Introduction

This chapter begins with the axiomatic presupposition that the discourse around (post)digitality could greatly benefit from looking back on the past of education science. More specifically, we propose that the German concept of Bildung—considered the “god-term” of education science by Luhmann and Schorr (1988)—can enrich existing debates around learning, self-formation, and personal as well as collective improvement in the digital realm. This beneficial coupling is suspected to work both ways, just as the existing scholarship on Bildung could move forward by considering works from outside its classic domains. This unlikely match requires further explanatory work, however, which will be sketched in the paragraphs below. Having clarified central points of reference regarding Bildung and its suspected overlapping with (post)digitality, this chapter will address existing understandings of (post)digitality as well as its implications for teaching and learning, seeking to connect the dimension of learning with teaching and learning materials. Special focus will be dedicated to (the promises of) Open Educational Resources (OER), which will be discussed regarding their potentials and limitations in terms of inclusion-sensitivity. Secondly, the possibilities of postdigital Bildung in guiding conversations about inclusion and participation in the realm of educational media will be explored. The Inclusive Teaching Materials Project (ITM project, 2018–2021) will be presented as an example in which participatory methods are employed to evaluate and design learning materials that suit multiple needs. The aims and approaches as well as preliminary results of the project will be presented, to be read as impulses toward a reflection on the status quo regarding the production of inclusion-sensitive teaching and learning materials in general and OER in particular. The chapter will close with final reflections on the interplay between learning materials and postdigital Bildung, the latter being identified as a potential guidepost for future education. We will begin with an abbreviated discussion of one of Germany’s messiest concepts, the idea of Bildung as well as its suspected points of contact to the discourse around (post)digitality.

Throughout the times, Bildung has undergone tremendous change (cf. Vogt & Neuhaus, 2021a), yet it has served as a unifying platform to bring together different sets of discourses and ideas. Contrary to the international discourse on education and competences (cf. Grigat, 2012), Bildung’s least common denominator is that it is a holistic endeavor which combines aspects of learning (i.e. specific skills) with moral improvement and self-cultivation and is thereby distinctively different from what is understood internationally as education (cf. Oelkers, 1999). As such, this endeavor can be traced back to humankind’s earliest philosophical as well as religious efforts (cf. Neuhaus et al., 2023; Neuhaus & Vogt, 2022). The concept’s messiness also manifests itself in the lesser defined goals of Bildung, which differ tremendously from one scholar to another. Yet most philosophers and scholars discussing Bildung reference, to diverging degrees, the ideas and ideals of freedom, autonomy, critical thinking, and insight (into oneself as well as the world) as its goals (cf. e.g., Von Humboldt, 1792/2002; Kant, 1784/1983). While being more holistically oriented, Bildung is simultaneously a messy concept as it intersects in rhizomatic fashion (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1974) with—among other entities—institutions and institutional alignment (cf. Neuhaus et al., 2021); processes of inclusion, exclusion, and (social) demarcation (cf. Vogt & Neuhaus, 2021b; Neuhaus, 2021); as well as struggles for participation (cf. Boger et al., 2021). As such, questions of Bildung are negotiated in neighboring discourses,Footnote 1 such as (but not limited to) inclusion/inclusivity, participation, and—due to their strong ties to the idea(l) of autonomy—in political and economic discussions (cf. Taleb, 2018).

