Journal of Educational Memory, Media, and Society

The nature, uses, and implications of knowledge are not cast in stone. A simple claim such as “It is raining this morning” can mean radically different things for different people. Office workers, such as the authors of this introduction, may see morning rain as a slight nuisance on their commute from their homes to their workplaces. A farmer may see it as beneficial for their crops after a long drought and thus a godsend necessary for preserving their income. This difference runs much deeper than mere effects: context, perception, and perspective are critical. An office worker may view three millimeters of precipitation as heavy rain, while a farmer may see it as barely sufficient for their crops’ survival. We are looking at the same rain, yet my knowledge of that rain and your knowledge of it can be very different.

This interdisciplinary article examines the systems and interests that shape the production and use of educational media together with the wider political conditions that shape the adoption and application of digital technology in schools. It does so by taking systemic approaches to analysis associated with polycrisis, the postdigital, educational technology, and peace education. The analysis is developed using two forms of diagramming—causal loop diagramming and systems mapping (or network analysis)—to map trends and contingencies in digital technology, artificial intelligence, and education. It thus proposes a framework for studying the ethics around digitalization in education that explicitly takes account of these complex causal connections, including perpetuations or patterns of violence that are not always visible to end users, including educators. Ultimately, it examines what standard or measure is most appropriate in the definition and ethical evaluation of digitalization in education, with its harms and benefits, and looks at the complex power dynamics that inform education technology in the polycrisis.

This article explores the transformative potential of visual culture as a tool for fostering resilience and empowerment among women and girls in marginalized mining communities in Southern Africa. Using Makusha, a mining community in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe, as a case study, it adopts an approach that integrates Freire's notion of critical awareness, feminist phenomenology, and postdigital theory to highlight how, through hybrid analog–digital practices, women can enhance their visibility in resistance and relational empowerment. Employing qualitative mixed methods, including participatory visual methods (photovoice) and focus group discussions, it examines how women navigate intersecting barriers of gender, socioeconomic inequality, and digital exclusion to reclaim narrative agency. The results show that although digital tools like smartphones and WhatsApp increase communication power, they also perpetuate disparities in access to technology between different age and class groups. The study underscores the need for contextually grounded strategies that integrate intergenerational knowledge and hybrid analog–digital approaches to foster inclusive empowerment.

This article explores how integrating oral history and photovoice projects into history education can promote peace and foster critical historical thinking skills. While history education seeks to foster a deep, critical, and multiperspectival understanding of the past, studies have shown that in reality historical events are often taught and interpreted through a dichotomous lens. In Indonesia, such prejudices are reflected in students’ understanding of violence in the Indonesian War of Independence, including the Malang Bumi Hangus incident of 1947. A quantitative survey using a mixed-methods approach and an explanatory sequential design was employed to examine the students’ initial perspectives. This was followed by a qualitative analysis of the oral history and photovoice projects carried out by the students. The study shows that combining these two learning methods helps students to critically examine the past and to develop creative ideas to promote peace and multiperspectivity.

This article explores the role of discourse in social media for educators’ advocacy efforts in the context of Poland. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, social media have provided educators with platforms to discuss, resist, and promote educational methods independent of governmental control, bringing new debates to the fore. One such debate, within a Polish public educators’ Facebook group, concerned the promotion of formative assessment and formative feedback, shifting away from numerical summative assessments. Based on an analysis of this debate, this article examines the ideational power employed in social media groups and analyzes how discourse is implemented to exercise advocacy. Such ideational power is employed in three dimensions: “power in ideas,” “power through ideas,” and “power over ideas.” It analyzes posts and comments from the Facebook group using critical discourse analysis and a thematic analysis of positive outlooks on formative feedback in order to assess how actors use social media to engage in advocacy.

Growing concerns about racial justice and the embedded discriminatory potential of digital technologies have drawn attention to how the category of race is “made” in schools. Yet while global structures of racialization are well documented, the ways in which they materialize in everyday schooling remain relatively underexplored. This article examines how racialization unfolds as a sociotechnical process in classroom interaction. Drawing on ethnographic research from secondary schools in Germany and Mexico, it explores how race is produced and enacted in classrooms and what role digital technologies play in these processes. By adopting a sociomaterial and ethnomethodological perspective to reconstruct scenes from ordinary school life, it shows how digital devices, platform logics, and peer dynamics intersect to produce and contest racialization processes.

As climate disruption, violent conflict, and digital transformation increasingly intersect, education faces the challenge of preparing learners for crises shaped by ecological forces and sociotechnical infrastructures. While constructivist and critical pedagogies emphasize inquiry and learner agency, they have not consistently theorized the postdigital conditions under which knowledge is produced, circulated, and governed. This article advances postdigital constructivist pedagogy as a theoretically grounded rearticulation of constructivist learning under conditions of datafication, algorithmic mediation, platform capitalism, and uneven technological access. It argues that constructivist learning must be refined to address how digital and analog infrastructures shape epistemic authority, participation, and agency in climate and peace education. It develops an integrative framework foregrounding critical digital literacy, ethical engagement with educational technologies, and praxis-oriented learning, and concludes with implications for curriculum design and teacher education.