Where are we heading? Hackathons as a new, relational form of policymaking

ABSTRACT

Within the last decades, a new way of policymaking has become increasingly prominent: civic hackathons. However, in education policy research, hackathons have not been broadly addressed so far. With this article, we contribute to closing this research gap by empirically investigating the educational #wirfürschule (#wfs) Hackathons that took place in Germany between June 2020 and 2021 as well as their organizing initiative #wfs. As a methodological framework, we hereby draw on social topology. This methodology offers a promising toolbox to get hold of the multiple dynamics and digital platforms of hackathons as well as to address the nuances of such new education policy practices. By applying a topological lens, the aim of this article is to analyze how the spacetimes enacted in, through and around the #wfs Hackathons contribute to new relational ways of policymaking and power shifts in education governance. As our analysis showed, the #wfs Hackathons operated through enabling relational proximity and presence as well as through creating relational distance, by enacting spacetimes that reconfigured traditional policy sites, actors and categories, while supporting new authorities in education policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Hackathons
• topology
• platforms
• reach
• policymaking
• authority

1. Introduction

Education policymaking and governance has undergone profound transformations over the last decades. Shifting from more hierarchical, top-down, governmental modes of decision making to rather collaborative forms of network governance, there has been a remarkable rise of complex policy networks and a growing involvement of diverse and (geographically) dispersed non-state and (new) intermediary actors, that challenge and stretch sectoral and topographical boundaries and governmental processes (see e.g. Ball and Junemann 2012; Lewis, Sellar, and Lingard 2016; Wilkins and Olmedo 2019).

Furthermore, enhanced by vast datafication and digitization processes, a growing body of research addresses the rising importance of digital technologies and data infrastructures in education governance, which contribute to the ‘(re)formation and (re)composition of spatiotemporal educational arrangements’ (Decuypere, Hartong, and van de Oudeweetering 2022, 872) and governing spaces (Landri 2018; Ozga, Segerholm, and Simola 2011; Williamson 2016, 2017). Among others, recent studies hereby highlight the growing relevance of digital platforms for education governance and practice (for an overview, see Decuypere, Grimaldi, and Landri 2021), and the potentials of social media to broaden participation in education policy debate and to exert influence on (educational) policy processes (e.g. Schuster, Jörgens, and Kolleck 2021; Supovitz, Daly, and Del Fresno 2018).

Thus, both transformations are creating new policy sites and changing relations of power and space in education (e.g. Ball and Junemann 2012; Gulson and Sellar 2019; Williamson 2016). To address such complex relational governmental settings, this contribution builds on research in education policy that increasingly employs a ‘topological lens’, which will be explicitly outlined below (section 2). In line with these two transformations, a new digital platform-based way of policymaking has arisen in the educational sector, which has not yet been the focus of critical education policy research: civic hackathons.

Outside the education sector, hackathons have served as a popular format in the field of collaborative programming for quite a while already. They originally arose in the open-source movement of the late 1990s as on-site events to develop technical solutions for predefined problems in a short amount of time (Berg et al. 2021; Muuß-Merholz 2019). Their basic structure includes an introduction to a specific problem by the managing organization, followed by a phase of project idea presentations and teambuilding around these projects. The teams then work on prototypes or solutions that will eventually be presented to, and judged by, a jury (Berg et al. 2021; Landwehr Sydow and Jonsson 2015).¹ The attraction of hackathons stems from their optimistic, entrepreneurial, maker-oriented spirit, as well as from their associated promise that ‘agency can triumph over structures’ (Stanley 2017, n.p.) and that ‘doing and making can change the world’ (Irani 2015, 800; see also Gegenhuber et al. 2023).

