Conference Program

The growing hybridization of educational spaces, where physical classrooms intersect with digital platforms and informal networks, cannot be reduced to a mere technological shift. It reflects broader processes of platformisation and datafication that are reshaping the governance, visibility, and normative foundations of schooling. In this sense, hybrid schooling must be read within longer trajectories of rationalization and social ordering (Durkheim, 1961; Weber, 1978), now rearticulated through networked infrastructures (Castells, 1996) and cultures of convergence (Jenkins, 2006). This article offers a sociological framework that bridges classical theories of social order and rationalization with contemporary analyses of algorithmic governance and digital visibility (Han, 2015). Rather than celebrating or rejecting digital transformation, the paper conceptualizes hybrid schooling as a field structured by three enduring tensions: stability and adaptability, emancipation and control, inclusion and inequality. These tensions resonate with longstanding debates on democracy and education (Dewey, 1916; Biesta, 2013) and with critical analyses of social reproduction and distinction (Bourdieu, 1979). Building on this analytical triad, the article proposes a governance oriented model for hybrid communities grounded in environmental design, critical media literacy (Buckingham, 2003; Rivoltella, 2017), collaboration as a commons (Benkler, 2006), transparent data governance, and plural evaluation metrics. The central argument is that schools can evolve into reflective institutions only if they consciously negotiate the infrastructural power of platforms, preserve protected spaces of opacity, and redistribute decision making authority over data and metrics. By reframing hybrid education as a site where democratic agency and algorithmic governance coexist in tension, the paper contributes to current debates on the platformisation and datafication of education.