The ambiguity indicated above has led many scholars to abandon the concept of Bildung, yet newly emerging research on as well as re-perspectivations of the topic suggest that Bildung covers or at least touches upon many areas of tremendous importance for the twenty-first century, such as the nation and nationalism (cf. Stieger, 2020), meaning-making and well-being (cf. D’Olimpio & Teschers, 2017; Neuhaus & Vogt, 2022), as well as digitality/digital education (cf. Kergel, 2022; Neuhaus et al., 2023). The concept of Bildung—despite its blurriness and complexity—thus has great potential to help guide the role of education within (post)digitality. This is not the first instance of bringing Bildung into the conversation around digital education (c.f. Kergel et al., 2022; Peters & Jandrić, 2018). Although it has been repeatedly pointed out how the term with its theoretical richness and specific cultural anchoring in the German context is particularly interesting, it can also be highly instructive as the basis for thinking about the interplay between education and digitality. If Bildung is recognized as a rich and historically as well as theoretically anchored concept, ways of thinking about Bildung (and its aims) can be structured by treating it the same way as concepts with a similar broadness, such as the concept of religion (cf. Neuhaus et al., 2023). Both have in common—when following one central aspect shared by many long-lasting interpretations of Bildung—that they strive for the rightFootnote 2 way to conduct oneself in the world, an endeavor linked to the search for truth as well as similar goals. Such a search for truth—also translated as the right, the beautiful, or the good (cf. Vogt & Neuhaus, 2021b)—can be oriented towards external feedback or internal coherency as markers of truth.Footnote 3 As soon as Bildung is primarily geared to external feedback, it becomes an arbitrary, interchangeable, and profane concept (Neuhaus et al., 2023), which can be moved in all directions; the usage of proxies, such as effectivity, learning management, or learning outcomes can be read as a manifestation of such a profanation. The constant oscillation between abstract (higher level) ideals and concrete realizations, therefore, protects Bildung from becoming too one-sided and, thus, (morally) corrupt (cf. Neuhaus, 2021). Its self-proclaimed aim to search for truth as well as sensitivity towards one-sided arrangements are reasons why we suggest that conversations about digitality and education could largely benefit from this intellectual cross-fertilization.

In fact, Bildung and postdigitality already share a plethora of assumptions: Bildung renders visible the interweaving of the subject with social, political, and economic conditions and contextualizes the self within the world. An actively engaged subjectFootnote 4 and its participation is considered a prerequisite for Bildung (Hansen et al., 2006). It is this idea of Bildung that acknowledges the self’s constant entanglement with the world, counterbalancing deterministic framings of digital education as an uncritical and decontextualized approach to effective and efficient learning (Emejulu & Mcgregor, 2019), which simultaneously disregards the “social nature of digital technology” (Selwyn, 2012). This highlights the potential of the term to be used as a basis for thinking about postdigital participation. Conceptually, in this sense, postdigital Bildung firstly recognizes the multiple entanglements of the subject with the social, economic, and political conditions of an equally multiply entangled digitality. In accordance with the concept of Bildung and its connection between learning, moral improvement, and self-cultivation, postdigital Bildung can be grounded in the idea of an active and participating as well as critical subject. Bildung as a concept contrasts uncritical, technocratic (e.g. Tröhler, 2013), technodeterministic, and solutionist notions of education in the digital condition (e.g. Sharma, 2022) with theoretical and historical depth. If this notion is paralleled with nuanced perspectives along the lines of postdigitality, postdigital Bildung can be understood as a counter to the often undercomplex and inadequate notions of “digital education” that overlook these entanglements. Due to the complexity and lack of clear definitions of both terms, postdigital Bildung cannot be defined conclusively. Rather, the term can be approached like a guiding principle which leads the pressing negotiations in the current interplay of education and (post)digitality. Bildung and postdigitality thus step into a reciprocal relationship whose synergies should be explored as potentially they inform critical educational practices for digital futures. This chapter sketches out postdigital Bildung as a variant of education in the digital condition that embraces its messiness and sociopolitical, cultural, and economic entanglements by exploring how to overcome essentialist and instrumentalist applications and co-constituting education in the (post)digital condition in terms of both participation and critical thinking.