Besides these shared core characteristics, hackathons differ strongly in their themes (e.g. creating software prototypes or addressing social issues), organizational structure and scale (e.g. from few participants up to several thousand participants) (Code for Germany 2020; Landwehr Sydow and Jonsson 2015; Thornham and Gómez Cruz 2016). While they have been established in the corporate sector as an innovative method to develop software prototypes in high velocity at low cost, hackathons have also become a popular format to foster participation, collaboration, productivity and innovation in the public and third sector (Irani 2015; Thornham and Gómez Cruz 2016). In the context of governance transformations, one type of hackathons is of special interest: civic hackathons.

Civic hackathons gained in popularity in the context of digital democracy and civic tech movements, and are used to mobilize people to solve societal problems and to focus on social innovations for the public sector (Berg et al. 2021; Endrissat 2018; Gregg 2015; Levitas 2013). They are generally initiated by state actors or civil society, with governmental support (Berg et al. 2021). While ‘activists, citizens, entrepreneurs, and coders’ (Endrissat 2018, 70) originally worked together to develop open data solutions for the public sector (e.g. hackforchange.org or codeforamerica.org), civic hackathons have ‘expanded to focus more on changing the culture of government to work more effectively and creatively with its citizens’ (Levitas 2013, n.p.). They aspire direct and comprehensive forms of citizen participation (‘complementing’ representative democracy), adopt a problem-solving perspective, and aim to establish alternatives to existing bureaucratic-administrative structures and processes, which are assumed to be inadequate to solve society’s urgent problems (Berg et al. 2021; Gegenhuber et al. 2023). Some go as far as to frame civic hackathons as deliberative democratic events (e.g. Turkel, Suchanic, and Neil 2019). For governments, civic hackathons are thus an attractive opportunity to enhance procedural legitimacy and to tap into the ‘current zeitgeist of social innovation and entrepreneurship’ (Johnson and Robinson 2014, 349) by signaling a willingness to govern transparently and participatory, while at the same time responsibilizing citizens to (contribute to) solving governance problems. Furthermore, developed (technological) solutions might equally improve or facilitate governmental work (Berg et al. 2021). However, in contrast to such democratic and participatory rhetoric and normative, instrumental or technical perceptions of hackathons, research has pointed out that civic hackathons are often not as participatory and inclusive as promised (e.g. Gregg 2015). For instance, it has been noted that civic hackathons are at risk for being misused as ‘incubators for startups that seek to combine public good orientation with monetization via civic tech and open social innovation’ (Berg et al. 2021, 624).² Furthermore, the notion of entrepreneurialism and the ‘problem-solving approach’ of civic hackathons are in line with neoliberal thinking and the concomitant ‘instrumentalization’ of public problems in education policy making processes. Such instrumentalization has been generally critiqued as (potentially) compromising many essential aspects of public policy making processes (Au and Ferrare 2015; Ball 2012; Ball and Grimaldi 2022; Ideland, Jobér, and Axelsson 2021; Webb 2014; Williamson 2018).

In the education field, civic hackathons have only recently been deployed as policymaking initiatives (see e.g. the new European Commission funded projects ‘EduHack’, https://eduhack.eu/ or ‘DigiEduHack’, https://digieduhack.com/en/). This also holds true for the German context, where (national) large scale civic online hackathons only started to appear in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the ‘#wirfürschule³ Hackathon’ in June 2020 being the first civic hackathon exclusively addressing education.⁴ The #wfs Hackathons are thus not only of great interest as these nationwide, civic hackathons are the first ones of their kind in the educational sector; they are equally of interest because they are implemented through various digital platforms and digital practices and therefore contribute to the ongoing digitalization of education policies and practices. Moreover, these hackathons equally create new opportunities for non-state actors and intermediary policy networks to contribute to (re)configure educational settings and policy.

