Abstract:

The educational opportunities for young people are very unequal - in particular, the interaction of certain socio-demographic characteristics contributes to the fact that certain groups of adolescents are significantly more affected by social and educational disadvantage than others. In various social spaces such as city districts, the proportion of people who are formally considered to be educationally disadvantaged is particularly high, so that the socio-spatial dimension of disadvantage comes into focus. In order to answer the question of the extent to which social space-related educational offerings can help to overcome educational disadvantage, the project DILaboration is based on a relational concept of space that understands social space as the result of social processes including interwoven social practices. The district of Gröpelingen in the west of Bremen is considered a particularly disadvantaged social area. The M2C Institute for Applied Media Research develops and implements projects using digital media that follow a lab approach in Gröpelingen. The concept offers an educational, digitally supported, creative thinking and action space in which activities are initiated in dynamic and participatory projects for and with young people that open up a wide range of educational opportunities.

This Digital Impact Lab (DILab) approach is characterized by four central characteristics:
1. Digital media as tools for educational work. DILab activities deepen existing interests and open up spaces in which participants can expand their practical repertoire towards the active design of and with digital media.
2. The project focuses on deepening and transforming digital tacit knowledge into actively usable skills. These include the acquisition of knowledge in programming, constructing, designing or dealing with relevant software, but also experiences of self-efficacy in a non-formal context.
3. Promoting the networking of young people with peers, institutions and actors in the community and in public spaces. This is done through a targeted and process-oriented networking of local offers such as social-educational institutions and offers.
4. Social space-changing impulses and empowerment. The lab's expertise is used to plan real renovations at partner schools or in the district with the participation of the young people. This strengthens the motivation and practical recognition of the work of young people in the social space.

By means of an empirical reconstruction, this project aims to identify which conditions in this setting enable or restrict the educational participation of socially disadvantaged young people in the social space in order to systematize the conditions for the success of this work and to develop transferable concepts. The focus is on an understanding of education as a change in relationships with oneself and the world. The project thus focuses on the question of how educational offers and barriers in the non-formal and informal sector shape the acquisition of relevant skills, including for potentially formal participation in education, and considers different levels of potential reproduction or overcoming of educational inequality.

Keywords:

Digital learning, social spaces, tacit knowledge, equality, transformation.