A Word from the Thematic Editors

Abstract

Disruptive changes in culture and forms of social communication, which radically remodel our everyday lives, also impose on contemporary education the necessity of continuously seeking new solutions in the areas of content and pedagogical forms, creative practices, institutional spaces, and media. In accordance with the principles of Education 4.0, these media are not merely modern educational tools but increasingly complex cultural machines that influence our imagination, emotions, cognitive processes, and actual behaviors. Such influences often operate beyond the conscious awareness of individual users, which only amplifies the intensity and scope of their impact on fundamental dimensions of individual and social life. Consequently, in line with postmodern educational trends and parallel to technological development, it is essential—through creative, performative pedagogy—to foster attitudes of critical reflection and distance toward contemporary cultural, social, and political phenomena. This enables, subsequently, in familiarized post-media cultural environments, the cultivation of ethical and reflective engagement with the world. The development of cultural, media, cognitive, and social competences, necessary for nurturing humanistic sensitivity to ethical, aesthetic, and epistemological issues, thus requires activism, participation, and creativity; it should not rely on the mere reproduction of rapidly outdated cognitive models.

Contemporary theatre, it seems, can constitute an exceptionally effective space for such educational tasks and cognitive experiments. Every stage, whether within cultural institutions or educational settings, can provide broad access to a repertoire of practices and networks of social and intercultural relations, serving as a source of living and continuously updated inspiration for creative educators, teachers, researchers, and creators of contemporary, new-media culture. Mediatized theatre, saturated with diverse digital media, is not the exclusive domain of hermetic experiments, high art, or elite culture. It becomes a tool for knowledge, a space for implementing various educational practices both at practical and symbolic levels. In its social reception, such theatre aligns with the objectives of Education 4.0, engaging directly with the digital economy and 4.0 creative industries. It cultivates new social, cultural, and media competencies within a post-media civilization. Its pedagogical potential lies not solely in the use of new digital tools and media but precisely through their active and creative deployment, highlighting novel challenges and ways of enacting life trajectories in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The performative turn in the humanities has heightened awareness of and ascribed significance to the agentive role of linguistic and communicative practices across art, education, and everyday social activities inspired by media—digital, tactile, immersive, and beyond. Analogies between theatrical actors and social actors, mediated through symbolic interactionism, have become particularly legible within social sciences and at the meta-cognitive level. With the dynamic evolution of social media, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and networked narcissism, the concept of play, as well as artistic and cultural performance, has acquired new meanings and socio-political and semantic connotations that are increasingly relevant to contemporary education. These phenomena can innovatively shape or reform specific subject didactics, particular competences, or broadly understood performative skills.

The essays compiled in this monographic volume, entitled Education 4.0 and Contemporary Theatre: Media, Strategies, and Creators, engage with these questions. We hope that the proposals, studies, and discussions presented here will inspire readers to pursue further research and reflection on the topics addressed in the volume.

/Agnieszka Ogonowska, Marek Pieniążek/