In sum, even though hackathons have increased massively in the last years and received a growing interest across academic disciplines (Thornham and Gómez Cruz 2016; Chau and Gerber 2023), civic hackathons have not yet been systematically investigated in the field of (critical) education policy research. In this paper, we address this research gap by critically investigating the role, operationality and effects of this complex, dynamic and distinguished new way of platform-based educational policymaking building on the lens of social topology, which is increasingly being used as a theoretical approach for critical educational research (for an overview, see Decuypere, Hartong, and van de Oudeweetering 2022). By applying a topological lens, the aim of this article is to analyze how spacetimes are enacted in, through and around the #wfs Hackathons and how these spacetimes contribute concretely to new relational ways of policymaking and power shifts in education governance.

2. Studying hackathons relationally: a topological framework

To address emerging ‘connectivities, multiple networks and relations, datafication and digitalization of the social and of new kinds of mobilities and flows’ (Lingard 2022, 990), scholars in educational research have gradually adopted the approach of social topology from social and cultural theory (Decuypere, Hartong, and van de Oudeweetering 2022; Hartong 2021; Lewis, Sellar, and Lingard 2016). In general, topology approaches educational practices as fields of becoming and connectedness, whereby relations are considered as primarily organizing, characterizing and qualifying practices (Lury, Parisi, and Terranova 2012; Ruppert 2012). In its most general sense, social topology departs from understanding (policy) space and time as pre-existing, a priori transcendental containers (i.e. respectively, in Euclidean and chronological terms; e.g. Hansen, Sivesind, and Thostrup 2021). Instead, it qualifies and characterizes space and time as multiple and processual: continuously and dynamically-made, unfolding, produced and (de-)stabilized by and through relation-formation. It thus scrutinizes how spaces and times are the concrete a posteriori result of relation formation and manifest in powerful agential forms, such as the specific ‘sprint-like’ and ‘solution-oriented’ ways of organizing hackathons. Topology furthermore allows us to think the near and the far, as well as the distant and the present, together (Decuypere, Hartong, and van de Oudeweetering 2022; Martin and Secor 2014; van de Oudeweetering and Decuypere 2021).

In this study, we use topology as a tool to investigate the enactment of policy spacetimes, and draw attention to their diversity, complexity and ongoing evolution and (trans)formation. This includes considering not only how policy relations are constructed and formed (e.g. established through a hackathon platform architecture that is in constant movement), but also how they are maintained and endure despite conditions of continual change (e.g. the platform architecture being in constant movement, but the hackathon as such being established as a fixed format) (Decuypere and Lewis 2023; Lury, Parisi, and Terranova 2012; Martin and Secor 2014). The notion of ‘enactment’ in that sense refers to practices of ‘world making’, where realities (e.g. hackathons) are ‘done’ and ‘made’ in the here and now, relationally brought into being via practices (e.g. mobilizing people via social media channels), and at the same time enabling specific practices (e.g. constructing ‘solutions’ for educational ‘problems’) themselves (Woolgar and Lezaun 2013; see equally Mol 1999, 2002). From a topological perspective then, forms and objects (such as a curriculum or a specific policy) are ‘not pre-givens, but rather specific enactments of constellations of relations in a certain setting’ (Decuypere and Simons 2016, 374) that enable or prevent specific practices. In such an understanding, education policy, thus, is approached as a specific arrangement of diverse actors that ‘relationally give shape to what can or cannot happen’ (Decuypere and Simons 2016, 373) in educational settings.

