Digitalisation of education for what? Reflection on education stream at the Digital with Purpose Summit 2024

Abstract

At the DwP Summit 2024, a number of very interesting workshops were held, which serves to illustrate the potential of digital technologies to enhance the education system. What is lacking is a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the situation by educational domains, geo-political areas and specific educational objective. European policies in Higher Education (HE) and EU-policies in primary and secondary education, HE and Vocational Education and Training (VET) indicate that education systems are changing, also in the realms of digitalisation and sustainability although there is a dearth of analysis of their impact in the innovation capacity of the education sub-systems. Another area that remains largely unexplored is the extent to which novel education and learning technique and approaches are being implemented in schools and other learning environments. The debate on collaborative and cooperative learning approaches, challenge learning and problem-based learning, as well as the use of games in formal education serve as indications of grassroot innovations. This impression is strengthened by the number of concrete initiatives that have been presented in the workshops at the DwP. However, they are not aligned with the overarching objective of GESI to support the sustainable transition by digitalisation. For future actions, this working paper suggests making a clear distinction between education technologies (or methodologies) and digitalization and asking more concretely how digitalization can enhance the effective use of the different education technologies to achieve educational goals.