During the last three decades, European countries have invested large amounts of money in providing schools and higher education institutions with digital technologies. These investments were made hoping that they would enhance digital literacy and e-skills in Europe’s young people. In fact, digital competence was listed as one of the eight key competences for lifelong learning (European Council, 2006). Since the turn of the century, considerable achievements in implementing ICT in educational setting have been made, although large implementation gaps within and between countries remain (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, 2011).

 In this two-part symposium, we would like to focus on the use of digital technologies and on the contexts in which these are used.

 Φιλολογία (philología), the love (φίλος) for language (λόγος) is he name for the sciences that deal with language and literature. In their contribution, Carles Lindín Soriano from Universitat de Barcelona in Spain and Giovanna Di Rosario from Politecnico di Milano in Italy focus on digital philology as a comprehensive approach to the field of digital media, their uses and their artefacts. They argue that digital philology should be incorporated in bachelor’s degree study programs for students who will later on work as teachers or as creators of study contents for schools. Digital philology should also be implemented in curricula of secondary schools which would help students to develop digital competence.

Karl Steffens from Universität zu Köln in Germany points out that the young people assessed by PISA studies are in transition from childhood to adulthood, in a phase which Erikson called “identity versus role confusion”. Although the concept of a unitary identity was criticised by Keupp who suggested the concept of patchwork identity, it still suggests that this age period is a critical one. He believes that identity development – and as a correlate, the development of a self-concept - is strongly influenced by the family in which children grow up and that a young person’s characteristics and behaviours – such as ICT use and academic achievement - are related to family characteristics like cultural capital and parent’s support for their children and that his could be made visible by patterns of family background, students’ self-concept and their ICT use at home found in PISA 2015 data.

The importance of the family for the development of students’ competencies is also a topic in the presentation by Ana Rodríguez Groba, Adriana Gewerc and Esther Martínez-Piñeiro from Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Spain. They interviewed and observed university students in virtual learning environments with respect to their competency to self-regulate their learning.  Self-regulated learning has become an important topic in education as there is a gradual shift from teacher-oriented to student-oriented learning (Zimmerman, 2000); self-regulation of learning has also been listed as one of the 21^st century key competencies (European Council, 2006). One of the main findings of the group’s research is that students with higher levels of self-regulation exhibited greater motivation and in their childhood had experienced a great deal of autonomy and support from siblings and parents in their families.

References European Council (2006). Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on key competences for lifelong learning http://eurlex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2006:394:0010:0018:en:PDF Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (2011). Key Data on Learning and Innovation through ICT at School in Europe 2011. Brussels: EACEA. Zimmerman, B.J. (2000). Attaining self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. Pp. 13-39 in M.Boekaerts, P.Pintrich & M.Zeidner (Eds). Handbook of Self-Regulation. New York: Academic Press.