Topology furthermore allows us to systematically include digital spacetimes (Hartong and Urbas 2023; Lewis 2022). It enables and even requires to look beyond traditional binaries, such as the analogue or human versus the digital, the social and the material, or actors inside or outside of government, and to think and analyze diverse actors, sociotechnical relations and spacetimes together, ‘without privileging one over the other’ (Decuypere 2021, 72; Lewis 2022). As recent lines of topological research emphasize, digital platforms play a key role in mediating and enabling relation-making and thus ‘infrastructuring’ and enacting specific (new) sorts of digital education policy spaces (Decuypere and Lewis 2023; Decuypere, Grimaldi, and Landri 2021; Gulson and Sellar 2019; Hartong 2021; Lewis and Hartong 2022). Following this stream of research, this contribution understands digital platforms in a broader sense as environments ‘that set up sociotechnical relations and that allow users of various kinds to interact with each other’ (Decuypere 2021, 75). They define which sort(s) of circulation and flows are offered and enacted, or are precisely suspended, and thus how and which (new policy) actors and ideas can come to (dis)connect, and often do so in such powerful and agential ways that they become part of the infrastructure of these practices (Decuypere 2021; Lury 2021; Lury, Parisi, and Terranova 2012). Furthermore, digital platforms give completely different meanings not only to what it is ‘to be present in the “here and now” […], [but equally to] what it means to be positioned “inside” or “outside”’ (Decuypere, Hartong, and van de Oudeweetering 2022, 872), by enabling new translocal and transtemporal connections (Sheail 2018). Platform-based (civic) hackathons are, therefore, technological materializations of specific opportunities (Berg et al. 2021), and thus highly political.

Furthermore, the turn towards heavily networked forms of governance – that civic hackathons are one concrete materialization of – equally includes ‘new possibilities for power to operate […] across established spatialities’ (Gulson and Sellar 2019, 353). For the adoption of a topologically-informed understanding of power and authority, we draw on John Allen, who understands topological power and authority as not primarily linked to formal properties, institutional affiliations, formal authority, societal positions, or spatial locations (Allen 2011, 2016). Rather, power and authority are both to be understood as being composed relationally in terms of reach (Allen 2009, 207, 2011). Reach, hereby, is defined differently from conventional topographical understandings, which assume that the greater a physical or territorial (mappable) distance or extension is, the bigger the reach is (yet with diminished control and influence because of increased distance) (Allen 2016; Hartong 2018). Topological reach, conversely, is ‘more about presence than distance; it is intensive rather than extensive’ (Allen 2016, 2). This means that reach is about the relationally produced and felt intensity of presence and proximity and it is, in that regard, crucial that ‘it is the relationships themselves that create the distance between things, not anything measurable’ (Allen 2016, 46). This equally implies that in a topological vein, resources and capacities of, for example, policy actors are considered to be less crucial than how these resources and capacities are used (Allen 2016, 11, 152). In topology, then, proximity and distance are therefore no antipodes, but are playing across one another, as one can be physically present yet relationally distant or vice versa, or having a presence without actually being present (Allen 2011, 284, 2016, 12; Lewis and Lingard 2015).

All this implies that reach has to be ‘actively leveraged’ (Allen 2016, 155) to make one’s presence felt or registered (Allen 2016, 11). For relationships to be proximate or distant, things can be drawn closer or pushed further apart. This includes, on the one hand, to draw things within close reach, for instance by establishing a simultaneous co-presence through folding in actors directly through real-time technologies (Allen 2016, 12, 156). Pushing things further apart, on the other hand, topologically means constructing a relational (not necessarily physical) distance. This is, for instance, established by displacing responsibility for schooling by folding out specific demands (e.g. regarding future-oriented schooling) by referring to new/other accountable actors. Importantly, both movements (drawing closer – pushing apart) are to be considered as part of a two-sided ‘topological equation’ (Allen 2016, 53) and not mutually exclusive: what can be drawn within reach for some actors can simultaneously be placed beyond reach for others; what can be ‘folded out’ for some can simultaneously be ‘folded in’ for others; and, in a similar vein, relations and spatiotemporal forms can be stabilized as well as destabilized. Since from a topological perspective, spaces, times, reach, and authority are all ‘far from fixed’ (Allen 2016, 47), they require a lot of labor and maintenance (processes and practices of relation (un)making) to be ‘secured and recognized’ (Allen 2016, 47).

In sum, topology affords a high analytical potential to examine new (digital) sites and opportunities for policy networks to establish and/or influence policy processes (Gulson and Sellar 2019). Following the outlined perspective and in order to investigate how the #wfs Hackathons and their enacted spacetimes contribute to power shifts in education governance, our analysis focused on the following research questions: (1) How do the platform-based #wfs Hackathons precisely enable spatiotemporal proximity & presence by folding in actors and by drawing them within close(r) reach and (2) how do they (dis-)place actors via specific (bordering) practices.

