strategic ambiguity employed by participants in interactive contexts. While intriguing, strategically ambiguous communication—a sophisticated means by which individuals, in registering the power dynamics and interactive norms of a given context, simultaneously express and protect themselves—operates per se outside the limits of visibility and legibility. Examples of this phenomenon take place in adult education research and practice, both spontaneously and even in preplanned forms. Students may choose not to respond (or to respond differently than expected) when prompted by a teacher, or when participants in a research study choose not to answer a particular question on written or in conversation-based data collection processes (e.g., Entigar, 2025). Such cases can evoke a disruption to the communicative process whereby those in power (teachers, researchers) ask and those subject to this power (students, research participants) may be forced to reckon with their de facto onto-epistemic and ethical authority in meaning making. At the same time, the intentional creation of opportunities for individuals to contribute agentively and creatively, including in strategically ambiguous ways, can gesture toward a novel politics of learning which refuses to accept the tacit normative enclosures of our work.

I suggest that while approaching strategic ambiguity in communication is complex because it is difficult to observe—let alone analyze and interpret—we might consider that such difficulties to be an invitation for different thinking. Interweaving women of colour feminist scholarship, critical social epistemology, legal studies, performance theory, and applied linguistics, I call for a calibration of the lens by which we approach the silence of participants in the learning process. Reflecting with new eyes upon strategically ambiguous communication in education—of which silence is but one example—can shed light upon ongoing harms enacted upon learners, particularly those whose ways of being and knowing are subsumed to established educational norms as well as the white cisheteropatriarchal and settler colonialist norms which continue to inform our work. We might, in doing this, begin to reckon with our unilateral onto-epistemic and ethical authority as academics and practitioners to speak for silence and other forms of strategic ambiguity when we make claims about its meaning, which can have immediate and far-reaching consequences.

I will present my conceptual, empirical, and community-based work on silence (Entigar, 2020, 2025), including where I have failed to apprehend—by which I mean both “to understand” and “to arrest or enclose”—silence. As a community-based adult practitioner, a researcher exploring student silences, and a queer and trans community group facilitator, I bring examples of how I have encountered, prepared for, and employed silence in activities of belonging, healing, and possibilizing different collective futures. This discussion will provoke thinking about the ethics and politics inherent to pedagogical and methodological decision-making in adult education as we let in silence, as storyteller, as soothsayer, as Tiresias and as trickster and imagine possibilities for our work with those like and different from us.

1. Topic, Research Questions, and Objectives

By 2026, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has transitioned from a supplementary tool to foundational "cognitive infrastructure". However, a phenomenon termed the "Double-Speed Classroom" is emerging: a crisis where premium algorithmic resources are cordoned off behind a structural economic barrier. This research interrogates the “$20 Intelligence Barrier": a term derived from the de facto industry standard pricing (e.g., ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro) which imposes a fixed monthly cost of $20 USD globally, regardless of local purchasing power.

This research addresses two primary questions:

1. How does this flat-rate "Cognitive Tariff" create quantifiable stratification between students in different socio-economic strata?

2. How can institutional leadership transition from "passive recipients" of technology to "institutional architects" capable of neutralizing these inequities? The objective is to formalize and validate the LEGA framework, providing administrators with a rigorous diagnostic toolkit to identify and mitigate systemic algorithmic inequity.

2. Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

This study integrates Bourdieu’s theory of Cultural Capital with Jan van Dijk’s "Third-level Digital Divide," which focuses on the inequity of outcomes resulting from the quality of resource access. We also draw upon Distributed Leadership theory, positing that leadership is a practice "stretched" across people and tools.

To operationalize these theories, we introduce two original mathematical models:

• Metric 1: The AI Access Burden Index (AABI) The AABI identifies the "stratification threshold" of AI access. It is calculated as:

  AABI = (Subscription Cost (C_sub) / Mean Monthly Disposable Income (I_disposable)) × 100%

  This ratio reveals the real-world economic pressure of AI adoption. While a $240 annual cost is negligible for high-income households, it represents a structural barrier for lower-income families, leading to a "Cognitive Tariff" that restricts access to high-reasoning models.

• Metric 2: The LEGA Decision Equation The LEGA framework evaluates institutional resilience through a multi-variable equation:

  LEGA = [Human Agency (ξ) × Institutional Governance Capacity (G_cap)] / [AABI × (1 + ln(1 + Cognitive Debt (△_gap)))]

  • Numerator (Drivers of Equity): Human Agency (ξ) represents the degree of effective intervention by educators in algorithmic workflows , while Governance Capacity (G_cap) denotes the institution's ability to implement mitigating strategies, such as district-level procurement or resource pooling.

  • Denominator (Barriers to Equity): AABI measures the economic hurdle. Cognitive Debt (△_gap) represents the cumulative disadvantage and "hallucination" risks incurred by students relegated to inferior, base-tier models.

  • Mathematical Logic: The use of a natural logarithm (ln) for Cognitive Debt reflects the non-linear, compounding nature of algorithmic disparity—where small initial gaps in the quality of AI assistance lead to exponentially widening achievement gaps over time.

