Against the backdrop of technological acceleration and the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper addressed the question of how educa-tional practitioners’ hopes and desires articulate a critique of the present and simultaneously give voice to (im)possible futures.
Highlights the tension between technological advancement and human flourishing
Interestingly, our interview partners spoke more about technology when reflecting back on their work during the pandemic,and less when asked about their hopes for the future. The absence of “high tech” (Selwyn et al., 2018) in their responses wasparticularly striking for us
a grassroot resistance against over-technologizing education.
If “[m]odernity is about the acceleration of time” (Conrad, 1999), then acceleration is often associated with the cultural change thatis entangled with technological transformations (Rosa, 2017), from the steam engines powering industrialisation to today’s “gener-ative AI”
rapid innovation can compromise human reflection and social cohesion.
These descriptions of today’s lack of participation, care, and appreciation, and the interwoven hopes for future social togethernesscharacterized by greater visibility, dependability, and understanding, reflect a central desire for solidarity and community.
Modern technological acceleration can hinder these communal values.
The third theme, the appreciation of other groups, opinions and ways of life, includes, for example, the interviewees’ expresseddesire for "more understanding for each other", "for different points of view"
technology often segregates perspectives through algorithm echo chambers.
Some of our interviewees talk about the self-centred egoism they perceived during the lockdowns, which they contrast with analtruistic we-centredness.
digital acceleration and pandemic isolation amplified self-centered behaviors.
The lack of mutual care is the second theme that we see problematised in the interviews, expressed together with a desire for morematerial and social dependability:
Modern tech can undermine mutual care by promoting isolation and individualism.
A staff member of a church organisation who is responsible for afternoon and leisure activities for children and adolescents told us:"I would like to see children and young people seen more and involved more in decision-making processes [...]" (AB_23). For her,"relationship work" is a very decisive component of cooperation with children and adolescents.
Emphasizes relational, not digital, tools for learning. Socratic reflection: true understanding comes from conversation and engagement, not screens.
the interview responses to the third section of the interview, i.e., the questions about futures and hopes for society in an utopianenclave, which also included reflections on problems in today’s society. In a third step, we reflected on these specific themes, andidentified an overarching ‘yearning’ connecting them, which provides, we suggest, traces of (im-)possible futures.
This reflects a core Socratic method-examining the present to imagine possible better futures.
While in thefirst two sections our interviewees reflected on technology as an enabler or inhibitor of distance learning and educational care work,technology was noticeably absent in the third part of the interviews.
highlights both the promise and pressure of technology; Socratic reflection would ask weather reliance on tech distracts from deeper educational goals.
In total, we spoke with 65 school social workers, teachers, school administrators, education policy makers, youth workers and otherpeople from institutions that provide formal and informal education for children and young adults in different regions of Germany.
Empirical foundation—these perspectives represent democratic voices from everyday practice.
Specifically, the "utopian moment" of our research come
connects to hope, method, and critique.
We thus shift the focus of previous empirical approaches, which explicitly askabout future scenarios, actions and artefacts
This phrase captures the Socratic ideal—knowledge grounded in uncertainty.
Our critical-utopianapproach entangles these three approaches to thinking about, observing and reflecting
This mirrors the dialectic method—questioning, observing contradictions, and reflecting toward moral clarity.
Hope is, among other things, a human reaction to the external world, to suffering and misery.
A key ethical insight—hope is not escapism, but moral resistance, akin to Socratic self-knowledge in adversity.
More specifically, if we (asscholars or educational practitioners) draw on past experiences to create space for technology-centred futures, we often unintentionallyreduce the space for technology-light social utopias.
A warning about over-reliance on technology, consistent with your argument that tech utopias threaten democratic self-examination.
Levitas refers to this as “political pragmatism” that “prioritises short-term fixes for problems within thecurrent system”
Levitas critique of unreflective plagiarism, much like Socrates questioning challenges unexamined habits of thought.
Drawing on the past to shape the future can, however, also restrict thought and practice.
this idea suggests relying on intellectual complacency can limit imagination.
his research, sometimes based in empirical studies, other times as social science fiction,critically reflects on the impact of technological change on society, creating both utopias and dystopias.
the author signals that utopian thought can be both creative and dangerous, echoing topic about the threat of technological utopias to democracy.
The interviews were explicitly framed as interested in technology. Yet the interviewees, althoughdescribing their use of technology during the pandemic, foreground other concerns when they look to the future, i.e., a contemporarylack of (i) participatory decision-making, (ii) care and (iii) appreciation. They articulate hopes outwith technological solutionism.
Emphasizes human and democratic priorities over technological determinism; reflects Socratic principles of examined life.
Each phase of accelerated growth within a society also brings with it desires for deceleration.
introduces tension between social acceleration and deceleration, relevant to technology-driven societies
A particularly striking example of these far-reaching changes is schooling. In many societies, the school is regarded as the placewhere children and young people learn on a daily basis, are taught societal values and are educated to be a part of society.
school closures show impact on technology-driven crises on social institutions, relevant to discussions of technological utopias and democracy.
Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, austerity,right-wing populism and technological acceleration, there is increased uncertainty today about many things in everyday life that couldpreviously be taken for granted
illustrates societal fragility and need for reflection, echoing Socratic self-examination.
Our aim is to illustrate hopes and desires for more socially just, in part utopian, futures using concrete,contemporary examples from reflections on educational practice
Final focus reinforces the importance of reflection, care, and community in technological societies.
This is to say, we can only try to assume, imagine or hope that something will, might, should or should nothappen
The word "hope" connects Ernst Bloch's philosophy, framing futurity as a moral and imaginative act rather than prediction.