Between Competencies and Bildung in the Digital Medium Environment

We are living in a media revolution, in a period where new social structures arise in the communicative space of digital media. This means that psychic systems must try to adapt to a changing social world within all social arenas like economy, work-life, love relations and last but not least education. What happens is that the information– and interaction-situations change so almost any information becomes only few clicks away and everybody in the world can message you where ever you are. The problem is not that the students now must face a new digitalized school, but that students meet a school system that have not found it’s own feeds yet. Especially two reactions to this unclear situation can be identified; one that tries to work against the new media because one cannot find suitable education methods, or have ideological opposition to the new social relations enabled by digital media. The other reaction comes from industrial and economic logics influencing governments and management of educational institutions to improve media literacy focusing on digital competencies. The latter reaction we find most constructive because looking at the history of media evolution the new media are here to stay and the social will evolve within their possibility space. But we also find the scope of just looking at competencies much too narrow. Therefor this paper tries to create a concept of Digital Bildung drawing on Klafki and Biesta who both in their theories points at the important aspect of making students able to think critically and become citizens taking social responsibility gaining not only technically competencies. Thereto we apply Luhmanns systems theory to integrate the concept into educational sociology and medium sociology. The paper draws on empirical findings from the Socio Media Education experiment, a Danish action research project in upper secondary school.