Profile, self- and professional understanding

Media education as a goal of media pedagogy
Media education is one of the central key areas of the 21st century: it combines technology and culture, subject and society, science and practice - and is thus seen as the interface between the front end and back end of an increasingly digital world. At its core, as a task and target category of media education, it stands for enabling people to remain or become capable of judgment, action and education in this medialized world through appropriate skills. School is and remains the central place for this.

Media education as a scientific discipline
Media education can be seen as a relatively young scientific discipline that deals with all questions relating to the pedagogical relevance of media. It is a science of reflection and action and therefore aims to develop research-based and practice-relevant theory with regard to educational and educationally relevant action through, with and about media(DGfE, 2017). Its central subject is thus the role of media in processes and relationships of education, upbringing, socialization, learning or teaching or forms of pedagogical socialization in general and in particular. These are questions, problems and phenomena that affect every educational practice and educational science discipline, but are not (only) considered by media education from the specific perspective of an educational practice (kindergarten, school, extracurricular child and youth work, adult education, etc.) or educational science sub-discipline or neighboring discipline (elementary education, school education, social work, subject didactics, etc.), but with a focus on media and medialities. Accordingly, media education is concerned with the overarching, connecting and special aspects of media and medialities in these contexts, through the specific research of which it gains its disciplinary identity(cf. Meder, 2017).

Media education is the basis for current pedagogical professionalization. In university education, it aims to promote and acquire media education skills. This includes media literacy (as well as so-called 'digital' skills) "and is understood as knowledge, skills and the ability to reflect, combined with a professional ethical attitude, which is necessary so that those working in media education can stimulate and support learning and educational processes with, about and through media in the sense of media literacy for their later target groups"(DGfE, 2017).

Profile lines of the Chair of School Education with a focus on media education
In order to meet this requirement, the Chair of School Education with a focus on media education focuses primarily on three main topics in teaching and research:

• Educational theory and educational research with special consideration of media and technology,
• Media education as an individual-collective condition of possibility, practice and goal orientation of socio-cultural change and
• Media socialization theory and research with a focus on post/digital practices, aesthetics and forms of communitization.

With this orientation, the Chair works in a future-oriented and interdisciplinary manner. In teaching, it contributes to the conception, testing and establishment of new and contemporary formats of academic work. Different forms of "knowledge presentation and communication" are sought in order to strengthen practice transfer and outreach in particular and to promote creativity and self-efficacy experiences. Reflections and discussions on the meaningfulness and usefulness of (selected) media forms and technologies are to be stimulated on the student and civil society side and a critical-reflective openness is to be promoted in a participatory manner. Didactically, the focus is on problem- and project-oriented work and research-based learning. Seminars and comparable event formats are based on a self-image as a research community that deals with current phenomena from multiple perspectives. The "Orientation framework for the development of curricula for media education degree programs and study components"(DGfE, 2017) as well as contours of a "basic media education" (Niesyto, Bellinger & Spengler 2024 [Preprint]) provide orientation for this.

The Chair's general research orientation also unfolds along these three thematic focal points: Its methodological orientation is primarily historical-systematic and qualitative. It is supplemented by power-analytical perspectives, in particular educational studies of subjectivation and governmentality as well as theories of critique, with special consideration of media and technologies. The further development, re-accentuation and research-methodological operationalization of a cultural-aesthetic media education as a culturally and scientifically founded, critical (media) education theory, research and practice is a cross-cutting focus.

The Chair of School Education with a focus on media education aims to,

• to carry outbasic work on media education and media socialization theory in order to develop an analytical and reflexive framework for the relationship between self and world relations;
• to strengthenmedia criticism as a basic concept and practice of media education, for example to open up critical perspectives on digitality, platformization and datafication, to disclose and negotiate the conditions, possibilities and limitations of media education and
• further developaesthetic-cultural perspectives in order to focus and shape this tension in a new or different way.

In concrete terms, the Chair thus contributes to investigating, understanding and shaping the socio-cultural implications of digital transformation in the context of living and working environments and their media, and to promoting media education professionalization.