Learning Materials in the Postdigital Condition

New Paths for Teaching and Learning (Materials) in the Postdigital Condition

The shaping of education under conditions of digitality has been marked by a sense of urgency, not least since the COVID-19 pandemic: digital transformations made “rethinking education” (European Parliament, 2020) necessary in order to meet the challenges of tomorrow. In Germany, the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs speaks of a re-organization of school and teaching (Ministerpräsidentenkonferenz, 2021) that needs to be undertaken. Simultaneously, connoted terminology such as “disruption” and “innovation” captivates the “collective imagination” (Daub, 2020), whereby criticism of this optimism is automatically tied to positions of stagnation. Along neoliberal and technocentric lines,

technology evolves too quickly and schools adapt too slowly; the labour market demands new skills and competences but the teachers are too incapable or unwilling to adapt their competences and methods to the new “learning environment”; the global economy set [sic] conditions based on “hard” facts but educational institutions are still too attached to “soft” social and cultural factors, and so on. (Stocchetti, 2014, p. 32f.)

a striking juxtaposition shaping public debates about the interplay of educational institutions and digital technology. In this context, it is also important to consider how the focus of digital education discourses has shifted from teaching to learning, and thus the goals of education have once again been relegated to the wings, while efficiency and effectiveness have moved to the fore (Bayne, 2015).

Within this framework, teachers would serve as nothing more than a “delivery system” (Ferneding, 2003, p. 83) enabling mere knowledge transfer. At the same time, a purely technology- and output-centered dimension of digital education implies thinking about technologies separately from their inherent social practices (Bayne, 2015). Stocchetti contrasts this with democratic education, which should be understood as a “fundamental resource to pursue the egalitarian ideals through the broadening of participation” (2014, p. 22). Here again, the significance and impact of technologies should not be uncritically affirmed or utterly dismissed, but rather critically assessed: “uncritical approval is dangerous because it misconstrues the social meaning of the information age and ignores the ideological implications of technocentric discourse” (Stocchetti, 2014, p. 26). Even more culturally embedded perspectives on digitality (c.f. Stalder, 2018)—often presented as contrastive to instrumental and technocentric positions—can be considered abbreviated when approaching the interplay of education and digital technologies in an overly optimistic and consequently insufficiently critical fashion.

Postdigital perspectives now offer “an alternative view on human-technology relationships” (Knox, 2019, p. 359), aiming to mix up assumptions about the digital as either “the zenith of technical process […] or as a dehumanising force” (ibid.). Postdigital approaches highlight the idea that digital technology is to be understood as “embedded in, and entangled with, existing social practices and economic and political systems” (Knox, 2019, p. 358), which demands “a much more nuanced and critical view of human-technology relations” (Knox, 2019, p. 359). When looking at teaching and learning within these conditions, it was pivotal for teachers to see the possibilities generated by educational technologies. However, it needed to be acknowledged that these possibilities are “socially, and materially situated and relate to the traditions, practices, culture, policy, and infrastructure in which they are embedded” (Fawns, 2022). The postdigital holds the potential to make this embeddedness visible. If postdigitality challenges existent ideas about how to think of technology and digitality, postdigital Bildung can now guide explorations in the field of education within the digital condition. Perspectives and practices of teachers and learners alike can be centered when (co-)creating postdigital education.

Contesting Openness: Potentials and Limitations of OER with Regards to Participation and Inclusion

It is pivotal to reflect on the factors that shape the handling of teaching and learning materials in the digital condition. Of particular significance are postulates of openness in education and Open Educational Resources (OER). Openness as a concept was “bound up with the philosophical foundations of modern education with its commitments to freedom, citizenship, knowledge for all, social progress and individual transformation” (Peters & Britez, 2008, p. xvii), which characterizes knowledge and communication systems, epistemologies, society and politics, institutions or organizations, and individual personalities. Openness claims to promote “accessibility of knowledge, technology and other resources; the transparency of action; the permeability of organizational structures; and the inclusiveness of participation” (Schlagwein et al., 2017). According to this line of thought, it is being contextualized with democracy (Peters & Britez, 2008) as well as, in the context of the MOOC model, a contribution to “participatory citizenship” (McAuley et al., 2010). The present decade can be described as “the ‘open’ decade” (Peters, 2008, p. 4) but should, beyond that, be considered “a change in philosophy and ethos, a set of interrelated and complex changes that transforms markets and the mode of production, ushering in a new collection of values based on openness, the ethic of participation and peer-to-peer collaboration” (ibid.).

