Editorial: Acting in the Field of Media and IT Education

Abstract

The study deals with offers in the field of media and computer science education for children in middle childhood with the focus on strategies and framework conditions of pedagogues. In the first part of the research work the socialization of children today is considered. In addition to socialization theory, the meta-processes of mediatization, individualization and globalization and their effects on children‘s socialization are presented. Subsequently, media use is analyzed in the context of the specifics of middle childhood by describing media acquisition and development processes, findings on media use, and the discourses on risks and opportunities regarding children‘s media use. The self-evidence of media and digital artifacts in the lifeworld of children characterizes childhood today. As a result, the expectations of all members of society to deal with social change and its associated phenomena are increasing. Education is seen as the key to social participation. It is therefore not surprising that education is given the task of responding to the demands of increasing digitization. The third chapter presents the disparate ideas of the various social actors as to how development-oriented education in the digital world could be designed. From a general pedagogy science perspective, a theoretical framework of analysis has been developed in the third chapter. This framework underpins the educational science understanding of pedagogical action according to Benner (2001) and makes it possible to analyze target determinations from an educational point of view. There is a lack of empirical evidence on the focus of extracurricular pedagogical practice for middle-aged children and the objectives it follows. The conditions and structures under which pedagogical action takes place are also unknown. In order to close this research gap, guideline-based interviews were conducted with 31 pedagogues and the data was first analyzed by means of content structuring qualitative text analysis (based on Kuckartz 2018) using a combination of inductively and deductively formed categories. For further evaluation of the systematized data, a typology of six types was formed using the concept of the attribute space and a multi-step reduction procedure. The extracurricular activities in the field of media and computer science education include preventive and educational measures as well as educational offers that children can use for their development which are implemented with and without the use of media. Both in the pedagogical specialist discourse and in most of the partially formalized activities examined, the children’s reflective and analytical abilities are targeted in addition to their creative abilities. Different strategies are shown in the field of media and computer science education, in which areas of tension and challenges emerge through the interplay of social framework conditions and pedagogical practice.