Our approach

The international and interdisciplinary SMASCH-team consists of researchers from the department Transformation of Governance in Education and Society (HSU Hamburg), the department for Management Accounting and Control (HSU Hamburg) as well as the department for Methodology of Educational Sciences (KU Leuven). Experienced school coaches who accompany the German SMASCH schools until 2024 additionally support the research team.  Together with the school coaches and the research team, the schools examine their needs and challenges towards digitization and organizational development in workshops, discussions and other formats. Depending on the specific school context, different stakeholders are integrated into the process and organizational dynamics are made visible. Based on this exploration of needs and structures the schools start a development process. Through specific investments in the form of trainings, speeches, workshops or other services, the schools have the opportunity to develop and position themselves context-specific towards a conscious and value-oriented engagement with digital topics.   

Participation plays a key role for SMASCH so that the schools can embed digitization in their overall school development. Therefore, principals, teachers and other pedagogical staff as well as students and parents are integrated into the development processes.  In the scope of a sustainable digitization strategy we do consider all these stakeholders as important knowledge carriers who have to be actively integrated into the design of digital tools and methods. Accordingly, the project strives for the implementation of specific exchange- and development formats where educational experts cooperate with software developers, platform designer, media educators and researchers to learn from each other. This approach is supposed to open new creative potentials for the development of didactically meaningful tools as well as to bring perspectives together that will collaborate even closer in the future and have an impact on our understanding and shaping of education.

The participatory and interdisciplinary aspect of SMASCH is supposed to bring diverse stakeholders from within and without the educational sector together and to build a network on eye-level. The German and Belgian schools will have the opportunity to exchange next to political and national barriers and to develop new ideas together. Additionally, the SMASCH network is used to bring fruitful approaches from the scientific into the practical context. This kind of networking takes place in webinars, conferences and creative workshops. Moreover, the SMASCH project has a cooperation with the initiative “heimspiel. Für Bildung” situated in the Alfred Toepfer foundation as well as with Joachim Herz foundation, which is among others the leading organization in Hamburg’s digital initiative “Digital macht Schule”.