Associated with the idea of sharing and the removal of barriers, openness is considered a “remedy to educational inequality” (Deimann, 2019, p. 39) and can thus undoubtedly be described as a “social and political project” (Peters, 2008, p. 4) or “political agenda” (Otto & Kerres, 2022). Within the realm of educational media, this approach is specifically associated with Open Educational Resources. Despite the lack of a universally established definition (Geser, 2007), OER can be described as

teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, text books, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. (Atkins et al., 2007, p. 4)

Thus it is claimed that OER, being free of cost and generally accessible online, “remove restrictions for learners and educators” (Deimann & Farrow, 2013). Here, openness is “built on the belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources without constraint,” making education more accessible and effective (Peters, 2008, p. 10). OER is assumed to support “quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory as well as enhance academic freedom and professional autonomy of teachers by widening the scope of materials available for teaching and learning” (UNESCO, 2019). Thus, a democratizing and even an “anti-hierarchical [and] countercultural” (Gourlay, 2015) effect is attributed to OER while traditional forms and institutions of learning are being positioned as “representative of elitism, reproductive of privilege, exclusionary, hierarchical and therefore antithetical” (ibid.) to values connected with the OER movement—the term “movement” indicating that “participants themselves see the desirability of openness as ideology,” demanding that participants comply with the proposed beliefs of openness (Funes & Mackness, 2018).

This ideology, however, was “in need of a counter narrative” (ibid.)—an indicator of how framing openness as an intrinsic key to inclusivity and participation is also met with criticism. First of all, an inherent lack of philosophical and theoretical foundation was ascribed to openness as a concept (Deimann & Farrow, 2013), which subsequently has been criticized as “under-theorised” (Knox, 2013). The wider history of and literature on the development of open systems is often disregarded in accounts promoting OER, obscuring the fact that today’s open education has a history providing context and underlying values (Peters, 2008, p. 14). This criticism of weak foundations and oversimplifications can be traced back by highlighting the fact that education science long ago recognized the limitations of claims along the lines of “education for all,” acknowledging the manifold and complex mechanisms of exclusion and segregation hindering social participation (Kerres, 2019). In this sense, it remains to be examined whether and to what extent mere access to OER actually leads to more participation in educational processes (Kerres, 2019, p. 5). Moreover, evidence for claims of OER fostering practices of egalitarianism, equality and higher order learning has proved insufficient (Gourlay, 2015). As such, the simple equation “the more open, the better” (Deimann, 2019, p. 40) cannot be taken at face value. Otto and Kerres conclude that “the availability of a resource is not the same as education” (2022) since access to education at the societal level is controlled by different mechanisms and does not necessarily mean a reduction in educational inequities. While these perspectives identify the limitations of openness as inherently democratizing, Funes and Mackness point out how the utopian narrative of openness creates aspirational norms “whilst intending to include and encourage diversity, [norms that] can lead to exclusion and homogeneity” (2018). By identifying a set of actual operational norms “that can be hidden in the current open online education context” (ibid.), they show how the more prevalent aspirational norms “create a buffer that enables people to ignore what actually happens in favor of collaboratively ‘creating a desired future’” (Chun, 2016). Gourlay (2015) characterizes the claims surrounding Open Education and OER as a Foucauldian “heterotopia of desire”—“a necessary construct in order to maintain a particular world view and set of identity positions” (ibid.). This way, “opening imperatives in education can create illusions that obscure the view of social inequalities” (Otto & Kerres, 2022). This refers to the fact that academic research must continue to critically accompany the political demand for openness and its ongoing tension with closedness as well as “the contribution of OER to Open Education with regard to broad participation in education, social development and open discourse” (Otto & Kerres, 2022).

