FUTURE EDUCATION Conference 2026: Interdisciplinary Research Perspectives

„Language proficiency“ is a key to educational succes and social participation. (At least) Two questions, however, are controversial: (1) What does „language proficiency“ mean? And (2) Who is responsible for promoting „language proficiency“ in the respective sense? Both questions will be addressed.

Question (1) requires answers that arise from assumptions about linguistic challenges that learners have to master. It is highly likely that these include linguistic diversity: the presence of more than one language (“multilingualism”) as well as multiple language varieties (“multilectalism”), and communication through different modalities (e.g. spoken, signed, written, or technology-mediated; “multimodality”). Against this backdrop, language proficiency means: ability to master the challenges of linguistic diversity approproately, autonomously and fair.

Question (2) refers to traditional concepts of task sharing between families and educational institutions. The latter continue to be deeply entrenched in traditions of monolingualism and the privileging of a narrow set of languages as subjects of formal education. Schools (and considerable parts of the general public) expect that families „deliver“ children who can function appropriatley in a monolingual & standard modus (Piller 2016). Hardly any education system has taken on the responsibility for promoting language proficiency in the sense mentioned above.

I will present research research that underpins: addressing the challenges associated with linguistic diversity has no negative impact on mainstream education. Furthermore, I will present an overarching approach to general language education that allows students to reach their full linguistic potential – regardless of their families' resources to support their language development (Gogolin 2020).

The 21st century comes with a number of global challenges for mankind. These challenges include a changing climate, feeding an ever-growing population and a more sustainable production and use of energy. While students grow increasingly concerned about these challenges that will shape their future lives, STEM education however is still mostly focused on teaching students scientific principles and practices with little to no connection to these challenges. In order to provide students with the competence to mitigate the global challenges they will be facing, a new vision of STEM education is needed. The presentation will discuss what students really need to be prepared for the global challenges, develop a vision of a 21st STEM education that will not only prepare students to mitigate the challenges, but will also support them in developing the belief(s) that they are a crucial element of the solution. The presentation will conclude outlining a road map towards this vision.

Forschungsarbeit und Biografie von Knut Neumann

Technology-enhanced learning has been studied for decades. During that time, thousands of experiments and quasi-experiments investigated different design features and support measures of digital technologies and their interactions with learners’ individual differences. Despite this wealth of studies, they often focus on effects of specific digital technologies and their technology-specific features on learning outcomes. Thus, a general analysis targeting the impact of digital technology on learning across different technologies is apparently difficult. Additionally, when digital technologies are put into practice, studies sometimes reveal results that are not in line with those from controlled experiments. Therefore, considering research in technology-enhanced teaching might be helpful. Such studies consider teachers’ digital skills, identify effective contextual conditions at an institutional level, and delve into the orchestration of digital technologies within classrooms.

In this keynote, I will offer an evidence-based and meta-level perspective that focuses on learning activities during technology-enhanced learning, thus, highlighting the relevance of how digital technology is used during learning in higher education and beyond. Specifically, I will elaborate on how adopting a perspective centered on learning activities helps us to better understand mechanisms of technology-enhanced learning and conditions for effective learning and teaching with digital technologies. In addition, as recent advances in digital technologies and artificial intelligence confront teachers, learners, and researchers with new possibilities albeit also challenges, I will complement the perspective on learning activities with a perspective on learning analytics. I aim to elaborate on how to shape recent advances in digital technologies and related research positively.

Forschungsarbeit und Biografie von Michael Sailer

Growing inequalities affect children's chances of success in our increasingly digital society, creating diverse and growing learning support needs in education and training worldwide. This calls for developing innovative and inclusive pedagogical solutions to enrich educational traditions. Creative technology education, which aims to provide all children with a high-quality and safe environment to grow and learn using technological tools, is one possible solution.

My research shows that creative technology education plays a vital role in today's quality pedagogy. In particular, the cross-curricular pedagogy of technology education (invention pedagogy) can contribute to quality growth, teaching and mentoring in integrated learning contexts. Invention teaches both cross-curricular skills and different learning domains, such as science and technology content, creative learning domains and mathematics (STEAM subjects) through collaborative work. The perspectives I will explore in my keynote highlight aspects of digital inclusion, digitally supported learning, and creative technology education.

Forschungsarbeit und Biografie von Kati Sormunen