Media and in particular digital media play an important role within the discussion unfold around the professionalization of practitioners in adult education as a heterogeneous target group (e.g. Rohs & Bolten 2017; Breitschwerdt et al. 2022). On one hand the focus of this debate is the identification of different necessary skills and knowledge resources adult educators have to develop in order to deal with the challenges and opportunities of a digital world. On the other hand, the research interest lies in the analysis of formal, but especially informal and non-formal learning processes in order to develop these skills and knowledge resources (ibid.). Looking at the documents of current EU education initiatives in this context (e.g. Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020), digitalization is stylized as a turbulent, dark, and opaque sea in which adult education actors are called upon to navigate the European society as a global competitive player (Bellinger & Dehmel forthcoming – 2024). Consequently, adult education is an extremely heterogeneous field whose stakeholders can hardly be reduced to a common denominator, while at the same time European education policy attaches enormous strategic importance to it. Against this background, the associated professionalization processes of adult educators to acquire (digital) media related skills and knowledge resources become a very complex and simultaneously crucial element in order to ensure a successful “education in an age of uncertainty” in European society.

While the discussion about the necessary media related skills has now progressed very far and has produced a variety of knowledge based on empirical research (e.g. Schmidt-Hertha et al. 2020), there is surprisingly still an important gap in the question of what “media” actually are from the perspective of adult educators. Of course, most – if not all! – studies on media related professionalization define a concrete concept of media from media theory on which the analysis is based on. However, this is always a procedure that is naturally made by researchers with a view on adult education practice and practitioners. As far as we know, there have been no studies yet that explicitly deal with the latent ideas and associations that practitioners in adult education themselves have towards the question what media can be. This question seems to be particularly important because these ideas and associations frame their specific efforts of media related professionalization and an in-depth analysis will help to understand them better.

Our submission aims to fill this gap and will analyze excerpts from interviews with various planning and teaching adult education staff as further explained in the methods section. We deliberately base our study on a heterogeneous sample in order to do justice to the diversity of adult education. First, we will examine which latent perceptions and associations of the interviewed practitioners regarding the concept of media are concealed in the qualitative data material. Secondly, we reflect on our research results against the background of educational media theory. In doing so, we focus on theoretical deliberations that suggest a broader view on media beyond technologies as entities that decisively shape the way we perceive the world and how we relate to the world (Bettinger 2021). In the third step, we relate our media theoretical findings back to the discourse on media related professionalization in adult education and consider what significance they have with regard to a successful “education in an age of uncertainty” in perspective of EU adult education policy (e.g. Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020).

Against the background of this conceptual approach, we re-analyze a sample of 15 interviews with teaching and planning adult education staff from different institutions located in Germany. These interviews were conducted in the context of various studies on media related professionalization in general adult and continuing education as well as further vocational training contexts. The sample was selected in a way that it contains as different individual cases as possible and a maximum contrast within the data set is ensured. In an initial walk-through analysis, we describe these interviews and our first approximate insights towards the media term within. In a second in depth analysis step, we identify the most important segments related to our research interest and interpret them with the help of Objective Hermeneutics (Wernet 2013). In connection to this empirical approach, we understand the analyzed interviews as an expression of a specific social practice in which the adult education staff members reflect on their professional activities in and with (digital) media. In this view these documents become empirically accessible for our investigation (ibid.). We assume that there are certain latent orders and social attributions in the interviews concerning the conceptualization of media and their pre-structuring function for media related professionalization processes which are figured out in our analysis. Afterwards, we compare our findings on all interview analysis with each other and come to a final conclusion. As already mentioned, our submission reflects these outcomes with reference towards a broad media understanding from educational media theory (Bettinger 2021) and will relate them towards the imaginations of a media related EU adult education policy perspective (e.g. Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020).

Our first look at the data material shows a focus on digital media among adult educators. Media perceptions are conceptualized as technical actors mostly, which at first seems to be reductive against the background of educational media theory (Bettinger 2021). However, a closer look reveals that media are described as a technically conceptualized space of opportunities that reorganizes human experiences. With focus on adult educational practices, it changes the relationships between teachers and learners and between learners and leaning objects. On a latent level of meaning, media in a sense of digital technologies are thus ascribed their own agency within adult educational practices by the interviewees. This perspective corresponds with the approaches of educational media theory (ibid.). At the same time, the interviews show attitudes that conceptualize digital technologies as a threat towards established teaching routines and reveal a negative and dismissive view. With reference to the perspective of EU adult educational policy on media related professionalization (Council of the European Union 2021; European Commission 2020; Redecker & Punie 2017) our findings show that media concepts have to be thought in a much broader way. It is not sufficient to understand them as neutral techniques in adult educational contexts for which operating skills and knowledge resources must be acquired. Our findings will show that it is important to include approaches to media education in the discourse unfold around media related professionalization that refer to a changing human mode in relating to a mediatized world (e.g. Bettinger 2021). This approach is a significant and at the same time necessary expansion of the economically orientated and functionalistic EU perspective. As our findings suggest, such a broader view is important to achieve a successful and sustainable adult "education in an age of uncertainty" – especially considering the fast development of digital media.

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