Platformisation in Education and the Emergence of Transnational Didactics – Lessons from International Projects in eTwinning in Teacher Education

• In Event: Diverse studies exploring educational topics: internationalisation, etwining, compulsory attendance, and online learning platforms

Proposal

In recent years, a growing body of comparative research on teaching, learning, and didactics has been published (Hudson & Meyer, 2011; Hallizky et al., 2016; Ligozat et al., 2023). Empirical comparative research into classrooms has identified patterns of instructional strategies that differ across countries (e.g., the 1995 video study (Stigler et al. 1999)). The research has demonstrated that there are national and cultural differences regarding the conceptualisation of academic knowledge about teaching and their role in teacher education depending on the national and cultural context (cf. Rakhkochkine 2012). Despite the persistent fragmentation among national and regional traditions of teaching and learning, there is a noticeable trend toward the universalization and even standardization of subject-specific didactic approaches and teaching practices. This trend is driven by factors such as international student assessment studies, the processes of lending and borrowing educational practices, globalization in the production of teaching materials, internationalization in teacher education, and international teacher mobility. These developments contribute to setting transnational curriculum standards and establishing transnational classroom practices (Wahlström & Sundberg 2018).
One of the recent trends in education, which gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic, is platformization. Platforms have impacted many spheres of economic and social life, and education is no exception. According to Kerssens & Van Dijck (2021), the transformation of educational content, activities, and processes means that they become part of a corporate platform ecosystem, including its economies, data infrastructures, and technical architectures. Global platforms contribute to the commodification, globalization, and privatization of educational provision (Sharon, 2021; Kerssens & Van Dijck, 2023).
This paper explores the research question of how different national and cultural traditions in didactics are negotiated and transformed within the transnational virtual spaces of educational platforms. The first part of the paper presents a theoretical analysis of research into national traditions of teaching, learning, and didactics from a comparative perspective, with a particular focus on transnational curriculum and didactics, as well as platformization in education. The second part of the paper is based on a small-scale study that make a step beyond the theoretical reflections and explores the possibilities for empirical research by examining collaborative projects in eTwinning (a European platform for cooperation between schools and institutions of teacher education, mostly used in the countries of the EU and a few other associated countries), developed and implemented in teacher education. These projects are an integral part of the internationalization of teacher education in participating countries. It applies document analysis (project descriptions and reports) and interviews with developers and participants of an eTwinning project. The paper seeks to identify the characteristics of the emerging transnational didactics in eTwinning, particularly in comparison to national traditions of didactics and digital teaching and learning and discusses intended and unintended effects of platform-based internationalization on teaching and learning.

Author

• Anatoli Rakhkochkine, Friedrich-Alexander Unversity Erlangen-Nürnberg