Media – Knowledge – Education: Knowledge Diversity and Formatted Educational Spaces (MWB2023)

International Conference at the University of Innsbruck on June 23-24, 2023 in Innsbruck (Universitätsstraße 5-7).

  23. - 24. June 2023

 Universitätsstraße 5-7, 6020 Innsbruck (Travel/arrival information video)

Diversity and digitality are among the central topics that have received increased attention in numerous discourse contexts in recent years. Normative and descriptive dimensions of different approaches play a role not only in many branches of science, but also in political, lifeworld and artistic contexts. On the one hand, many of these discourses are characterized by a forgetfulness of history. This applies, for example, to historical forms of approaching diversity and multiformity or to data management before the age of digitalization. On the other hand, these discourses are often linked to rhetorics of innovation and transformation, in which basic paradoxes of opening and closing or of standardization and pluralization remain notoriously underexposed.

Especially in the context of education, the formatting and standardization imposed on processes to ensure their evaluability and comparability, their operationalizability and interoperability come into conflict with the heterogeneity of forms of knowledge, and not only in the digital realm: They necessarily implement particular concepts of education and knowledge and thus codify them. Especially in digital educational platforms and tools, however, explicit social imaginaries of cybernetic control emerge, reformatting educational processes as parametrically monitorable optimization of quantifiable competencies.

Among the desiderata in diversity research are questions of knowledge diversity. While questions of bio- or gender diversity have been researched extensively, no research programs with significant funding have yet been established that deal with the extinction of types of knowledge or strategies for their preservation as well as with the relevance of different forms of knowledge for educational processes and societal problem solving - a relevance that is illustrated not least by recent developments in the field of education. The conference "Knowledge Diversity and Formatted Educational Spaces" will illuminate and deepen different aspects of the field of tension between knowledge diversity and formatted educational spaces.

The conference will focus on the following questions:

·         Which conjunctures of different understandings of knowledge can be described?

·         What is the significance of knowledge in formatted educational spaces in the 21st century?

·      Which concepts of diversity prove to be relevant for the future in the context of information and knowledge processes in general and with regard to school forms of knowledge in particular?

·       What consequences result from the analysis of knowledge and education policy concepts and the activities of the global education industry for the design of sustainable and future- open educational spaces?

·     How can educational research deal with problems of knowledge organization in a plural information society in the future and how can the teaching of media competence succeed in the context of digital developments?

·         How should educational media and technologies be designed in order to meet the demand for a diversity of forms of knowledge?

·        What challenges are associated with the reformatting of educational spaces in the context of digital transformation processes?

The focus can be on conceptual, theoretical and philosophical dimensions as well as on application-related and pedagogical-practical aspects of the topic. In addition, artistic and activist contributions may also be considered. The current conference program can be accessed here.

Organization

The international conference is organized by the interfaculty Forum Innsbruck Media Studies (IMS) of the University of Innsbruck (LFU), the Institute for Media, Society and Communication and the Institute for Teacher Education and School Research (ILS) in cooperation with the Media Education Section of the Austrian Society for Research and Development in Education (ÖFEB) as part of the conference series "Media - Knowledge - Education".

Program committee: Andreas Beinsteiner, Ann-Kathrin Dittrich, Theo Hug
Concept and program committee: Andreas Beinsteiner, Ann-Kathrin Dittrich, Theo Hug
Organisational support: Sarah Panizzutti-Giuliani as well as students of the „Medien – Wissen – Bildung“ (418115) seminar
Technical support: Andreas Forster as well as students of the „Medien – Wissen – Bildung“ (418115) seminar

Contact: MWB-conf@uibk.ac.at

Photographs or films may be taken as part of this event. By participating in the event, you acknowledge that photographs and video materials in which you are depicted may be published on the conference homepage or for reporting purposes and on the social media channels and websites of the University of Innsbruck. For further information on data protection, please refer to our privacy policy at www.uibk.ac.at/datenschutz 

Additional Information for the series

In addition to the conference, the open-access-book-republication of the iup-Series "Medien-Wissen-Bildung" is planned.(vgl. https://www.uibk.ac.at/iup/verlagsverzeichnis/medien_wissen_bildung.html). Contributors are invited to send their articles to MWB-Conf@uibk.ac.at until the 31.10.2023. The Stylesheetcan be found here.