Digital Degrowth: Exploring Sustainable Technological Futures in Education

There is a growing sense that the current excessive, exploitative, and extractive forms of digital technology have come to prominence in the global North need to be reimagined along radically different lines. As illuminated in recent scholarship, the current prevalence of energy-intensive technology use in education - including both data-heavy platforms, non-reperable devices, and practices involving large language models - is raising urgent questions about the possibilities to nurture technological futures that are more humane, democratic, and sustainable (Dunne & Raby, 2024; Fawns, 2022; Kallis et al., 2014).

Under the umbrella of 'digital degrowth', this one-day conference sets out to (re)imagine how efforts to foster alternative technological practices, infrastructures, and pedagogies might be brought together with the wider social movements now gaining momentum around ideas of degrowth and post-growth (Selwyn, 2024). What might digital degrowth look like in educational contexts, and what would be required to bring about sustainable, scaled-down, and equitable future forms of educational technology? How can digital technologies in schools and universities be reconceptualized to further ambitions of sustainable teaching and learning?

The conference will feature a keynote presentation by Neil Selwyn followed by three parallel workshops discussing different dimensions of digital degrowth. To foster dialogue and networking, we are offering to fully cover travel and accommodation for maximum 10 early-career scholars (PhDs, postdoc, and assistant professors) working on digital education, technologies and sustainability, or related fields.

Workshop 1: Policies and infrastructures

This workshop explores current political and institutional frameworks for digital technologies in education and discusses the possibilities of alternative forms of technological governance based on principles of degrowth. Discussions will focus on:

• Developing institutional policies that prioritize low-energy computing and sustainable digital practices while ensuring equitable access to educational resources
• Creating frameworks for evaluating and limiting unnecessary digital consumption in educational settings
• Establishing infrastructure guidelines for schools and universities that emphasize repairability, longevity, and minimal environmental impact
• Exploring alternative funding models that don't rely on continuous technological expansion, obsolescence, and dependency on Big Tech infrastructures

Workshop 2: Pedagogies and practices

This session examines how notions of conviviality, repairability, digital sufficiency, slow computing, and other terms emerging in literature on digital degrowth may inform pedagogies and practices. Key areas of discussion include:

• Developing teaching methodologies that balance digital and non-digital media
• Creating curricar frameworks that critically examine technological consumption and its environmental impact.
• Experimenting with critical computing practices that encourage mindful and purposeful use of digital tools, hereunder the potentials in practices such as perma-, frugal-, and salvage computing, maker spaces, and Collapse Informatics
• Sharing practical and creative strategies for reducing digital waste and energy consumption in educational activities

Workshop 3: Ethics and theories

This session delves into the theoretical foundations and ethical implications of digital degrowth in educational contexts. Topics include:

• Examining the philosophical and ethical underpinnings of digital degrowth and their relationship to different theories of learning
• Analyzing the relationship between digital degrowth and educational equity, accessibility, and social justice
• Investigating the intersection of indigenous knowledge systems and digital degrowth principles in education
• Developing theoretical frameworks for understanding and evaluating the impact of digital degrowth initiatives in education                        

Early-career scholars who wish to join the conference must submit an application via mail to lc@hum.ku.dk and m.pischetola@hum.ku.dk no later than 20 April, 2025. The application must include a brief description of research interests in the field of education and how it relates or might be relevant to discuss in terms of digital degrowth (maximum length 500 words). Applicants must also indicate which of the three parallel workshops they wish to join and discuss their work (see page below). It is not a requirement that applicants work explicitly with sustainability or degrowth in their research.

Applicants will be offered accommodation for one or two nights depending on their travel circumstances. Please indicate your place of location and preferred mode of transportation when applying. We encourage all participants to travel by train if possible. Applicants will be notified no later than April 24 if their application is accepted.

• Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2024). Speculative Everything, With a new preface by the authors: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT press.
• Fawns, T. (2022). An Entangled Pedagogy: Looking Beyond the Pedagogy - Technology Dichotomy. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(3), 711-728. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7
• Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more: How Degrowth Will Save the World. Penguin.
• Kallis, G., Demaria, F., & D’Alisa, G. (2014). Introduction: Degrowth. In Degrowth (pp. 1-18). Routledge.
• Selwyn, N. (2024). Digital degrowth: Toward radically sustainable education technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 49(2), 186-199.