Co-Transforming Education in Digital Societies

Educational institutions face profound challenges in adapting to digital transformations. Due to their rigid structures, they often struggle to move beyond traditional ideas of education. Thus, current research predominantly focuses on measuring the effects of digital tools on learning outcomes rather than exploring how education itself is fundamentally transformed. This narrow approach neglects innovative imaginaries of education, instead reinforcing existing paradigms. In particular, discourse around digital education is often dominated by dystopian narratives, such as fears of digital surveillance or the dehumanizing effects of automation. While this criticism is justified, this pessimistic view reinforces the limitations in envisioning and co-creating education in digital societies. By concentrating on risks and drawbacks, we overlook opportunities to design educational environments that are equitable, inclusive, and suited to the diverse needs of learners in the 21st century. Exploring utopian perspectives could offer innovative insights that encourage actively designing education. Such perspectives can help address persistent issues like educational inequality, the digital divide, and increasingly heterogeneous student populations.

This paper discusses three research and development projects that exemplify how education can be rethought to better align with the transforming digital societies—and their challenges. The first project explores how to open up classrooms to the diverse needs and prior (digital) knowledge of students to enhance educational equity. The second project investigates the use of artificial intelligence in reading, highlighting both the potential benefits and challenges of integrating AI into learning processes. The third project focuses on school development processes, illustrating how various stakeholders in educational institutions can co-transform their schools to better meet the demands of a digital society.

By critically engaging with these projects, the paper advocates for a transdisciplinary approach to co-designing digital education that goes beyond mere adaptation to digital tools, seeking instead to reimagine and actively develop educational institutions in digital societies.