Teacher Education in (Post-)Pandemic and (Post-)Digital Times

Silke Braselmann, Lukas Eibensteiner & Laurenz Volkmann

Introducing Teacher Education in (Post-)Pandemic and (Post-)Digital Times: International Perspectives on Intercultural Learning, Diversity and Equity

Drawing on the experiences gained in the field of teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this volume presents international and interdisciplinary perspectives on intercultural learning, diversity and equity in teacher education. It aims to explore the various opportunities presented by the sudden need to adapt to a changed world and to discuss the different challenges that the pandemic has posed for relevant processes in teacher education. In this specific context, the contributions from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds discuss three central and inextricably intertwined issues: (1) The changing focus on inter- and transcultural experiences in ever-evolving physical, digital and hybrid spaces seems to supersede scenarios of primary “purely” physical formats. A shift can be observed as education is moving from abrupt challenges to tackle crisis management in the sense of “emergency remote teaching” to experiences with new digital tools, platforms and formats to the integration of newly experienced digital options into traditional teaching-learning options (Eibensteiner & Schlaak 2021; Volkmann 2021). This is accompanied by a growing understanding of the demands of a “post-digital” environment where the dichotomy between a supposedly real offline and a non-real online world is disappearing by leaps and bounds. As the Internet increasingly permeates every sphere of the “real” world, “the material world is inherently embedded in the digital, and vice versa; both spheres have become inseparable” (Lenehan 2022: 15). (2) In order to effectively meet the demands of the “post-digital” era, (teacher) educators need to acquire a high level of (critical) media literacy or digital literacy in order to use digital tools, platforms and teaching-learning formats in classroom contexts. This includes not only the competent use of innovative technologies, but also the ability to critically reflect on one’s own use of media and to analyse how media content may contain, reproduce or reinforce inequalities or discrimination. (3) As the pandemic has revealed or exacerbated existing problems in education, such as unequal access to digital devices, it seems of paramount interest to analyse how the status quo could be improved towards diversity-sensitive and inclusive learning cultures with the support of digital, hybrid and physical scenarios and to explore how this focus can already be implemented in teacher education to raise awareness of these increasingly relevant challenges.

1. One of the pertinent issues during the pandemic was the lack of opportunities for authentic inter- and transcultural experiences – caused by limited mobility over a long period of time. As a central concept in teacher education, the notion of interculturality has not gone unchallenged and has been criticised for promoting a narrow understanding of “cultures” as closed entities, frequently (erroneously) linked to nation states (Kalpaka & Mecheril 2010). While the concept of transculturality focuses on transcending these potentially harmful binaries (Welsch 2013), recent definitions of interculturality highlight the concepts’ inherent potential to promote exchange, communication and appreciation between individuals from different backgrounds and environments. Rather than understanding cultures as containers of certain attributes, characteristics, etc., this renewed understanding promotes the idea that interculturality emerges from and happens in individual exchanges and interpersonal networks (Bolten 2020). For educational contexts, this emphasises a sense of interconnectedness and reciprocity, as it is also promoted by advocats of Global Citizenship Education. In this approach, “openness to the plurality of people and their environs” (Gaudelli 2016: 6) is central, and the capacity of all people to “participate in multiple communities, often simultaneously, at a wide range from local to global” (ibid.) is recognised. This increasingly wide range of participatory opportunities has been greatly transformed and expanded during and after COVID-19 and its forced retreat into the digital spheres.

In educational contexts, different digital formats have evolved rapidly and have certainly influenced how inter- and transcultural learning is perceived in terms of physical, digital and hybrid contexts (Braselmann, Ewers & Kramer 2023; O’Dowd 2021). If the COVID-19-pandemic did not usher in the era of the “post-digital world,” it certainly generated a growing awareness of how communication, dissemination of ideas and (inter-/trans-)cultural encounters are now common in digital environments. To a large extent, local exchange and social proximity have been shifted into the realm of the digital or the hybrid. Particularly in the context of foreign language education, which also informs the background of many of the contributions in this volume, the exploration of different realities without the need for long journeys had been hailed as highly beneficial for future teachers long before the pandemic. Here, immersion in another language through digital language encounters was seen as an accessible and viable solution for language proficiency. Consider, for example, a quote that demonstrates the enthusiasm for the Internet expressed by foreign language professionals in the pre-COVID-19 era: As Sykes (2018: 221) states, “technological innovations offer a unique opportunity for language educators to engage in deep language experiences that move beyond the translation of words as they relate to the community in which the target language is spoken”. However, in light of recent developments – i.e. English as a lingua franca and the loss of clearly defined “target cultures”, global social networking and in-time translation devices – such statements from less than a decade ago seem almost outdated and antiquated in 2023. Rather than cementing dichotomies of real-life and online-communicative practices, recent theoretical discussions in sociology, media studies and cultural studies have begun to dismantle time-honoured notions and examine the interconnectedness of the digital and analogue spheres in terms of a critical understanding of the pervasive power of technology in social environments.

The term “post-digitality” best captures this, characterising how the constant flow of digital information exchange on digital devices is ontologically intertwined with the way we perceive the “real world”, and vice versa, to the point where a clear demarcation line is no longer be discernible. In other words, as communication, and more specifically teaching-learning scenarios, take place in an endlessly oscillating flow between offline and online spheres, existing social, communication and learning practices need to be reconsidered (Knox 2019; Lenehan 2022). One of the yet to be defined goals of teaching and learning may well be to shift definitions of interculturality and transculturality towards an awareness of the “post-digital” world, how it affects learners and teachers alike and how it changes pre-digital concepts of self and alterity.

