Diversity and Education in the Digital Age

This volume presents foundational work and concrete examples of applications of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In the first part, the concept is introduced and discussed from different perspectives. The second part presents work by university teachers who have examined their teaching in the context of a SoTL project. In the third part, studies from the practice of continuing education in higher education show how SoTL can be implemented as a concept for teaching development at universities. In addition, studies are included that examine higher education didactics itself from the perspective of SoTL.

The Editors:

• Uwe Fahr and Alessandra Kenner work at the Center for Continuing Education in Higher Education at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. Holger Angenent heads the Center for Quality Enhancement in Teaching and Learning at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, and Alexandra Eßer-Lüghausen leads the digitaLe (Room for Digital Teaching) team at Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences. As university didactics experts, they design measures for teaching development, advise teachers, plan and organize continuing education courses on university teaching, and research the conditions for good teaching and the requirements for productive continuing education in the field of university teaching. 

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The essays in this volume all seek to answer the following broad question: How can philosophical, educational and critical approaches to corporate communications deepen our understanding of learning in the digital age? The authors reflect on how particular approaches, learning strategies, philosophers or critical theorists can advance the theory and practice of teaching and learning in the digital age. Each essay discusses key concepts from their work and relates those concepts to a particular problem within learning and teaching in the digital age.

Authors: 

• Birte Heidkamp-Kergel, Coordinator of the E-Learning Centre, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Kamp-Lintfort
• Prof. Dr. David Kergel, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg
• Dr. Arkaitz Letamendia, Political Science and Administration Department, University of the Basque Country, Leio
• Prof. Dr. Michael Paulsen, Institut for Kulturvidenskaber, Syddansk University, Odense
• Prof. Dr. Samuel Nowakowski, Campus scientifique, ProUniversité de Lorraine
• Prof. habl. Dr. Tadeusz Rachwal, Department of Culture and Literature of English-Speaking Countries, University of Humanities and Social Sciences, Warsaw
• Prof. Dr. Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University
• Prof. Dr. Peter Pericles Trifonas, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Judgment and critical thinking skills are central concerns of many Western educational programs. However, the promotion of critical thinking requires specifically developed and didactically coherent concepts. Therefore, the book attempts to provide a philosophically and empirically sound and application-oriented introduction to the concept and didactics of critical thinking. The higher education space is primarily defined by critically questioning knowledge and practice and thereby producing new insights. Against the backdrop of this task horizon, the introductory volume conveys theoretical foundations of critical thinking and didactic practice strategies for its promotion in a low-threshold manner that can be adapted across disciplines.

Authors:

• Dr. Dirk Jahn, research associate at the Center for Continuing Education in Higher Education (FBZHL) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Scientific focus: the promotion of critical thinking, design-based research, action theory, and the didactic use of films.
• Dr. Michael Cursio works at the Continuing Education Center for University Teaching at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-NürnbergResearch interests: Didactics of science, competence-oriented teaching, didactics of philosophy of science.

The volume provides a Bildung-theoretical presentation and empirical opening of Bildung Ethics for pedagogical practice. In this context, Bildung Ethics refers to the perspective of Bildung according to ethical aspects. Theoretical considerations of ethics in Bildung are transferred into the fields of pedagogical practice. In the sense of the interdisciplinary research approach of integrative Bildung Research, Bildung Ethics provides an empirical opening to normative ethics. The model of Bildung Ethics provides a scientific foundation for a value-orientated Bildung practice.

Author: 

• David Kergel is a Professor of Social Work at IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg. His teaching and research focus on digitization, media pedagogy, qualitative education and learning research, and diversity in the digital age.

The book provides a genealogically oriented reconstruction of media change and media pedagogical positions. In addition to discourse formations, an economic-analytical perspective is also integrated into the reconstruction. In this way, a transdisciplinary approach to an understanding of media science and media education can be opened up, which reflexively integrates the socio-cultural and economic dimensions. Against the background of this analysis, a profile of contemporary media education is developed.

