“…it is the vision that children are learning more when the things they are creating are in the centre of the process, and EdTech may help to do this”. David Klett, Klett Holding, 2017

Jessica White in Conversation with David Klett in 2017

In 2017 EdTech and Digital Learning had gone past its heady 2013 frenzy and has been levelling off into a range of solutions, that have no doubt been encountering challenges and boundaries due to too slow to reform education systems. Looking back upon that time, where we are now, which is the second year of the Pandemic, digital education is even more at the forefront of all our lives. Now, as they were then, these ideas about what is important to learners still rings true. I spoke with David Klett, from Klett Holding back in 2017 about some of the challenges that Germany was facing with balancing the excitement of EdTech with the need to be cautious. Arguably these thoughts still stand today. One thing is for sure, all too often we lose sight of what is important for learning and teaching, in favour of standardisation and escalation of achievement outcomes.

JW: In Germany, there has arguably been a resistance to change current courses and curriculum with EdTech sometimes for fear of disruption. For instance “everything is arranged quite well”. How have you managed responses similar to these in the face of implementing EdTech, how have you worked around or found solutions to resistance?

DK: I actually doubt that there is a resistance to change courses and curriculum due to fear of disruption. The reasons why EdTech plays a much smaller role in the German classroom, let’s say compared to those in Denmark or Finland, are diverse:

- not enough technology in the classroom (computers, tablets, wifi, IDM etc.) due to lack of funding, divided responsibilities for pedagogy (state) and provision of schools with tech (municipality)

- little focus on tech in German teacher education

- a lot of other problems-teachers have to deal with: inclusion, growing heterogeneity of learning groups, endless reforms and reforms of reforms

- a lack of feasible digital content and teaching concepts for the use in the classroom

- German pedagogy is deeply rooted in the philosophical tradition of idealism what may explain a certain reservation when it comes to standardised tests and quantification of learning outcomes — an important driver for EdTech

Our answer is in Germany — let’s put other countries aside where Klett is active- we are not preparing for “the big change” and for sure we don’t believe that we can drive that change. We believe that the transition will be slow and take many years. Our — Klett’s — idea is to find EdTech solutions around the world, which could be interesting for our markets, so that we can test them in the German classroom. We try to work with a lot of MVPs as well as prototypes, so that they complement our existing products with digital extensions that could, eventually, become stand alone products if that’s what our customers want.

JW: Richard Taylor in his EdTech report for 2016, talked about one of the ways in which to build a sustainable business is to “buy and build” which means merging startups with other startups /companies and institutions and finding ways to build customizable solutions together. What has been your experience with launching products in relation to this statement?

DK: First of all I totally have to agree. If you build an EdTech product, build it with a school, in collaboration and most definitively with more than one, which is not what normally happens. EdTech founders usually have their buddies in one, two or three schools and there they find the confirmation that their solution works. At Klett Holding, we are a group of dozens of companies focusing on K12 in half of all EU countries. We do everything we can to leverage content, technology and market access to help our EdTech ventures and prototypes to thrive. However, it is less about “merging” — as this would kill the entrepreneurial spirit of hungry EdTech entrepreneurs — we are actually encouraging cooperation, learning and sometimes, we are just a little bit insistent to keep the cooperation going.

JW: What do you think of this statement? “Learning Analytics Don’t Just Measure Students’ Progress — They Can Shape It.” Do you think there is potential of learning analytics, data analysis and visualization to offer ways for learners to improve while a course is in progress, considering the skepticism towards small and big data in Germany in comparison with the UK and US.

DK: What if there are important things happening in education you cannot measure? In Germany we have a word that somehow translates into a certain skepticism regarding the chances to be able to measure large parts of what is happening in education: “Bildung”. Non-German speakers may realize that the word includes something that sounds like ‘build’ — and that gives a good lead what “Bildung” means: personal, intellectual growth under and without the influence of institutionalised learning. It is a sort of personality that gets built or more precise: builds itself. Under this perspective educational processes are accounting a personality which has its own rhythms to change, it’s own ways to construct and stabilise reality, a personality that is and will be embedded in social conditions and scenarios that the school prepares for (even if this is not part of the school’s curriculum). For sure ‘Learning Analytics’ will shape what students are learning and for sure it will shape their progress. There is always a circular relation between the observer and the observed and there is nothing wrong about trying to measure this and that. However, focusing too much on it will make education less rich, more reductionist and will take out the diversity of what is learned in schools by limiting it to merely the measurable. It will make the system more vulnerable, because it is easier for students to find shortcuts, teaching to the test, bulimic learning etc.

JW: Yes, it is good that you raise this point about the philosophical underpinnings of German education and how it relates to present day Germany and its reluctance to welcome education technology with open arms.

