Educational Media in Competition on the Topic of Sustainability

Em. Prof. Dr. Thomas A. Bauer, Universität Wien und European Society for Education and Communication (ESEC)

Thomas A. Bauer

An international congress will take place in Berlin on June 11, 2024, at which the Sustainability Award for educational media will be presented as part of an EU-wide project. The following text addresses the complex connections between education and sustainability in the context of media and social change.

The event serves to discuss criteria for the quality of sustainability in a media didactic context. The presented and awarded submissions are intended to provide everyone working in the education sector with ideas about the feasibility of addressing sustainability in the context of adult education. Registrations for this are gladly accepted.

 

Thomas A. Bauer

Publishers, media companies and media producers who are involved in the educational media environment, as well as teachers and learners who are increasingly fulfilling their orders and tasks via educational media, are confronted with the phenomenon of far-reaching transformations: upheavals in the structures of education, media and society, which, As we know, they do not happen independently of one another, but are determined by a paradigm shift that is common to all, on the one hand, and a technological change that is common to all, on the other.

Paradigm shift:

The paradigm shift reflects a fundamental rethinking in the social construction (communication) of the worldview from a world that is feasible in every case and in every interest to one whose fragility and weaknesses become apparent in crises: environment, democracy, media, social cohesion, education, etc just to mention the core crises here. For all of these areas, a previously and largely neglected value is being brought back into society’s cultural memory: sustainability. A value whose prophetic reference lies in being both a challenge and an opportunity. And whose cultural and civilizational meaning lies in combining values ​​of usefulness and usability, of relief and relief with those of ethical reason, those of social aesthetics and those of the knowledge of the finiteness of (natural, structural, social, individual, cultural and symbolic) to connect resources. In this thinking, humans see themselves as the factor of the present responsible for history and the future, as the species that, because it is capable of reason, knows how to measure the measure of possible things: at least in all the framework concepts of the world that are available in the context of education: sociability and Individuality, media and communication, nature and culture, history and future, knowledge and wisdom, beginning and end, now or never.

 

Technology:

A second category that largely defines the understanding of the world is that of the feasibility of the world. It is, as Einstein says: everything that is the case. In the sense of technology, the logic of feasibility, one can go one step further because it does so: the world, the image of our world, is everything that we make fall, what we make due – not because it is in everything would absolutely be due, but because we might find pleasure in making it due. But if it is no longer we ourselves who perceive what would be due in order to make an event into history, but rather leave it to the computing power of automation or the algorithm of a software to make a result due, then we may be at a standstill Besides. Then the picture of the world, the very world we live with, flattens out due to a lack of intuition and dialectics, in the pattern of self-plagiarism and repetition. A technology that is limited to itself and only focuses on its effects and focuses on functions of reducing complexity can definitely do this. The last stage that we think we have reached in the almost universal sense of this logic is that of digitalization – in all its forms, most recently in the format of AI, a model of logic from which, to put things in perspective, Noam also mentions it here Chomsky says that in the sense of dialectical reason it is not as intelligent as it is called: it is more correctly labeled as plagiarism software. She doesn’t think rationally in the sense of generative creativity, but rather consistently in the possible combination of what is already known. But at least: Digitization is the change in the representation of reality from analog to digital technology: computerization, automation and digitalization make it possible to connect or disentangle analog contexts of reality in terms of content, time and their interpretation and relevance. To the extent that technology is designed and developed to accelerate or facilitate arduous and complex processes, the personal and individual responsibility associated with the craftsmanship and originality of the processes is also delegated to technological and logical processes. The complexity that is possible in terms of content thus becomes a “only” technically possible or necessary complexity, the logic of which is not optional but causal. This relieves the forces of imponderability and indeterminacy that may have to be applied creatively and generatively, but then requires an understanding of the grammar of technology in order to form technically possible “new sentences” in the wake of this very grammar.

 

Values:

Values ​​are not fictional characters or theoretical inventions, but rather perspectives of practical social reason. They are based in life, not in moral abstraction. There is a sociology, a social-practical logic of values ​​that speaks of freedom, equality, respect for dignity – and also of sustainability. A sociology of sustainability

You don’t have to outsource the topic of values. Values ​​are based on the fact that the world is how we think it, how we think life and how we live thinking. We think of them socially because we observe them that way: empirically and normatively. We know that we cannot think, do or be anything that is not anchored in the context of the social, cultural and symbolic environment. Because – in the sense of cultural studies – culture is not what we do or think, but how we do or think something, values ​​in thinking and doing (in theory and practice) are not structural, but rather cultural orientation positions of sustainability (validity , substance) of how (with what reason) we think something, how (with what reason) we do something, how we use something.

