HuCER 2024 - Contemporary Narratives of Education

Conference abstract:

The conference aims to reflect on the challenges of accelerating technological development, a fragmented society, and the battle for attention. We are calling researchers to propose scenarios and solutions for the future of education.

By 2024, all stakeholders in education will be confronted with the increasingly unpredictable, complex, and contradictory nature of the world, regardless of the extent to which digital technology is used. Education faces challenges that have received little attention in the past. Technological developments linked to digitalization are rushing, and education systems need help keeping up. Think of artificial intelligence, which has already impacted all areas of education in the past year! Society is becoming increasingly polarised, which is also reflected in education, with unequal access to knowledge and technologies and different generations having different expectations of the school world and its role, with Generation Z teaching Alpha under the supervision of Generation X and Y.

Finally, the narratives created by different actors competing for attention on social media often encourage students not to think critically but to put ready-made opinions before facts and to believe the more convincing storyteller.

Uncertainty about "what to learn from whom and how" is amplified by the fact that the flow of information around us has accelerated considerably and by the fear of missing out. In a networked world, information comes through the interpretation of others, and there needs to be more emphasis on experiential learning and actual experience. As we move away from a world moderated by teachers and editors, the extent of unreliability, falsification, copying, and credibility becomes crucial.

These challenges seriously threaten the quality and effectiveness of education, but they also provide opportunities for innovation. Therefore, we, education professionals, must discuss these challenges and formulate proposals for the future of education in the fields of inclusion, early childhood education, pre-school education, general education, vocational education and training, and adult learning. Research-based proposals will be based on disciplinary and transdisciplinary theories in educational psychology, history of education, didactics, pedagogy of vocational education and adult learning, art education, sociology of education, and digital pedagogy.

https://hera.org.hu/hucer-2024/