Author: 

• David Kergel is a Professor of Social Work at IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg. His teaching and research focus on digitization, media pedagogy, qualitative education and learning research, and diversity in the digital age.

This volume provides a practice-oriented and theoretically sound examination of the possibilities of e-learning. Theory and practice of digitally supported learning are analyzed integratively and communicated in an application-oriented manner. Thus, approaches to the didactic design of digitally supported teaching/learning events based on learning theory are presented, and strategies for quality management are.

Authors:

• David Kergel is a Professor of Social Work at IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg. His teaching and research focus on digitization, media pedagogy, qualitative education and learning research, and diversity in the digital age.
• Birte Heidkamp-Kergel, M.A., Research Associate and Coordinator E-Learning Center, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. Scientific focus: E-learning, research-based learning with digital media, diversity in the digital age, qualitative education and learning research.

This volume is a practice-oriented introduction to the socio-semiotic analysis of pedagogical concepts and educational didactics. Based on integrative Bildung Research, David Kergel imparts, among other things, methodology, central concepts as well as methods for a socio-semiotic analysis in educational contexts. Based on this, the author develops quality characteristics and implementation strategies for Bildung Didactics to design educational spaces.

Author: 

• David Kergel is a Professor of Social Work at IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg. His teaching and research focus on digitization, media pedagogy, qualitative education and learning research, and diversity in the digital age.

Against the backdrop of cultural diversity and media change, the challenge arises to discuss the concepts of education and learning theory and re-explore their requirement profiles in pedagogical practice. The anthology addresses the effects of digitization in adult education, social work, media education and higher education. It shows how a diversity-sensitive approach to education and learning can succeed in the context of social transformations.

The Editors:

• Dr. Holger Angenent is deputy head of the Center for Quality Improvement in Teaching and Learning at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. 
• Birte Heidkamp, M.A. is a research assistant and coordinator of the E-Learning Center at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. 
• Prof. Dr. David Kergel is a Professor at the IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg. 

International authors discuss possibilities and conditions for promoting critical university teaching in this volume. They discuss theoretical approaches and methodologically-didactically guided strategies for designing teaching in tension between employability requirements and classical educational goals, such as scientific judgment. Selected studies from teaching-learning research and university didactics are also presented. The contributions take up current educational policy discourses in their breadth: How should teaching at universities be designed to promote critical thinking, inquiry-based learning, or diversity-sensitive teaching? How can social commitment be curricular anchored or democratic processes be implemented within studies?

The Editors: 

Dirk Jahn, research associate at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Alessandra Kenner, research associate at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

David Kergel, Professor at the IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg.

Birte Heidkamp-Kergel, M.A., Research Associate and Coordinator E-Learning Center, Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.

The book focuses on inclusion and diversity as guiding concepts of social discourses on self-understanding in the digital age. An analytical examination of these terms makes it possible to avoid redundancies and incoherencies in theory and (pedagogical) practice. At the same time, an ethical foundation of subject formations is provided. Especially in educational work, the question of an appropriate ethical understanding of subject formations and social practice in the digital age represents a central challenge. With recourse to socio-epistemological analysis strategies, this study provides a historically and ethically informed tracing of the concepts of inclusion and diversity in the digital age.

Author:

Prof. Dr. David Kergel, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg

David Kergel explores the questions of how free and self-determined we are in the digital age, whether the Internet encloses us or whether it opens up new spaces for diversity and education. The starting point is the thesis that the Internet is both heritage and future: postmodern spaces of freedom and neoliberal fixations of the electronic age unfold in the ubiquitous cultural space that digital media span. At the same time, the Internet restructures social spaces in the ‘analogue world’, digitalizes self/world relations or forms digital cultures, which in turn form ourselves. To deal with the ambivalence of the Internet between postmodern diversity and neoliberal subjectification, an understanding of media education based on educational theory is proposed.

Author:

Prof. Dr. David Kergel, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg