The digital transformation and educational equity. Insights into discourse strands from the German-speaking community

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Digital transformation and educational equity in the German education system: Perspectives on opportunities and challenges in school and classroom development

Proposal

René Breiwe
The debate on the topics of digitality and educational equity in the German-speaking academic discourse is primarily taking place in the context of the associated potential transformation processes within the education system (Eickelmann et al. 2024). These processes are seen not only as technical adjustments, but also as comprehensive social changes having a profound impact on the institutional and social practices of the education system. In this context, the term “transformation” implies a fundamental change that is understood as a transition to new, altered social forms of action and practices that permeate all areas of social life (Stalder 2016).
The discussion on the transformation of educational processes focuses, among other things, on the transition from typographic to digital culture. This change should not only be understood as the addition of the digital as a ‘fourth’ cultural technique to the traditional cultural techniques of reading, writing and arithmetic. Rather, the digital is integrating itself into these established cultural techniques and changing their application and meaning in a subtle but profound process (Krommer 2019). The transformative aspect is less evident in the mere substitution of analogue media with digital tools, but rather in the gradual change in everyday school practices. One example are hybrid forms of writing, in which digital technologies are not only used as tools for text creation, but also enable the dissolution of boundaries in writing practice through their potential, such as synchronous collaboration and the embedding of further content. Writing processes are transformed by digital networking opportunities and the quick and easy availability of additional information and resources.
These technological changes are accompanied by diversity-related potential. The removal of boundaries from traditional practices can be seen, for example, in the use of automated speech recognition and translation tools or assistive technologies that can support students with special needs in particular (Schulz et al. 2022). These technologies can facilitate access and remove barriers by enabling learners to participate in new ways that would not be available in an exclusively analogue learning context. For teachers, this results in the challenge of designing inclusive lessons under the conditions of digitalisation. Inclusion is understood as a fundamental pedagogical requirement that aims to consider the different prerequisites, needs and potential of all students. Digitality not only offers new opportunities for differentiation to cater to the diversity of learners, but also harbors the risk of reinforcing existing mechanisms of exclusion. For example, the monolingual habitus orientation can continue in the virtual space if digital tools and platforms are not designed for multilingualism.
Against this backdrop, the contribution provides an in-depth, theory-based analysis of the central perspectives from the German-language discourse on the connection between digitality and educational equity:: On the one hand, cultural sociological approaches to the ‘culture of digitality’ are highlighted (Stalder 2016), which shows how digital technologies inscribe themselves into cultural practices and lifeworlds. On the other hand, the interactions between digitalization, inclusion and educational equity in the context of teaching and learning in schools are analyzed (Drossel et al. 2019).

Author

• René Breiwe, Bergische Universität Wuppertal