3. Researching the #wfs Hackathons: a topological methodology

Following recent methodologies of topologically informed critical data infrastructure analysis that address a call for more inventive methods (for an overview, see Gulson et al. 2017) as well as building on the outlined theoretical-conceptual framework, the present study scrutinizes the enactment of particular spacetimes in, through and around the #wfs Hackathon platforms, which set the conditions and possibilities for relation enabling or hindering (e.g. Decuypere 2021; Gulson and Sellar 2019; Ruppert, Law, and Savage 2013). From a topological lens then, the focus is not only directed to the ‘what’ or ‘who’, but especially to the ‘how’ and ‘where’ of specific relational configurations (Decuypere and Simons 2016, 373).

To do so, and to get hold of the multiple and complex relations and spacetimes enacted in, on and through the #wfs Hackathons, this contribution focusses on examining the interfaces of the various platforms involved in the #wfs Hackathons (Decuypere 2021). To collect our data, we carried out active navigations, which means observing of and engaging with an interface to disentangle it navigating it in a step-by-step and slowed-down manner, following links, possibilities and ‘nudges’, and focusing on specific analytical focal points (Hartong 2021; Light, Burgess, and Duguay 2018; van de Oudeweetering and Decuypere 2019, 2022). Informed by our theoretical framework, the iterative process of data collection and analysis was focused on (1) how spatiotemporal proximity and presence and/or (2) how relational absence and distance(s) were enabled.

In order to methodically address the dynamics of the #wfs Hackathons, the active navigations were carried out at four different points in time (shortly after the first hackathon and before, during and after the second hackathon - July 2020 to December 2021) over two weeks each (Table 1). To get hold of the continuous change and mutability of our research object, we also took into account and accessed (former) versions of the #wfs platform interfaces from in between the concrete data collection timeframes via a digital internet archive.⁶

Table 1. Overview of the accessed platforms throughout the data collection process.

Period of data collection (two weeks each)	Platform	Data collected and analyzed
July 2020	#wfs website	Embedded (promotion) videos, press releases, FAQ guidelines, quotes and screenshots of embedded logos and icons, prompts, social media posts and subscribing screens
	#wfs Slack Workspace	Notifications, screenshots of comments and posts as well as the channel overview
February 2021	#wfs website	Press releases, quotes and screenshots of embedded logos and icons, prompts and social media posts
	#wfs Slack Workspace	Notifications, screenshots of comments and posts as well as the channel overview
June 2021	#wfs website	Embedded (promotion) videos, press releases, quotes, hackathon schedule and screenshots of embedded logos and icons, prompts and social media posts
	#wfs Slack Workspace	Handbook, How-to guidelines, notifications, screenshots of the seek and find spreadsheet, comments and posts, channel overview as well as the target image evaluation survey
December 2021	#wfs website	Embedded videos, target image, press releases, quotes and screenshots of embedded logos and icons, prompts and social media posts
	#wfs Slack Workspace	Notifications, screenshots of comments and posts and channel overview

In a first step, the homepage of the #wfs website was accessed and the links and descriptions of the hackathons were analyzed to obtain an overview of which platforms were actually part of the #wfs initiative and hackathons (for an overview, see Figure 1). It soon became clear that the #wfs website, as well as the #wfs Slack⁵ Workspace, were particularly constitutive for the #wfs Hackathons, which is why the data collection and analysis focused on these platforms (equally including embedded links to #wfs Youtube videos and Instagram posts). In order to gain access to the #wfs Slack interfaces, the first author of this article registered both in the #wfs Slack community and for the second #wfs Hackathon 2021.

Figure 1. Visualization of different sorts of relational spacetimes that evolved throughout the #wfs Hackathons (see also legend). The follower numbers are from March 2022.