These general limitations in the concepts of openness and OER need to be decisively correlated with their potential for participation and inclusion. Inclusion in the broader sense (e.g. Werning & Lütje-Klose, 2012; UNESCO Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, 1994) can be used here as a touchstone for these claims and accounts. In the context of OER, it is primarily openness in the sense of technical, legal, and structural aspects as well as accessibility (technische, rechtliche und strukturelle Offenheit and Offenheit im Sinne von Barrierefreiheit (Muuß-Merholz, 2018)) that is at issue. The fact that inclusive teaching materials play a central role in the design of learning spaces (Vogt & Krenig, 2017, 2019) is thus generally acknowledged. However, openness and adaptability or enabling access alone neglect the fact that content analysis of inclusive teaching materials remains a research desideratum (Vogt & Krenig, 2017). It is also questionable to what extent models of inclusive didactics (Feuser, 2011; Reich, 2014) are referenced in the context of OER. The didactically meaningful adaptation of materials to different needs for use in heterogeneous teaching and learning contexts is technically possible but tends not to be addressed in further detail, with the result that it cannot be problematized in view of the high workload and time constraints of teachers in everyday teaching practice. Overall, the matter of inclusion is not at the center of discourses about OER. This leaves teachers on their own in the actual implementation of the requirements; the responsibility for creating inclusive teaching–learning contexts is thus redirected towards them as individuals. Here, a shift in accountability and responsibility occurs: if inclusion and participation in education are marked as attainable via the modification of learning materials by teachers, the complexity and challenges regarding inclusion and participation in the context of OER need to be addressed no further. The necessary social dialogue around inclusion as a social issue and the far-reaching processing of structures and mechanisms of exclusion (Zorn et al., 2019, p. 17) is limited and abridged within the OER movement. In the course of these abbreviations and lack of linkage to inclusion research, OER discourse refers to an ailing understanding of inclusion and participation that obscures the complexity of the challenges around inclusion and exclusion as social constructs. Inclusive and participatory potentials are proclaimed, but discussed solely in a framework that disregards the complex tensions between inclusion and exclusion and the limitations of OER or even the conceptual frame of “education for all.” In the context of OER and openness, inclusion tends to appear as an “empty signifier” (Laclau, 1996)—as an underdefined and at the same time overdetermined term (Boger et al., 2021) in which relations of (hegemonic) power dictate the definition and thus solution of a problem. This repeats a pattern that Selwyn (2015) identifies in communication about digital technologies:

[T]he ways that digital technology is talked about within educational circles certainly extenuate superficial, ephemeral and often banal aspects of the topic at the expense of any sustained engagement with its messy politics. This is also language that routinely normalises matters of oppression, inequality and injustice. There is little—if any—acknowledgement of differences of class, race, gender, disability or other social ascription. (p. 5)

Such ideologically framed discourses around digitality and education fail to recognize the inherent messiness and “entangled relationships” (Knox, 2019, p. 360) of digital technologies with the social, economic, and political. The self-image of EdTech as “forward-looking optimistic areas of practice” that “can be ‘harnessed’ to improve learning, teaching and other aspects of education” (Selwyn, 2021) falls short. It is now the postdigital perspectives that make these abridgements visible and nameable. The postdigital looks “beyond the promises of instrumental efficiencies, not to call for their end, but rather to establish a critical understanding of the very real influence of these technologies as they increasingly pervade social life” (Jandrić et al., 2018, p. 895).

In this context, thinking along the lines of postdigital logics makes it possible to question the claims and postulates of OER and, moreover, to open them up to constructive criticism. By being centered around the digital condition sui generis, however, this critique remains without a clear indication of how to approach the interplay of education and digitality with regard to their inclusive and participatory potential. We suggest that the broader critical approach of postdigital Bildung can be of guidance here, entering into an active, engaged, and possibly inclusion-oriented as well as participatory discourse around the ideals, potentials, and limitations of education in general and educational media and resources, specifically.