It is the concept of reason that can be used to describe the social-societal perspective of values ​​- here sustainability: Sustainability is a value of social reason. This in turn is a descriptive metaphor for educational values, the meaning of which can be composed of quantities such as: knowledge, awareness, competence, distinction, responsibility. Neither theoretical nor practical language is sufficient to grasp the world of what is theoretically thinkable and practically meant. But perhaps the distinction between value events and value matter will at least help in the theoretical description.

 

Sustainability:

In the case of sustainability, the material of values ​​must be described hermeneutically: substance, depth, authenticity, essential character, the moment of duration. The values ​​are realized by: enduring, persevering, standing in the long term without causing or causing harm, using and sharing mindfully. The value process arises through memory, education, knowledge, consciousness, because it is not only done in the pattern of technical or organized use of natural or cultural resources, but only really becomes in the pattern of attitude, habitus (attitude) in the pattern of conscious memory culture between the origin and future of natural, cultural and symbolic resources. The fair distribution and safeguarding of these resources (future memory), which is thought to be linear over time and generations (future memory), can only be credibly successful if it is also currently socially and horizontally ensured (ethical rationality of social practice). One without the other would be discrepant. This results – if we take a critical look at the reality of educational programs – across the educational landscape, in the need to change established attitudes: educational content, educational methods, educational media.

 

Educational media:

The latter – the educational media – have a special role to play in the environment of technological and educational policy change: the quality of the media-didactically prepared quality of the conveyance of educational content with the aim of stimulating educational awareness among users in such a way that the knowledge imparted becomes conscious and that users are aware of their knowledge Make use of it and integrate it into your image of the world and reality. Since there is no consciousness without reality, just as there is no reality without consciousness, the dimension of reality must be made conscious in a special way. However, this does not simply happen through the use of media in an educational or teaching context, but rather it happens in the pattern of everyday media use. Or, to put it even more clearly and more correctly in terms of media theory: media is not the tool with which you could replace teachers (who are not great either). Rather: the term media describes (contextually perceived and culturally theoretically interpreted) the entire connection between observation and action, insofar as it is determined by the use of media (media technology). Educational media are therefore not just programs that are prepared in a media-typical way or contexts that contain content using media technology, but are a pattern of generating knowledge that differs from the traditional transfer of knowledge (teaching, training): as knowledge understanding. And that means: In the context of media society, all knowledge is (individually) accessible to everyone at any time. Therefore, the value of the originality of educational media does not lie primarily in the entertaining preparation of what is already known, nor in the repetition of what is already there, but in the special perspective that illuminates the awareness of social life values. This is not done in the preparation of structural knowledge (as a pure accumulation of knowledge), but in the stimulation of intuition, emotion and intrinsic interest in the substance, in the materiality, in the authenticity, in the durability, validity, resilience and Sustainability, the responsibility for what one gets to know. And that is exactly what we hope and assume can be taught and learned more originally and creatively by using the characteristics of the “media”. Of course, the use of media practiced outside of institutionally organized educational contexts is also crucial, especially since the use of social media is essential in every situation. Beyond all educational policy and practical expectations, educational media also compete with the individual behavior of everyday media use for educational values.

In the meantime – after a long time of percolating the terminology – it is clear that all values, but especially the value of sustainability, cannot be separated from the social context. Not only because the various areas in the organization of society are structurally systemized from each other, but organizationally and culturally one area cannot be realized without the other. This affects systems and various living environments. The reality meant in each case arises in the practical contextualization.

 

Literature notes:

  • Bauer, Thomas A. (2014): Thinking about communication scientifically. Perspectives of a contextual theory of social understanding. Vienna: Böhlau
  • Bauer, Tomas A. (2017): Understanding knowledge in media society. Theoretical sketches on the mediology of social learning. IN: Bauer, Thomas A./ Mikuszeit, Bernd H. (ed.). Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang
  • Henkel, Anna et al. (2017): Sociology of Sustainability. Münster: SuN
  • Thome, Helmut (2019): Values ​​and value formation from a sociological perspective. IN: Verwiebe, Roland (ed.): Values ​​and value formation from an interdisciplinary perspective. Wiesbaden: Springer
  • Welzer, Harald (210): Culture of remembrance and future memory. IN: From Politics and Contemporary History 25-26/: Supplement to the weekly newspaper “Das Parliament”. June 21, 2010