The challenges of technological and medial change within present-day societies are the focus of public debates concerning which knowledge and competencies pupils acquire in the global information society, and in which media these should be transported. Historical periods featuring processes of societal change and reform, in which the political objective was to open up the existing education system, have often had a catalyst effect in defining new knowledge and the production and introduction of new teaching materials for schools. This interrelationship is shaped by a complex process of discussion and negotiation, which connects up a wealth of individuals from the political, economic and educational sectors.
This research project not only addressed this current discussion on the relationship between the societal shifts within information and the media in education policy and scholarship; it also sought to develop new perspectives by examining the questions of current debate from a historical perspective using two key periods of societal change as well as the re-defining of knowledge and the media for the classroom. The project inquired as to the connection between educational reform during the democratisation of education and society on the one hand, and the production of new knowledge and new media on the other. It examined how new items of knowledge are acquired via education policy, scholarship, teaching staff and editors at textbook publishers or media companies, and in which media formats they should be conveyed. The project took the example of knowledge production for the social studies classroom (history, geography, political science/civics and subject combinations in the media of the textbook, educational film, and educational television). It focused on two periods of societal transformation: the Free State of Braunschweig during the Weimar Republic and the federal state of Lower Saxony in the 1960s and 1970s, both of which constituted the ideal framework for this study. This is due firstly to the close relationship between education and curricula reform via new media and, secondly, to the active role of the publishers based in the region and the newly established institutes working in the field of education science, such as the Braunschweig-based Forschungsinstitut für Erziehungswissenschaften (Research Institute of Education Science) and the Media Education Centre of the Alfeld Teacher Training College and the University of Hildesheim.
This project was particularly innovative in that it constitutes the first study of the dynamics between the experience of societal and medial change, the re-definition of school knowledge, and the continued and re-development of educational media. These dynamics have resonated and been recognised far beyond the region and thus interlinked the three levels of individual persons and institutions, knowledge and the media.
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Results
By combining its innovative guiding inquiry with the scope of the project, the study achieved new insights as to the specific innovative potential of the region for educational reform during the twentieth century. For the purposes of the project, a wealth of documents from the state, university and company archives within Lower Saxony, documents that have received little interest until now, were evaluated and given a new thematic context as well as linked to the contents of the media archive of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (North German Broadcasting Corporation) in Hamburg.
The scientific results were presented at a public conference investigating the extent to which this twofold access of historical experience and current situation can lead to new perspectives for the social studies classroom in Lower Saxony. This conference included participants from all three levels of the study, especially representatives from education policy in Lower Saxony, teachers, education scientists and employees of the textbook publishers based in the area.
Events
- Neues Wissen in neuen Medien? Bildungs- und mediengeschichtliche Perspektiven auf das 20. Jahrhundert.
Workshop at the Georg Eckert Institute – Member of the Leibniz Alliance. 23/24 November 2017.
Publications
- Sammler, Steffen, New educational media for creative and socially open schooling. The aspirations and realities of Lower Saxony’s Educational Revival in the 1960s and 1970s, in: Bruillard, Eric, Anichini, Alessandra, Baron, Georges-Louis (eds), Changing media – changing schools? IARTEM 2017 14th International Conference on Research on Textbooks and Educational Media, Kongsberg 2019, p. 61–68.
- Sammler, Steffen, Bruch Anne, Europäische Initiativen im Lehrfilmbereich und Schulfernsehen als Herausforderung für die Darstellung Europas im Unterricht (1950er bis 1970er Jahre), in Augschöll Blasbichler, Annemarie, Schütze, Sylvia, Matthes, Eva (eds), Europa und Bildungsmedien, Bad Heilbrunn 2019, p. 275–284.
- Sammler, Steffen, Neues Wissen in Neuen Medien? Gesellschaftliche Debatten um die Praxis neuer Unterrichtsmodelle im Zeichen von Medienrevolution und sozialem Wandel in den 1960er- und 1970er Jahren, in: Historische Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen. Arbeitskreis für Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Rundbrief Nr. 26 (2018).
- Neues Wissen in neuen Medien? Bildungs- und mediengeschichtliche Perspektiven auf das 20. Jahrhundert.