To conduct the active navigations, the main interfaces of the two focal platforms were accessed to then follow and carefully examine the functions, navigations paths and embedded elements (videos, pictures, documents, texts, icons, logos, posts, visualizations, hyperlinks etc.) present, considering especially how (via which practices) spacetimes were enacted and what kind of relations they enabled or hindered. In the next step, subpage interfaces were accessed, and the same procedure was employed there as well.

Throughout the active navigations, screenshots of (parts of) the respective interfaces were taken (Table 1). To save, document, structure, and subsequently analyze the data⁷, we developed a research data infrastructure in a OneNote database. In this research data collection, not only the respective URLs, screenshots, documents and links to embedded videos were recorded, but also transcripts of video sequences. The research data infrastructure was divided into four subsections, reflecting the four data collection periods, and further structured along the following categorizations: (1) platform interface (e.g. #wfs website and the specific URL), (2) actors referred to or made visible (e.g. via logos of partners, in videos from politicians), (3) temporal aspects (e.g. the chronological and limited time frame of the hackathons or submission deadlines), (4) spatial aspects (e.g. positioning of actors and topics, but also visualized and/or textual practices of relation making), and (5) research notes (memos based on theoretically and conceptually guided interpretations).

The database was subsequently coded inductively, applying an in vivo coding process (Ravitch and Carl 2021, 265) using the hackathon’s initiators’ and participants’ utterances to summarize and label data segments (e.g. ‘together’, ‘anyone’ or ‘community’). Furthermore, we strategically combined this inductive coding process with a deductive coding approach, guided by the theoretical framework and looking for practices of ‘reaching out’, ‘drawing in’ or ‘pushing further’ and ‘bordering’ (see above).

To not only give an overview of the (chronological) temporality and various platforms of the #wfs Hackathons, but also to illustrate the multitude and complex entanglements of the relational spacetimes that evolved throughout the hackathons, we furthermore generated a visualization (Figure 1). This figure illustrates how the hackathons’ spacetimes interact with one another and partly overlap. Solid lines imply rather ‘closed’ spacetimes, whereas dashed or dotted lines visualize rather permeable and ‘open’ spacetimes. The capricious shapes display constant processes of ongoing de- and reformation (e.g. Decuypere and Lewis 2023; van de Oudeweetering and Decuypere 2021).

4. The #wfs Hackathons’ political claims and diverse spacetimes

Before addressing the #wfs Hackathons in more detail and presenting the findings of our analysis, it is important to contextualize them in the German education system, which is characterized by a federal policy architecture with strong decentralization. Authority is divided among the 16 subnational state (Länder) education systems – institutionally organized in the ‘Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the German States’ (KMK). However, although not being juridically responsible for school education, the ‘Federal Department of Education and Research’ (BMBF) has been gaining more and more authority over the past decades – for example, by financing projects, offering funds and setting agendas, especially around the digitization and datafication of schooling (Hartong 2018; Hartong and Förschler 2020; Hartong and Urbas 2023). Additionally, as in many other countries around the world (Williamson 2017), recent policy shifts in Germany have included a remarkable growth of new intermediary policy networks that bring together actors from various sectors and policy levels to push reform (Förschler 2018; Hartong and Förschler 2020). Such policy networks frequently criticize the German federal structures for their insufficient capacity to address ‘necessary’ modernization processes, and have expanded their power around the ‘pressing need for digitization’ (Hartong and Förschler 2020).

