„Educational Media for Adults“ – IGSBi Conference 2023 in Gdańsk (Poland)
The annual conference of the International Society for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media e.V. (IGSBi) took place at the University of Gdańsk from 6 to 8 October 2023, in cooperation with the Faculty of Languages, Department of Modern Languages (Dr. Ewa Andrzejewska). The topic of the conference was “Educational Media for Adults”.
Researchers and teachers from various European countries and from Sub-Saharan Africa dealt with different aspects of the topic from a historical and current perspective and with different methodological approaches. After an introductory lecture on the specifics of adult learning, the focus was on educational media for teachers (e.g. teacher handouts), for higher education (such as study books and multimedia applications) and language education (literacy for refugees, foreign language teaching), but also on informal educational media for adults such as historical leaflets, current parent letter series and educational games. In addition, there were workshop reports on the concrete development of educational media, for example for the independent energy supply of local communities in East Africa.
Presentations on the importance of artificial intelligence (e.g. Chat GPT) for educational processes as well as on myths and possibilities of digital learning environments completed the program.
The contributions stimulated lively discussions.
The conference volume with many contributions will be published in 2024.
New Publication on Primers Research
Learning to Read, Learning Religion. Catechism Primers in Europe from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries (2023). Ed. by Britta Juska-Bacher, Matthew Grenby, Tuija Laine & Wendelin Sroka. John Benjamins.
Catechism primers are inconspicuous but telling little books for children combining the teaching of reading skills and religious catechesis. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, they have been produced, disseminated and used in huge numbers in many regions of the world, in particular in Europe. Remarkably, similar texts appeared across the continent, spanning confessional traditions that were in other respects highly divergent. In different places, and across the whole period, different denominations used not only similar pedagogical and religious strategies, but also shared the same formats and iconography.
This volume, edited by scholars from Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom – among them three members of the International Society for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media e.V. –, is the result of a collaborative transnational and interdisciplinary effort including education, language teaching, children’s literature, book history, and religious studies. With contributions on seventeen European countries and regions, it sheds new light on a fascinating but largely neglected part of European cultural heritage, and, by establishing a comprehensive and authoritative summary of the field, offers fresh impetus for further transnational research.
Newsletter of the Reading Primers Special Interest Group
New Publications
Eva Matthes / Christine Ott / Sylvia Schütze / Dieter Wrobel (Eds.): Kontinuität und Wandel von Wissen in Bildungsmedien. Continuity and Change of Knowledge in Educational Media (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2024)
In the school context, knowledge in educational media is aligned with laws, educational standards and curricula; in non-school contexts, it is usually less strongly regulated, but still orientated towards agreements or guiding principles.
Educational media knowledge is sometimes surprisingly persistent; at the same time, the content of educational media can be seismographs for change, sometimes even developing “subversive” potential by undermining guidelines. Their potential in both respects can only be categorised in relation to references and knowledge productions outside the educational medium.
The contributions in this volume consider the multifaceted nature of the concept of knowledge and offer multi-layered approaches to the complexity of the topic. In addition to subject-related research on educational media knowledge, there are studies on the implementation of pedagogical-didactic knowledge, analyses of media-material pre-figurations of knowledge transfer and acquisition as well as reconstructions of socio-cultural knowledge and its historical or cultural-historical presentation.
Link to the table of contents and to the introduction
Jasmine Annette Dorigo: Lehr- und Lernmittel für den Sprachunterricht im ladinischen Sprachraum Südtirols. Eine historisch-didaktische Analyse von Mehrsprachigkeit [Learning and Teaching Supplies for Language Teaching in the Ladin-speaking Areas of South Tyrol. A Historic-Didactical Analysis of Multilingualism] (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2024)
Teaching institutions of the Ladin valleys of the Dolomites are known for their multilingualism. Multilingual teaching needs respective supplies for learning and teaching.
The goal of the publication is to analyse especially important learning and teaching supplies for language teaching at Ladin primary schools of Badia Valley (Gadertal) and Valley Gardena (Gröden). The teaching and learning supply analyses affect both the historical schoolbooks that trace back to the parity schools (1948), as well as the contemporary supplies that are used currently (2023) in Ladin primary schools. The main focus lies on language didactics. Overall, the learning and teaching supply analyses give an insight into the development and changes at Ladin schools of South Tyrol between 1948 and the 21st century.
Link to the table of contents and to the introduction
Luciana Bellatalla / Piergiovanni Genovesi / Eva Matthes / Sylvia Schütze (Eds.): Nation, Nationalism and Schooling in Contemporary Europe (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2022)
During the 19th century, up to the middle of the 20th century, the theme of national identity – and even more so of the absolute primacy of the nation – was firmly at the center of the educational projects of European states. Moreover, schools had and have been one of the fundamental instruments in the processes of nation building and, subsequently, in the establishment of nationalist perspectives, being used as a place of transmission of narratives aimed at legitimising the primacy of the nation, whether historically or ethnically based.
A significant undermining of the absolute primacy of the nation emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War. A widespread desire to reduce the scope of national sovereignty, to fight against the drifts of nationalism, took on a new consistency. The ideological struggle centered on the two blocs, which characterized the age of the Cold War, contributed to strongly circumscribing the political space of nationalism, but the fall of the Wall has opened up new spaces both for the role of the nation and for the phenomena of micro-nationalism and neo-nationalism.
Scholars of different European countries contribute in this volume to the reflection on the interrelation of nation(alism) and schooling with a special focus on educational media. This reflection is more urgent than ever and is central to the future social, civil, and cultural development.
Link to the table of contents and to the introduction
Eva Matthes / Stefan T. Siegel / Thomas Heiland (Eds.): Lehrvideos – das Bildungsmedium der Zukunft? Erziehungswissenschaftliche und fachdidaktische Perspektiven (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt 2021)
The internet market for educational videos both on commercial platforms like YouTube and TikTok and on educational platforms is booming, and representative surveys show the growing importance of educational and explanatory videos in research and practice. These are increasingly used at university and school as well.
This volume comprises multidisciplinary perspectives on these educational media, which have been mostly neglected so far. There are still many open questions: What exactly are educational videos? What should we know about the providers of these educational media (for example explanatory videos on YouTube)? Do there exist any quality criteria for these videos? What kind of chances, challenges, limitations and possibly even dangers are connected with their use?
The aim of our volume is to make a contribution to answering these questions and to provide clarity and transparency. Therefore, it includes:
(1) fundamental articles which introduce to the subject matter,
(2) analyses of explanatory videos from domain-specific perspectives,
(3) contributions regarding the use of educational videos in teacher (further) training at university.
Link to the table of contents and to the introduction