Conference Agenda

The recent surge of academic opinion on how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) should be engaged with ethically in educational research, deployed strategically, or dismissed as toxic to the environment and distracting, has arrived amid critical responses to existing polycrisis (Tooze 2021). Muldoon and Wu (2023) argue that global economic and political power imbalances in GAI production cannot be separated from continuities of historical colonialism, which now constitute the supply chain of GAI (Png 2022, Traxler & Jandrić 2025). This extracts value from labour in the Global South to benefit Western technology companies, perpetuates hegemonic knowledge production and structures research approaches that marginalise non-Western alternatives. This is reflected in local research partnerships too, where topics like ‘forced adoption of GAI’ (Seybold 2026) are still examined via traditional research methods which may unwittingly also reproduce an ethos of ‘extraction’, over more equitable ‘co-production’.

We explore, firstly, how postdigital polycrisis, including Covid-19, global economic and political instability, GAI, climate and environmental challenges and threats to Higher Education (HE) have highlighted pressing overlapping concerns of equity in both global and local educational research partnerships (Traxler, Scott, Smith & Hayes 2020). A replication of the ‘extractive’ models of labour and data collection that underpin GAI seems also to be repeated even in HE-led research projects that claim to address such inequalities. This is partly due to a biased Europatriarchal approach to the polycrisis that ‘is unsuitable for tackling the polycrisis because it is the polycrisis’ (Salami, 2024:52). Educational research projects in the Global North may seek to address global or local inequities, but without a more structural overhaul of traditional, university-centric methodologies, there is a risk that little changes.

In order to explore and disrupt this dilemma, we examine secondly, projects that advocate for a clear move away from university-dominated structuring of research methods and data collection. Whilst ethics and rigour are key to equitable research, partners can be more extensively involved throughout research cycles to co-create more equitable, diverse and inclusive methodological approaches ‘from the ground up’ (Hayes et. al., 2025). We discuss too work-in-progress that draws on novel ways to include creative activity with GAI, performance and popular culture, to co-research and co-construct shared postdigital and dialogic positionalities with different communities (Carvajal-Leoni, Raffaghelli & Zanchin 2025).

Finally, we look at how universities are perceived by community researchers (Hayes, et al., 2021, Jopling et. al., 2025, Hayes et. al., 2025a; 2025b) amid postdigital polycrisis, as intersecting inequalities are socially, politically and technologically reproduced. Universities in much of Europe are themselves in economic crisis, due to falling birth rates and corresponding drops in student numbers. They risk a ‘great resignation’ alongside the inevitable redundancies, as ‘academic anomie’ leads to experts reviewing their own positionalities in this context (Watermeyer et al., 2024). We therefore discuss an urgent need to transparently revisit how the university sector engages with existing local and global cross-sector community research ecosystems (Community Knowledge Matters 2025, Hayes et al., 2022; 2023). Here we draw parallels with a traditionally extractive global fashion industry, which is now exploring new approaches and designs for sustainability. We consider the notion of ‘re-making’ and question if universities can learn from community textile projects that re-work pre-worn materials as opportunities (English 2025). This requires universities in crisis to revisit what has been discarded from perspectives of their local and global partners, and to engage in postdigital dialogues where injustices can be surfaced. A shared re-making of our methodologies as ‘refabrication’ in civic partnership is needed to address postdigital polycrisis, now that GenAI has revealed just what is at stake, if we fail to do so.

Achieving equal educational opportunities (EEO) remains a persistent challenge in secondary education. While policy frameworks increasingly emphasise equity, schools often struggle to translate these ambitions into coherent and context-sensitive practices. One reason for this difficulty lies in the conceptually ambiguous and normatively charged nature of EEO, which requires ongoing interpretation, negotiation and alignment within and across schools (Bronfenbrenner, 1980; Levinson et al., 2022). Another reason concerns the limitations of traditional professional development, which frequently focuses on individual competence rather than collective and partnership-based learning (Battey & Franke, 2015; Carter Andrews & Richmond, 2019; Opfer & Pedder, 2011).

This paper explores how a learning network (LN) can function as an interschool partnership that supports equity-oriented professional learning. Learning networks bring together professionals from different schools to engage in sustained dialogue, shared reflection and the exchange of practices around a common concern. As such, they can be understood as partnership structures that connect individual professional learning with organisational reflection and action. However, empirical research on how these partnerships support learning around complex concepts such as EEO remains limited.