3. European and International Dimension

This research provides a critical blueprint for global educational justice by synthesizing 2025/2026 data from the World Bank, OECD, and ITU. Our preliminary comparative modeling uncovers a profound injustice: the $20 monthly fee represents a negligible 0.4% of disposable income in affluent regions (e.g., USA), yet escalates to 13.3% in lower-income contexts (e.g., Nepal, Ethiopia). This 30-fold disparity signifies a new era of "Cognitive Colonialism". In alignment with the ECER 2026 theme of "Knowing and Acting," this study transforms the knowledge of the AABI into transformative actions through the Algorithmic Equity Toolkit, ensuring that academic success remains determined by merit and agency rather than household purchasing power.

Note to Reviewers: While I am submitting this as Ignite Talk to contribute to the high-level dialogue in NW 07, I am equally open to presenting this research in a Poster format should the committee find it more suitable for the program's interactive sessions.

Concepts of ‘social justice and intercultural education’ as well as the understanding of their complex connections mark a contested field (Krüger-Potratz 2018, 2005; Bhatti/Leeman 2011; Diehm/Radtke 1999). In the late 20th and early 21st century, interpretation conflicts surrounding migration, the pluralisation of society and appropriate policy and pedagogical responses to it, have been more and more characterised by references to “scientifically based” findings (Bartels et al. 2023). Thus, the interrelationship between social and educational research, politics and institutional practice has also become the subject of critical research and self-understanding debates. In Germany, intensive research has been conducted on the “discovery” of the supposed problems in schools and vocational training faced by the descendants of “guest workers”, who had been settling in the Federal Republic of Germany since the post-war decades, by the social sciences (Czock 1993; Griese 1984). However, little research has been done yet on the more recent restructuring of the nexus between scientific research, education policy and practice in the course of implementing data-based school development in terms of social justice, plurality and democratic participation.

The submitted paper examines the implications and consequences of the ongoing establishment of data-driven education policy and education management in the field of migration and schools. The starting point is the observation that the so called New Educational Governance as a transnational school reform concept – based on the two pillars of deregulation and privatization of (formerly) welfare state responsibility for education and, at the same time, stronger central control via quantitative (output) indicators – has profoundly changed educational policies and systems in normative and structural-organisational terms in Germany as in many other countries, particularly in the Anglo-American world. The introduction briefly outlines how in Germany, a phase of deregulation in the 1990s was followed by the implementation of a new national overall strategy for the development and assurance of the quality of teaching and schools, employing performance studies, national educational standards, competence-oriented instruction, indicator-based education reporting and the quest for evidence-based education (KMK 2016). Especially in the initial phase, the improvement of the educational success of children and young people with a migration history and/or from socioeconomically deprived family background has been declared a priority and education as a main field of “integration work” (KMK 2006: 2).

By means of a document analysis and a series of expert interviews with stakeholders in school administration and civil society organisations, it is investigated how and with which consequences educational requirements of the (post-)migration society are incorporated into new output-oriented and data-based school governance – and thereby (re-)conceptualized, distorted or excluded.

The theoretical frame draws on political-sociological policy research (e.g. Grek/Maroy/Verger 2021; Parreira do Amaral/Steiner-Khamsi/Thompson 2019). In contrast to a pragmatic-functionalist perspective, new educational governance is conceived as a technical and social apparatus that always has an impact beyond its technical purposes by conveying normative orientations and values and contributing to the institutionalisation of social power and difference orders (Grek/Maroy/Verger 2021, 7f.). To conceptualise the (re)constitution of school knowledge orders in terms of inclusion, justice and democracy, approaches from discourse and governmentality research are used (Forster 2015; Krasmann 2007).

The findings indicate that current initiatives to reduce educational inequality are counteracted by complex mechanisms of depoliticizing the discourse. Pupils and parents with migration history are positioned in a new way as deficit carriers vis-à-vis the school by recourse to ethnicizing and culturalizing attributions, while transformational educational and school development processes tend to be blocked. Here, the dissolution of boundaries between research and politics as a dimension of the New Governance as well as the positivism of school effectiveness research form a central hinge.

Community‑based adult learning and education structures, such as community learning centres and comparable models, exist in many parts of the world and are increasingly recognised as inclusive, flexible, and locally grounded providers of lifelong learning (Belete et al., 2022). Globally, UNESCO’s Fifth Global Report on Adult Learning and Education highlights that such structures remain underfunded and unevenly accessible, with migrants, older adults, and disadvantaged learners among the least likely to participate (UNESCO, 2022). Similar trends are identified in Europe, where the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) reports persistent funding precarity, labour‑market dominance in policy agendas, and limited recognition of community providers’ wider social mission.

In the Australian context, Adult Community Education (ACE) is understood as a distinctive “fourth sector” of education: a community‑owned, not‑for‑profit and learner‑centred system committed to accessibility and social inclusion (Billet & Dymock, 2020). In the State of Victoria, 200‑plus Learn Local providers collectively support nearly 30,000 learners annually through provision in English as an Additional Language (EAL), literacy, numeracy, digital skills and employability (Ollis & Foley, 2023). While recent policy attention signals renewed interest in strengthening this sector (DET, 2019), funding remains uneven and episodic. This precarity limits opportunities for sustained professional development and pedagogical innovation, echoing concerns raised internationally.

This presentation contributes to this international conversation through an in‑depth qualitative study of language and intercultural education in community‑based adult learning settings: an area that remains noticeably under‑researched.