2. Since the pandemic has, as has been widely argued, accelerated the digitalisation of learning and teaching processes, it has also accelerated the demand for “media literacy” or “digital literacy”. An influential definition of media literacy has been offered by US scholar Aufderheide, as the ability to “decode, evaluate, analyse and produce both print and electronic media. The fundamental objective of media literacy is critical autonomy in relationship to all media” (Aufderheide 2017: 1). Terms such as media literacy education (more commonly used in the US), media education (UK) or the German Medienpädagogik, Mediendidaktik or Medienerziehung refer to concepts of empowerment, active “prosumer” choices, and have frequently been aligned with “critical literacy” or “critical media literacy”. Here, media users are asked and encouraged to understand whether and how media messages contain bias, racial or gender inequality or discrimination by understanding how overt or subliminal indoctrination is embedded in media codes and conventions. Definitions of media literacy and digital literacy often overlap, and it is often the case that “media literacy” is used almost metonymically for “digital literacy”. Like media literacy, digital literacy is seen in teacher education as a transversal key competence that enables competent practitioners to acquire other competences such as information processing, communication, content creation, safety awareness, problem solving and bias detection (Ferrari 2013; Pegrum, Dudeney & Hockly 2018).

Critical media literacy is often understood as “a critique of mainstream approaches to literacy and a political project for democratic change” (Kellner & Share 2007: 61). This vision of a more equitable education is shared by proponents of “multiliteracies”. This highly influential pedagogy, first conceived by The New London Group, takes as its starting point “the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies” (Cazden et al. 1996: 61). In their commitment to preparing students for changing life-worlds and globalised work environments, pedagogues are therefore challenged to address these changes and to enable learners to become not only active participants in these changes but “active designers – makers – of social futures” (ibid.: 64). Accordingly, a critical multiliteracies pedagogy will educate students “with a focus on social issues, including inequities of race, class, gender, or disability and the ways in which we use language and other semiotic resources to shape our understanding of these issues” (Vasquez, Janks & Comber 2019: 307).

Such conceptualisations are, of course, in line with one of UNESCO’s key documents, the “Sustainable Development Goals,” which go beyond a focus on environmental issues. The UNESCO defines these goals not only as the promotion of theoretical, factual or declarative knowledge but rather as the acquisition of competences that “suppor[t]‌ self-directed learning, participation and collaboration, problem-orientation, inter- and transdisciplinary learning and the linking of informal and formal learning” (UNESCO 2017: 7). The aim is to empower learners to make informed choices and take responsible action for a just society and for sustainable development.

3. Finally, the important role of learning in peer groups, of sufficient technical support, time and space for successful (digital) learning processes during and after the pandemic is highlighted. These challenges also become relevant in the context of teacher education at university level. Students with a relatively low socio-economic status were particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as they struggled to access online classes, earn money to support their studies, or build networks to support them during their first teaching experiences. As a result, teacher educators had to identify emerging personal crises among their students and ensure equitable access to tasks, learning materials and ways to support equal learning opportunities – while preparing future teachers for the same flexibility and awareness in their teaching practice. As a different experience, teacher educators were able to discover that, despite the obvious challenges, participation in the newly discovered digital teaching and learning scenarios may have led to creative outcomes for some students and supported the creation, discussion and implementation of new and inclusive task forms for their future teaching practice.

These challenges to teacher education need to be taken seriously, and critical approaches to teacher education are currently gaining momentum to address the growing challenges for educators living and working in a world at risk. In terms of equity and inclusion, it therefore seems of paramount interest to analyse where the pandemic has revealed or exacerbated problems in teacher education and how the status quo might be improved. Questions that need to be asked are: How can we ensure that teacher education in (post-)pandemic times shapes (and is shaped by) diversity-sensitive and inclusive teaching and learning cultures that are open and accessible to all? How can future teachers be prepared and empowered to establish and implement such new learning cultures in their (future) teaching practice? And how can digital tools act as scaffolds for students with learning difficulties in the future? The overarching aim of diversity-sensitive learning and teaching environments is to not only to recognise but also to actively support diverse identities and contexts, and to ensure that differences between individuals are valued rather than problematised or even discriminated against – an attitude that needs to be established at all stages of teacher education.

Digital media can help in this task by providing a variety of options for creating inclusive and diversity-sensitive teaching and learning formats. The integration of digital media to promote inclusion in educational contexts has been referred to as “diclusion” (Schulz 2023), with the main aim of achieving greater participation and equality of opportunity in educational contexts. The focus lies on the potential of digital media to remove barriers or create individualised teaching and learning formats. For example, digital media can support the implementation of multilingual-sensitive classroom practices that value the whole linguistic repertoire of learners – including heritage languages and non-standard varieties. In schools, teachers should aim to create such safe spaces where students feel comfortable expressing themselves in the language or variety of their choice – and teacher training should equip them to do so. In the context of language education, this also includes translingual practices (García 2009) which can be seen as an opportunity of overcoming the monolingual habitus (Gogolin 1994) and promoting equality and inclusion of students’ diverse languages or varieties in the classroom and beyond. For this complex task, teachers themselves need to acquire a plurilingual competence in order to act appropriately in pedagogical contexts. Such plurilingual competence involves not only the ability to speak different languages or varieties, but also to switch between them according to the communicative situation, and to think critically about language practices, among other things (CoE 2001, 2018).