The study therefore addresses the following research questions:

(1) How does participation in a learning network contribute to the professional development of educational professionals with regard to equal educational opportunities and the implementation of equity-oriented practices in their schools?

(2) Which characteristics of the learning network, understood as a partnership-based professional learning arrangement, facilitate this professional learning process?

The study is grounded in an ecological perspective on equal educational opportunities, which conceptualises educational inequality as emerging from interactions between individual, organisational and systemic factors (Bronfenbrenner, 1980; El Zaatari & Maalouf, 2022; Struyf et al., 2022). From this perspective, promoting EEO requires professional learning that goes beyond individual teachers and engages with shared beliefs, school culture and policy interpretation. Research on professional development for equity highlights the importance of collaboration, reflection and agency (Bancroft & Nyirenda, 2020; Carter Andrews & Richmond, 2019). In contrast to traditional, top-down formats, learning networks can be understood as partnership-based spaces for collective sense-making, in which professionals from different schools jointly explore challenges, compare practices and construct contextually relevant responses (Katz et al., 2009; Poortman et al., 2022).

The findings suggest that the learning network functioned as a meaningful interschool partnership for equity-oriented professional learning. The network created available time and space for joint engagement with EEO, encouraged renewed reflection on school vision and practices, and supported collective sense-making around the concept of EEO. Interschool exchange fostered contextualised learning, reassurance and a sense of collective efficacy. Several partnership characteristics, including sustained interaction, practice-oriented exchange, school-based locations and facilitation by a moderator, were experienced as particularly supportive of professional learning.

Although this study took place in Flemish secondary education, the findings offer insights into how interschool partnerships can support professional learning focused on EEO. This is relevant to various European and international educational systems facing similar challenges, such as translating policies into practice, professional fragmentation and conceptual ambiguity around equity and EEO.

Research Context and Question

This paper examines partnership dynamics within the project "Stories from the Future", a Sparkling Science-funded climate education research project. The project brings together three classes from an Austrian urban middle school, university researchers, and the to co-create futures-oriented climate narratives with students aged 10-16. In this presentation we ask: How does students' science identity construction and epistemic participation in climate education develop? And what patterns of solidarity and exclusion emerge when students strategically navigate science discourse?

Theoretical Framework

We draw on Olitsky's (2007a, 2007b) application of Collins' (2004) interaction ritual theory to urban science education, examining partnership configurations to see if they create or constrain interaction ritual chains, the recurring patterns of emotionally charged encounters that build solidarity or produce exclusion. Olitsky demonstrates how students in urban classrooms strategically deploy science language to gain group membership, yet face barriers when institutional structures privilege particular forms of scientific discourse. Her framework illuminates three critical dimensions for our analysis:

First, emotional energy and collective effervescence: How partnership interactions generate shared enthusiasm and commitment around climate futures, creating what Collins terms "interaction ritual chains" that sustain engagement across contexts. Second, solidarity and group membership: How students navigate multiple communities of practice (classroom, home/family, community) with different norms for legitimate participation. Third, strategic use of science language: How students code-switch between technical climate science terminology, narrative storytelling registers, and affective expressions of climate anxiety depending on partnership context.

We extend Olitsky's urban science education focus to an Austrian example, showcasing how European school contexts have to address the diversity of their school communities. We also examine how partnership structures either amplify or marginalize diverse student voices. The "Stories from the Future" methodology, underpinned by a feminist participatory action research methodology (Prasad, 2020) asks students to imagine and narrate climate futures which in turn provides a unique lens for analysing identity work, as students claim epistemic authority through speculative knowledge.

Urban Science Education and Justice Dimensions

Following Olitsky's focus on urban contexts where students face intersecting marginalization, we examine how partnership structures address or reproduce educational inequalities. We focus on middle schools since they serve socioeconomically diverse urban populations where students experience climate change through housing quality, heat vulnerability, and environmental racism (Anguelovski et al., 2024; European Environment Agency, 2022; European Network Against Racism, 2022; Santamouris & Kolokotsa, 2015). Students from these contexts bring embodied knowledge of climate injustice that challenges abstract climate science framings. The partnership must negotiate whose futures matter: techno-optimistic narratives versus stories centered on loss, displacement, and structural inequality.

Research Objectives

Our analysis aims to: (1) Document how partnership structures shape student participation in climate science discourse; (2) Identify interaction ritual patterns that build solidarity versus exclusion across partnership spaces; (3) Examine students' strategic language use as they navigate researcher, teacher, peer, and community members; (4) Critically assess how partnerships address equity issues and whose climate futures gain legitimacy.