Using the window of opportunity of the government being more open to innovation and digitization during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic (Berg et al. 2021), it was two actors from such intermediary (EdTech affiliated) policy networks⁸ that initiated the #wfs initiative and the first #wfs Hackathon in 2020 (June 8^th–12^th). The format of a civic hackathon hereby served as a device for #wfs to define ‘urgent policy challenges’ and to problematize existing bureaucratic-administrative governance modes as not being able to address such challenges adequately anymore. Besides #wfs’ call to quickly and jointly develop ‘new, creative solutions for a “hybrid school year”’ (#wfs website 2023a), it further predefined concrete ‘educational challenges’ in nine topic fields, addressing a wide range of education policy fields ranging from ‘future competencies’, ‘interlinking on-site teaching and homeschooling’ up to ‘school development & management’ as well as ‘teacher training’ and ‘social justice’ (for an overview of all topic fields and challenges, see #wfs website 2023a.). #wfs thus did not place a dedicated ‘digital’ focus on policymaking, which also manifested in the fact that #wfs was being open to digital and non-digital ‘solutions’ for creating a hybrid school year. Yet, by predefining these problems and creating particular types of spacetimes through the format of an online civic hackathons, #wfs enacted specific ideas of ‘good education and schooling’ (e.g. to establish a new learning culture and prepare kids ‘for the world of tomorrow’, #wfs website 2020, June 1) and implemented its ‘solutions’ for how to address such problems (e.g. establishing an inclusive society; working collaboratively and digitally; fostering an entrepreneurial spirit).

To enable the aspired online collaboration, #wfs created various platforms: the #wfs website, social media (Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube) as well as the collaborative platforms Slack and Devpost. The official ‘patrons’ of #wfs were the BMBF, the KMK, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Digitization (Dorothee Bär; cf. infra). Such patronage can be understood as the symbolic support of an event, a project or an organization by a well-known personality or (political) institution. As such, patronage lends legitimacy to projects, which attracts other stakeholders and can enforce financial support (Gegenhuber et al. 2023). Within a month, #wfs was able to acquire 6142 registered participants, including teachers, students, parents, but also various interested citizens with all kinds of professional backgrounds. After a livestream kickoff event, participants were invited to Slack channels to work collaboratively in teams on one of the challenges. The hackathon ended after five days with a closing livestream and a deadline for teams to hand in their solutions to the outlined educational challenges. Eventually, 216 projects (‘solutions’) were submitted to be judged by a jury. On June 30, the two initiators of the hackathon presented the results of the hackathon to the Federal Minister of Education, before the winning projects officially presented their solutions to the KMK in the end of September 2020. All of this was made visible on #wfs’ websites and social media channels. Moreover, #wfs permanently secured and hosted the collaborative Slack Workspace through which the hackathon was enabled in order to keep the evolved new networks and relations alive, and to permanently build a digital space for the growing community (section 5).

The second #wfs Hackathon (June 14^th–18^th 2021) built on this complex infrastructure with its various spacetimes and expanded them further (Figure 1), such as through a newly set up Slack Workspace. Yet, this time, the hackathon was not only about collaboratively developing projects and solutions to existing challenges, but equally about gathering and judging best practices of schools, as well as about presenting, collecting feedback and finetuning a policy paper – the so-called ‘Target Image for the School of Tomorrow’ (#wfs website 2023b). The draft of this paper, which ‘formulates goals, makes recommendations on how and under which conditions learning should take place […] and outlines a [national] curriculum with values, competencies, and learning fields and topics’ (#wfs Target Image 2021, 5), has been developed in advance of the second hackathon by the so-called ‘Future Council’ (cf. infra). Apart from that, the second hackathon’s structure was much like the first one: livestream kickoff and closing events took place on the first and last day; solutions were again to be handed in after five days on the Devpost website and judged by juries afterwards. On September 1, 2021, the #wfs team presented the target image policy paper to the President of the KMK and twelve state ministers of education. Eventually, the #wfs team restructured the Slack Workspace and brought together the spaces from the first Slack Community with the Workspace of the second hackathon (Figure 1), which resulted in a total number of 8972 community members (as of March 2022).

As introduced in the research questions of (1) how the #wfs Hackathons enable spatiotemporal proximity and presence as well as (2) how actors are (dis-)placed via specific (bordering) practices, in the following analysis we will first focus on practices enacting presence and proximity (section 5), before outlining practices constructing relational absence and distance(s) (section 6).

