Projects

The projects within the department are conducted in association with the Media | Transformation department at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) and apply concepts of critical mediality research and the media constellation model. They utilise methodologies such as participative observation, videography, discourse analysis, qualitative content analysis, interface analysis, walkthroughs, and structured and semi-structured interviews. They aim to analyse the media-based spaces of opportunity, how they are appropriated and the larger socio- and cultural media contexts. This culminates in three related perspectives:

• Perspective 1: The examination of media-based spaces of opportunity using artefact-related analysis and founded in media theory. In this area, the researchers are interested the possibilities that digital educational media open, limit and transform in terms of educational content and practices in the classroom. There is a particular focus on the subject concepts and power relationships that are incorporated within or assigned to educational media
• Perspective 2: Analysis of the media-related practices and appropriation processes using ethnographic-oriented methods. This perspective explores how the efficacy of educational media and the content they convey is developed within concrete, situated practices of appropriation and which subject concepts and power relationships evolve as a result.
• Perspective 3: An analysis of educational media using cultural and socio-theoretical concepts. The focus here lies in examining how digital educational media are intertwined with media and socio-cultural contexts, and how this shapes their design and use. This perspective includes explorations of how educational media is shaped by the technologies and developers behind it, as well as how future scenarios for schools and education – in the context of media-driven transformations – are being formulated by which stakeholders and against the backdrop of which discourses.

These approaches focus on digital media that are a) frequently used in schools and/or b) open new possibilities and have transformative potential. The current focus is on AI, games and other new media technologies.