Project Details
Projekt
Educational media 4.0? An analysis of the changes of production and media knowledge in the field of educational media
Subject Area
General Education and History of Education
Term
from 2020 to 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434442427
The research project ‘Bildungsmedien 4.0?’ (Educational Media 4.0?) proposes an examina-tion of the changes observed in the production of digital and analogue educational media, and an exploration of what we hypothesise to be associated transformations in the knowledge disseminated through such media. A further hypothesis postulates that the changes in produc-tion conditions indicate an economisation of educational media production as a whole. Digitisation acts in this case as the catalyst for a structural shift within educational media production. Concurrently, private stakeholders such as foundations, businesses and internet platforms are entering the field of educational media and are producing digital and analogue material for schools;frequently providing it free of charge. Also educational policy reforms are also contributing to modifications in the field of educational media which includes the partial liberalisation of approval procedures for textbooks and curricular reform (education standards, orientation towards competencies). They are altering the disseminated knowledge in terms of didactic structure, digital formats and the manner in which topics are addressed. The study will therefore examine and compare how the topic of ‘Globalisation and Economics’ is portrayed between 1995 and 2017 in products from textbook publishing houses as tradi-tional educational media producers, on the one hand, and on the other, those from new, private suppliers as well as public and non-commercial enterprises such as foundations and regional and national government bodies. The study will not only employ discourse analytical methods to analyse educational media for lower secondary school pupils in terms of its disseminated knowledge, it will also comprise expert interviews during which stakeholders and producers will be questioned on the changes in the field of educational media. Furthermore, network analysis will be implemented to establish network structures and stakeholder positioning within the field of educational media, according to the field theoretical perspective developed within the study. The guiding research questions, upon which the study is founded, are: How do the parties involved perceive production conditions, strategies and legitimation to be changing? What kinds of positioning), network structures and configurations of power (centre-periphery relationship,hierarchies or susceptibility to monopolies/oligopolies) can be ascertained within the field, particularly with regard to old and newstakeholders? How is professionalism defined and is a ‘new professional understanding’ discernible? In what way has theknowledge disseminated through educational media changed? What differences in content are distinguishable in the material produced by different parties (manner of addressing subjects)? Is there a proclivity towards didactic simplification and a thematic lack of complexity in the knowledge disseminated in new media?
DFG Programme
Research Grants