It is often the case in UK universities in education departments, some researchers are more inclined to support empiricism — the study of what is going on in real-time — incessantly recording and analysing that “reality” — rather than actually rationally questioning how pedagogically viable a particular topic is: such as why an over emphasis on UK industrial history (which was linked to The British Empire) is not being criticised in the curriculum.

Questions such as: How has the curricular foci on The Industrial Revolution been applied historically in order to inform “teaching”? How can we explore that with current multi-media resources combined with new technology?

This kind of reflection of The British Empire curricular that has arguably contributed to such popular votes such as Brexit, have unfortunately been swept aside to have instead more “important” empiricist focused questions such as:

Which group A or B scores better on a test?

Is it better to teach the Industrial Revolution with an iPad or in a group or with a mobile app?

So with this measurable approach dominating many education departments with EdTech, I am not surprised at the skepticism of data measurable outcomes leading the way. However, I think that Germany is not immune either. There are learning science departments that I have visited that are only focused on analysis of this kind of “data’’ and any mention of rational historical / or rational ethnographic approaches are gently swept aside and one is told to perhaps contact one of the older researchers…but they might have retired by now.

I think this is important that we can continue asking valuable pedagogical questions rather than just analysing “reality” which is like trying to analyse salt rather than understanding the components of salt which are sodium and chlorine to make up sodium chloride.

So I wonder if this emphasis of empiricism is growing in Germany as well in the learning sciences that are increasingly using EdTech. What interdisciplinary foundation is needed to build — excuse the pun — Germany’s “Bildung” future with EdTech?

JW: How do you think learning spaces will change in the future in Higher Ed & K-12? How can there be more social environments that facilitate organic interactions and cross-disciplinary problem solving? Do you see a rise in flipped classroom approaches and blended learning environments as well as experiential learning? How do you think that EdTech Startups, incubators & publishers may facilitate that further with EdTech by disrupting the current perhaps static landscape in Germany.

DK: I have the impression, that many pedagogical ideas and concepts which were discussed heavily in the 70ies and the 80ies in Germany are becoming commonplace right now. I think about the productive approach (I think it is somehow similar to task based learning), student led forms of learning, seeing the teachers more as a conductor or facilitator of learning processes etc etc. Yesterday The German School Prize was issued and the winner received 100.000 Euros for their concept of student focused teaching processes. EdTech can be part of this development but in many cases, it is not. Technology in the classroom is still often used as a drill and kill instrument, helping students to memorise stuff or to get some extra info fast to solve the task. The pedagogical idea is bigger: it is the vision that children are learning more when the things they are creating are in the centre of the process, and EdTech may help to do this.

JW: What do you think are the pain points in Germany in comparison with the bliss points? What do you think we are working towards? How does the outside perception of Germany being a difficult place to disrupt with EdTech compare with what is going on inside?

Actually I have the impression that EdTech companies from wherever have no clue about how the German school system works. Germany is not Morocco or Kenya or Ireland, countries which imported the central ideas of how to run an educational system from somewhere else, from a colonial power for instance.. In the 19th century Germany was the centre of pedagogical reflection, it inspired the world with its concepts. Waldorf, the Kindergarten (Fröbel), the modern Humboldian University in particular, these are German inventions. We have today over 100 Universities where pedagogical research is happening. In Germany there is a unique situation which is difficult to understand unless you have a similar political organisation. Germany is a conglomerate of federal states, when it comes to education. A school in Lower Saxony is different to one in Bavaria, very different. Legislation is different, pedagogical traditions are different, political responsibilities are different.

JW: Across the globe we have seen different trends such as in 2011 MOOCs in 2013 Adaptive Learning and now AI has experienced meteoric rises followed by skepticism and sometimes downfall. However, some say that they will continue to be potent disruptive technologies that will jeopardise the futures of many inefficient universities and perhaps K-12 with Learning management systems supporting those new learning spaces. Students are rethinking the value of a traditional education across the globe with these EdTech developments. Do you think that is the case in Germany? Where is the disruption with EdTech happening right now and where do you think it is heading in the future?

DK: I think that the word ‘disruption’ will disrupt my peace in the near future. Joking aside, we are not talking about people who used taxis and will now use Uber, or encyclopaedias and now Wikipedia. Educational systems are complex intertwined systems of adults, children, laws, endless interactions, legislations, rules and unspoken agreements. Show me one country where EdTech disrupted something important, where an educational system became turned from the head to the feet! We have significant changes in Canada as well as in Denmark, Finland and maybe even now in Germany. Maybe EdTech plays a bigger role here, but EdTech has not been the driver of the change, it is an instrument that helps. We know and we know and we know — but often pretend not to know — that there is one relevant factor, and that is the TEACHER. What follows? It is the TEAM of teachers and how they work together and how they develop their school. And if THEY think that EdTech helps them to do a better job, it will.