The educator Robin Schmidt has been dealing with the consequences of the digital transformation of society for pedagogy for years.
He received his doctorate on this topic from the University of Basel, contributed to the curriculum for digital media education at the Rudolf Steiner Schools in Switzerland, and is a member of the advisory board of the initiative Medienerziehung an reformpädagogischen Schulen [Media Education at Reform Schools], which is the responsibility of Paula Bleckmann at Alanus University and funded by the Software AG Foundation (SAGST). At the Pädagogische Hochschule der Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz [Teacher Training College of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland] (PH FHNW), Schmidt has conceived a four-year research project on the design of schools in the digital world: the ‹Teacher Agency in Digital Literacy Education›. The focus is on the question of which competencies teachers need today to teach confident handling of digital media, but also on the challenges of our increasingly digitized world. In addition to Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical suggestions, Schmidt also examines newer approaches to educational science, such as the development of professional competence. «With his scientific work, Robin Schmidt acts as a bridge builder between academic educational science and Waldorf education,» explains SAGST project manager Jana Weische. «We support this impulse here and other funding projects that stimulate the dialogue between different, including reform pedagogical concepts.» In a current subproject, Schmidt investigated the influence of experiences during the Covid pandemic on the next generation of teachers. He was able to show that fundamental changes are not to be expected in this context. However, one problem arises: What is experienced during emergency distance learning is often considered paradigmatic, which narrows the complex questions of digital transformation. From this point of view, the challenge for teacher training has not become smaller but greater: it has to deal with the experiences – positively or negatively evaluated – during the lockdown as normative variables. Therefore, it is now necessary to broaden the horizon of questions and assert various educational and didactic aspects more strongly.
Source Software-AG-Stiftung
Photo Thomas Park
Translation Monika Werner
