Educational Media in Heterogeneous Societies

Research projects focusing on Educational Media in Heterogeneous Societies investigate the strategies developed by schools and school practice to deal with diversity and heterogeneity. It is clear that the demographic structure of geographically bounded societies has diversified as a result of global transformations. At the same time, there is heightened awareness of the symbolic value of sociocultural, religious, ethnic, gender, ability and class diversity. Societies see a need to generate new ways of producing social cohesion which ensure inclusion without the danger of excluding particular groups. Projects in this research area draw to differing extents on three contexts to investigate how educational media and educational systems are engaging with these new challenges.

• First, projects illuminate the institutional contexts in which educational media are developed. Concepts such as diversity management have become the focus of sometimes heated controversies or negotiations in politics, economics and civil society. Thus, we investigate the explicit and implicit priorities of a broad range of actors, including publishing houses, authors, politicians, curriculum advisors, members of minority networks, teachers associations, etc. Part of the interest lies in finding out the extent to which these actors draw on global relevancy spaces. This interest grows from the observation that a number of transnational actors have issued more or less mandatory standards for how to engage with diversity. International organisations and transnational NGOs disseminate concepts which local decision-makers have to at least acknowledge if not adopt. The notion of multiple, flexible, constructed identities, for instance, has become a kind of commonsense for several epistemological communities. Organisations have to allow themselves to be assessed on the diversity and heterogeneity of their workforce.
• Second, projects analyse the contents of educational media for traces of the concepts and standards which are circulating in global relevancy spaces. Points of departure here are the various reader/viewer/user positions posited by media theory. Hegemonic (transnational) concepts can be accepted, negotiated, simulated, rejected, etc. A salient aspect of education is thus which particular positions locally produced teaching and learning materials articulate.
• Third, projects investigate how the concepts and proposals for engaging with diversity suggested by educational media resonate in school practice; how they are used, what effects they have. Of particular interest is how teachers and students respond to the subject positions on offer; how, for instance, they engage with notions of multiple, flexible, constructed identities or diverse workforces.

Currently, this research group consists of two projects, which both inquire into several of these contexts of analysis.

• One project, Ethnic Diversity and Nation-Building in Eritrea, is nearing completion. It explores if and how educational policy-makers in Eritrea manage to offer forms of identification which not only account for religious and ethnic identities but also interrupt them. Eritrea is a particularly interesting focus of interest since it is one of the few postcolonial nations of Africa in which the nation-building process has led to the establishment of well-functioning state structures. The state elite is notable in its capacity to approach the concepts and guidelines circulating in global relevancy spaces with confidence in order to assess their applicability and appropriateness for the specific local context and if necessary to change or reject them.
• A second project, Educational Media: Production, Praxis, Politics, is an ethnographic discourse analysis investigating media production and use in Germany and England. In the first phase, it traces the development of educational media for use in schools. It asks, inter alia, which actors are involved and what their priorities are. It considers possible diversity management strategies in publishing houses and the extent to which authors and editors draw on and/or implement transnational standards. In the second phase, the project analyses the materials produced during phase one. In the final phase, it plans to observe the use of the materials in schools, asking, for instance, if and how the forms of subjectivation offered in the materials are engaged with in classroom practices.

Projects

• Ethnic Diversity and Nation-Building in Eritrea: Education and Educational Media in the Process of National Integration (Mussie Habte; Doctoral Dissertation)
• Educational Media: Production, Praxis, Politics: The Development and Use of Educational Media in Germany and England (Felicitas Macgilchrist; Postdoctoral research)