Educational Ecosystems (EEs) in which young people learn within a network of different learning locations and in a more creative and interest-driven way, are regarded as a model of an education in and for the future (Smitsman et al. 2020). Therefore, educational studies have adopted broader approaches which require training and educational media to understand and enhance students’ ability to navigate a digitally connected world and to steer this world to new futures (Ito et al. 2020, Meister et al. 2014). Initiatives around the world have taken this ‘ecological’ approach from ecosystem science (Yu et al. 2021) to learning ecosystems (cf. Otto/Kerres 2023), which are described as ‘a potential game-changer for today’s learners’ (Al-Fadala, WISE, in Hannon et al. 2019, p. i). Educational Ecosystems are characterised by the cooperation of different learning locations like schools, libraries, museums, youth centres, associations or maker spaces. In these ecosystems young people are offered research-based and interest-driven learning opportunities. A German private media foundation is funding several such STEAM-based educational ecosystems in different cities in Germany. The aim of these projects is to equip young people with the knowledge and skills they need for a successful life in the 21st century. This, according to the funding institution, could not be left to schools alone. The research project “Educational Ecosystems: Patterns, Practices and Services” (EEPPS) studies four such regional educational ecosystems in Germany with a qualitative and ethnographic approach.

1) Pop-up maker space cooperating with the city library

2) Research-based learning in a museum of natural history & partner schools

3) A maker mobile which travels to different youth centers

4) STEAM-based learning in a neighbourhood centered ecosystem

The aim of the research is to find out the conditions of success and failure, the expectations, fulfilment and disappointments, enablers and barriers in each project and to compare them. A strong focus is on the perspective of the participating children, what they are interested in, what they make and produce, what they gain, which challenges and limits they encounter.

In this paper, I want to introduce the research project EEPPS and the initial findings with a strong focus on discourses of the future and future orientation from different angles and viewpoints. In particular, I wish to look at what happens when the provider’s articulated goal, of making children fit for the future in a way that is easy and highly effective, encounters the frictions, tensions and messy realities on the ground (Macgilchrist et al. 2023). This will be exemplified by case studies from different events within these media educational ecosystems. The following questions are therefore key:

How do the different stakeholders involved articulate their goals for the future and the future of the children?

How do these future discourses relate to the realities in the project activities on the ground?

In what way are the technologies involved articulated as “future technologies” and which media constellations are described as new or innovative?

To what extent do the children evaluate these activities as future oriented and how do they see their own educational or professional future as being impacted by the activities?

How do funders and providers work towards the sustainability of these ecosystems in the future, beyond the funding period?

The research design follows a strong ethnographic qualitative approach, with a principal researcher as an anthropologist and participant observation as the main method. As these are STEAM projects, research draws from media anthropology (Coman 2005) and media theory (Easterling, 2021; Krämer, 2008). Another focus lies on the concept of media constellations (Weich 2023), and how these are created in these projects. The researcher observes how media constellations unfold and how objects and children move across media constellations within the ecosystem. The researcher actively takes part in work and team meetings of the EEs and in project activities together with the children. Here, the researcher not only observes but ideally actively participates in the STEAM activities. In the context of these events, children are interviewed and asked about their perspective on the activities and how they can gain knowledge, expertise and skills and if they think these are useful for their future. These results are compared with the statements of providers and pedagogues working in the projects. Interviews and field notes are analysed according to thematic analysis, interview material and field notes are coded, and these codes are systematised to central themes that respond to the three sub-questions of goals, barriers, enablers, harms and benefits. The researcher also uses audio-visual methods like recording the children’s comments and feedback during the project activities as well as taking photographs and videos. Content analysis is used to analyse speeches, interviews, project reports and news and social media reports. The researcher, together with the pedagogues, identifies a smaller number of young people as key informants and closely follows their activities as well as their views on the projects over time and across the spaces within the ecosystem. The aim is to craft contextualised user stories, to add nuance, complexity and narrative richness in order to understand how young people traverse the media constellations within the educational ecosystems in which they are involved.

The paper aims to show the conceptions and articulations of futures as well as the future orientation of providers, pedagogues and the participating children in the project activities of the different educational ecosystems. It seeks to present and analyse future-fit education as a discourse as well as its realisation or non-realisation in the educational ecosystems and its meaning for the participating children. The findings aim to contribute to academic debates on the future orientation of media educational ecosystems. Case studies and user stories provide rich ethnographic narratives to inspire future practice in education. Further, the implications drawn from the study shall provide guidance for the creation and management of educational ecosystems in today’s digitally connected world.

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