“Digital education” or “education in a digital world” feature prominently in policy initiatives across Europe, at both national and supra-national levels (e.g. the European Commission’s “Opening up Education”, Germany’s “Digital Agenda” or “Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future” published by the House of Lords). Policy-makers still seem unsure of how to proceed, with differences across traditional political parties far smaller than in other areas of educational reform and policy-making. At the same time, various individuals and groups are lobbying for specific kinds of digital education, and giving priority to particular skills which young people in the twenty-first century should develop. This paper explores how policy on digital education is formed and formulated. To do this, it analyses a case study of a policy-making process in Germany. In early 2016, a draft strategy was circulated to key societal actors in the field of digital education, including non-profit agencies, research institutions and scholarly networks/associations. Several responses were crafted, and many were made publicly available. In late 2016 a final version of the strategy paper “Education in a Digital World” was published.

Drawing on critical approaches to educational technology and policy-making (e.g. Williamson 2016) and theories of the subject (Butler 1997; Carstensen et al 2014) and entextualization (Silverstein & Urban 1996), this paper asks what “student-subject” the various papers develop, i.e. it first describes what ways of living, being and engaging with technology are construed as desirable and legible in the draft strategy; second which are prioritised in the responses; and third, which of the responses had a visible impact on the final published strategy. 

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