Symboliska teknologier och lärande i en digital tid

During the past half-a-century the education sector has grown in size and significance in most parts of the world. In what is talked about as a knowledge or information society, the time spent in educational institutions increases. One of the most important game-changers for education, and for educational research, is digitization and the growing reliance on digital resources in most activities in our daily lives. One of the many consequences of this development is that children early on in their lives make use of and adapt to digital media. It is argued that in this new media ecology the classical questions we ask about access to education and success and failure will continue to be important for educational research. At the same time, education as a discipline should consider the profound ways in which our knowledge and skills rely on coordination with symbolic technologies; we increasingly know by and through such resources, and this insight should guide the development of instructional practices. In addition, we should contribute to a debate about what “Bildung” and critical citizenship should be in a world which is going increasingly digital.