Schools as Mediatized Worlds from a Cross-cultural Perspective

Abstract

If we think about education in the 21st century, we can identify a process of continuous change that is happening globally. Schools, in particular, are under constant reform pressure — from the Education Reform Act in the UK (1988), to ‘No Child Left Behind’ in the USA, (2001) to post-PISA in Germany (Programme for International Student Assessment). Furthermore, these processes are intertwined with meta-processes such as mediatization, globalization or commercialization. In order to understand the transformation of education, we need to understand the complex interplay between organizational reform (devolution, school autonomy and accountability) and changing media and their role in communication. The first is mainly induced by political pressure on the macro level, as well as on the micro level by parents. The second influences, and is influenced by, the way in which children learn and teachers teach, that is, communicate — inside and outside the classroom — and how administrators manage a school on the meso level. Hence, the traditional perspective of the functional distinction between the three levels of educational governance (Altrichter, Brusemeister and Wissinger, 2007) underestimates the process perspective across the levels, which is described by the meta-process of ‘mediatization’ (e.g., Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2012;Krotz, 2007;2009;Lundby, 2009).