Description

The digital transformation poses challenges for all schools. In order to meet these challenges, the focus is often on purchasing new devices and expanding the digital infrastructure. This project takes a different approach. Instead of asking what new tools, apps, devices and media are needed in schools, the project takes a minimalist approach that looks for solutions with existing resources and uses digital media sparingly. Digital change does not appear here as a purely technical progress story, but as a culturally shaped and formative phenomenon. In order to support schools in the digital transformation, a graphically and digitally prepared guide is to be developed that provides schools with a guideline on how they can assert themselves with the existing infrastructures and media.

The project deliberately chooses the striking term manifesto for the guide: manifestos make things visible or tangible (lat. manifestus) and at the same time they are to be understood as speech acts that are intended to make a difference in the world. As a manifesto, the guideline is to be written and presented graphically on the one hand, but also inspired and brought to bear through artistic interventions on the other. For example, high-profile performances and installations are planned as part of an opening and closing event, which will also define the project framework. A homepage will document the manifesto and its development as well as the artistic performances for a wider public. The manifesto is being developed in close cooperation with the schools and universities involved in the research, which are to be included in the sense of a participative design approach. The manifesto provides schools with a tool that shows them how they can use local and existing resources to help shape digital change rather than simply reacting to it. The manifesto also serves as an impetus for discussion on how to shape digital change in the school sector. This discussion should transcend language and national borders in the education and research landscape. To this end, the manifesto will be made available in various languages (German, English, French, Italian).

The central empirical access point for the project is the work on interfaces that schools perform in the context of digital change. Exploratory case studies will be used to visualise the work of schools on site and with the resources available to them in order to gain a better understanding of digital change in situ and the actors involved. The visualisation of technical and social interfacing shows what is already being achieved with local resources in order to survive the digital transformation. The project assumes that schools will have to network with an ever larger and more heterogeneous group of stakeholders within and outside the field of education in the digital transformation. To this end, education-related stakeholders – both in and out of school – must adapt to one another and make themselves compatible. Various interfaces can be identified where this happens. We understand the concept of interfaces to be not just technical, but social. Technical change always requires social work, with and through technology, whereby different actors are involved in negotiations.

With this in mind, the project examines interface work using illustrative examples from the school sector in the Canton of Zurich. This will be done with the help of two research approaches:

• With the help of a qualitative network analysis, the project examines the work at the interface in the school as an organization. The focus is on how the actors are embedded in their environment and connected with each other through social interaction. To this end, we first conduct expert interviews with 5–8 people (teachers, Pedagogical ICT Support (PICTS), school management, etc.) at four schools. The qualitative exploration is followed by a formal analysis in order to analyse the network structure.
• With the help of focused ethnography, the project examines how the interface work takes shape on the basis of practice-relevant settings in everyday life. These settings will be selected with the help of expert interviews, but will then be examined with regard to the practical methods of interface work in situ at the four participating schools.

On the one hand, the mediation between actors within the educational institutions (school management, PICTS, teachers, etc.), as well as the networking with actors outside the school (IT companies, school authorities, school administration, parents, providers of further education, etc.) will be examined. What adjustments do schools need to make if they rely on digital media? How do companies and other extracurricular stakeholders engage with educational institutions and adapt their actions? On the other hand, the ethnographic focus is also placed on how, when and with which local means this interface work is carried out in everyday life. What concrete means, practical methods and situational adaptations are used? The results of this one-year exploratory research phase will serve as the basis for the formulation of the manifesto. Various stakeholders from educational practice are to be involved in the formulation in the sense of a “participatory design”.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Tobias Röhl:

Professor PHZH

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Prof. Dr. Tobias Röhl

Professor PHZH

+41 43 305 68 17

tobias.roehl@phzh.ch