Postdigital Bildung in the Context of Educational Media: Project “Inclusive Teaching Material (ITM)”

Touching on the introductory reflections on the term Bildung as a theoretically and historically rich framework, the discourse on education and digitality can be provided with a holistic understanding of learning (combined with moral improvement and self-cultivation) aligned with ideals of freedom, autonomy, and critical thinking. Bildung implies the active engagement of the subject with the world and thus renders the interweaving of the subject with social, political, and economic conditions visible. Postdigital Bildung as a guiding principle anchored in these insights not only balances out overtly optimistic accounts of EdTech but surpasses a de-contextualized understanding of digital education as a matter of effective “learnification” (Biesta, 2010). Ultimately, there is a potential for it to center the learner’s self in respective discourses and, potentially, to foster participation and broader inclusion as a consequence. With regard to educational media, postdigital Bildung recognizes with Fuchs (2021) how they are entangled with people, technology, and society. Only then can participation in the realm of educational media be linked to a wider discourse around inclusion as well as Bildung. With regard to the limitations of Open Educational Resources, postdigital Bildung could allow for a far more contextualized and nuanced understanding of participation and inclusion in the context of educational resources to be developed. The ITM project serves as an example of how the needs of the learner can be anchored in the handling of materials.

Inclusive Teaching Material (ITM) Project: Approaches and Methods

This project (with the full title Comparing Teaching Materials for Inclusive Learning in Europe—Criteria for their Development and Evaluation) was carried out from 2018 to 2021 in an international cooperation between the universities of Bielefeld (Germany), Luxembourg, Örebro (Sweden), and Bolzano (Italy). The project addressed the lack of criteria for inclusive learning materials in the participating countries within the framework of international comparative research (e.g. Vogt et al., 2021). This lack goes hand-in-hand with an insufficient theoretical understanding of inclusion in the educational media on the market. The result is often low-quality materials that are not suitable for needs-based work in heterogeneous teaching and learning contexts. The project was based on experiences and insights into the daily practice of teachers (e.g. Saunders & Somekh, 2009; Cornwall & Jewkes, 1995), and aimed to interweave teaching practice with academic perspectives; for example, teachers were invited to share their perspectives by developing their own teaching material. Their experiences with and understandings of inclusion in everyday pedagogical practice were the basis for the development of a criteria catalogue for the evaluation of inclusion-sensitive teaching material, which (in contrast to many other scientifically based rubrics for evaluating educational resources) is designed for everyday, low-threshold use. A process model for the development of learning materials as well as training modules were also developed. The participatory observations were carried out at primary schools, and group interviews were conducted with a total of 32 teachers in order to uncover shared and divergent knowledge and opinions. A standardized interview guideline to elicit their understanding of inclusion and inclusive teaching materials ensured the comparability of the interviews in different languages. It became evident that experiences with and expectations of materials depend on (1) how inclusion is generally anchored in the education system, (2) how heterogeneity and demographic characteristics are dealt with by the teachers, and (3) which freedoms/liberties teachers generally have in designing their lessons/materials, or how their work with and on educational media has been shaped by their understanding of, and attitude towards, inclusion.

ITM Results: Criteria for Inclusive Teaching and Learning Material

The insights gathered from the project show variances as well as similarities between learning materials from different countries. Overall, learning materials often emphasize the necessity of individual-related adaptivity while at the same time generally adapting to different learning levels without referring to other aspects of diverse needs (culture- or gender-related for example). Similarly, the materials mostly show no awareness of environment-related adaptivity, but are set up for typical learning situations in classrooms with a teacher present in the room. Regarding the assessment of learning processes, there is often a gap between testing instruments, test results, and conclusions about further learning options. Test results can therefore often not be transferred into helpful learning paths—neither by the teachers nor by the students. Agency and self-efficacy are also undervalued aspects in the learning materials. To be inclusion-oriented would imply giving the children an active voice in their own learning process and taking them seriously as experts on their own learning paths. This could be achieved, for example, by letting them participate in the development of their own learning materials or by asking them for their views on the materials they are given. They should also feel that they can refuse to work with a certain material if they can produce an argument as to why it is not helpful for them due to their current state of learning and learning needs. Awareness with regard to learning processes and learning procedures should also be fostered by learning materials as an element of meta-cognition, but this was lacking in most inclusion-oriented learning materials. The last criterion in the catalogue is that of transparency regarding their references, their limitations, their structural ideas, and their overall understanding of inclusion; such transparency can be conveyed, for example, in conceptual explanations for both teachers and students. Given this frequent shortcoming, students are kept in the dark about the benefits of dealing with a certain learning task.

Based on the criteria mentioned above, the most important results from the analysis of learning materials from different countries can be concluded as follows: in terms of participation and agency, students mostly participate in processes neither of shaping nor improving their learning instruments, nor are they asked whether the materials suit their needs. At the same time, the adaptivity of the materials is narrow and ignores the variety of diversity dimensions. Using learning materials can thus turn into a more exclusive and anti-participatory measurement even though the materials themselves might claim and look different at first glance or—in the case of OER—enable modifications and remixing. The criteria catalog and the process model of the ITM project represent an important extension in thinking about the triangulation between learning materials, inclusivity, and digitality. By providing these instruments and engaging in discourse around inclusivity in learning materials, the ITM project recognizes the interconnectedness of learning materials with “contemporary cultural, social and political processes” (Fuchs, 2021) and overcomes technical questions of functionalities, distribution, and effectivity. Centering the learners’ agency and providing anchors for critical engagement with teaching and learning materials, the ITM project is aligned with postdigital Bildung, the logic of which functions as a guide through the prevalent deliberation and negotiation processes of the digital condition.

Concluding Reflections

Lastly, we will see how the principle of postdigital Bildung becomes visible within the ITM project. Looking at the learners, it becomes evident how their multi-layered needs (which go beyond the mere issue of efficient learning) are brought into the center of attention. As the criteria show, the learner’s self becomes the cornerstone of teaching material and educational resources. Space is made for the learners’ agency when they are enabled to relate critically to the resources available to them. These are aspects anchored in the concept of Bildung. While teachers continue to be responsible for designing inclusive learning situations, they receive support in the form of tools that can be used in everyday teaching life. Along the explicit centrality of an active and visible learning subject, teachers are also enabled to facilitate comprehensive and far-reaching educational processes in the sense of Bildung. In line with the postdigital perspective, the ITM project does not misrecognize materials, their creation, and application nor the platforms and technical assets as neutral entities. Nor is the critical learner a result of learning processes for which learning materials are mere transmitters. Rather, the very engagement with digital materials—including relevant digital platforms and so on—is potentially part of a process in the sense of postdigital Bildung. This again underlines the extent to which materials and educational media as a whole are a central aspect in the design of critical educational practices and futures. With regard to materials and their influence on the inclusivity or exclusivity of learning contexts, higher awareness of the centrality of learning materials for the postdigital condition is advisable. At the same time, a more complex understanding of inclusivity, which goes beyond the recording of different learning levels, needs to be anchored in the field of learning materials. In particular, the movements around openness in education and Open Educational Resources must be responsive to critique and objections as well as findings from academic research. In this context, the type of learning subject that underlies OER content and platforms, or even the OER movement as a whole, needs to be made more transparent or, rather, negotiated in the first place. Generally speaking, the discourse on learning materials as key elements of inclusion-oriented teaching and learning contexts must be further developed so that a broad awareness of these issues can be anchored and embedded in theory and practice (as well as future teacher training and professionalization).

With regard to the guiding principle of postdigital Bildung itself, its potential for a critical engagement with education in the digital condition must be further explored and placed on a broader footing. The anchor must be to enable educators and learners to critically engage with and potentially co-shape postdigitality.