5. Enacting presence and proximity

One central practice of #wfs in order to ‘open up’ policy processes and create new policy sites was to dislocate and shift responsibility for schooling from traditional educational authorities to everyone (‘the society’). For example, the #wfs website claimed that teachers, students, principals, and parents know best what challenges schools face and should be supported by experts, ‘such as designers, programmers or creatives’ (#wfs website 2020, June 1) to find solutions that would ‘really help’. Central to this practice is a strong notion of togetherness and ‘team spirit’ (#wfs Press Release 2021, May 31, 2) and the idea of a participatory and broad civic movement as the right means to address current pressing educational issues, which is in line with claims of civic hacking (see above). This displacement of proximity to, and responsibility for, education and schooling materialized through and within the hackathons’ and #wfs’ platforms – most importantly, the Slack Workspace. The use of these platforms as the infrastructures on which #wfs ran, enacted specific spacetimes in which, theoretically ‘anyone [could] interact directly or indirectly with others elsewhere’ (Allen 2016, 154) and work on their educational (policy) solutions whenever, (from) wherever and however (Sheail 2018; #wfs FAQ 2021). Put differently, the digital infrastructures of the hackathons enabled to draw closer and open up education (policy) to everyone, as they allowed to reach people ‘beyond spatiotemporal and administrative barriers of institutions’ (van de Oudeweetering and Decuypere 2021, 60) or ‘traditional policy constellation(s)’ (Hartong and Urbas 2023, 10). The involved politicians supported such a relational re-configuration themselves, as, for example, the Federal Government Commissioner for Digitization stated: ‘I think we have to get away from this old idea of saying: […] the state has to do one thing, companies have to do the other. […] [T]he state is all of us’ (#wfs YouTube 2020b, min. 18:58–19:12; emphasis by authors).

Yet, in a topological vein, such a broad community cannot be understood as organic, but rather needs to be understood as ‘synthetic, constructed in and through a specific time and enabled through the connecting infrastructure […] [as] an ongoing process of (re)assembling and (re)defining’ (Decuypere and Lewis 2023, 30). In the case of #wfs, considerable effort was put into drawing in and getting engaged as many actors as possible into its newly created spacetimes. This became visible in embedded (social media) icons on every page of #wfs’ website, as well as in various visually appealing prompts (e.g. colorfully highlighted frames) and social media posts that encouraged users to subscribe to the newsletter, get enrolled for a hackathon or become part of the community. Users were directed towards becoming part of #wfs’ spacetimes via massive cross-references within the different interfaces. The key spacetime in this context was enacted by the #wfs Slack Community Workspace, which evolved out of the first hackathon to maintain and secure the forged relations. Besides positively attributing people being part of the #wfs community (e.g. as education enthusiasts), the image of a strong community and movement was further enforced by creating a strong sense of ‘relational proximity’ (Allen 2016, 47). One example for this is the use of the German ‘Du’ (informal ‘you’) instead of the rather formal and distanced ‘Sie’ (formal ‘you’) in social media posts, on the website as well as in Slack notifications. Equally, the introduction of the Slack Workspace as a ‘digital #wfs-home’ (#wfs website 2020, October 28) for the #wfs family can be interpreted as seeking to create this relational closeness. Moreover, new members of the community were welcomed and, thus, folded in personally via personal Slack messages and invitations to join one of the onboarding Zoom Meetings, in which #wfs staff provided crucial organizational and technical information and answered questions. #wfs further offered and advertised a comprehensive online ‘Community Handbook’. This manual included information on the structure of the Slack Community, on how Slack generally works, as well as a selection of tools that can facilitate digital collaboration – thus intending to open up digital collaboration to everyone and to digitally implement the inclusive participatory claims and aspirations of civic hackathons.

In contrast to this drawing in of users, #wfs equally encouraged its supporters to engage in extending #wfs’ presence and reach as a crucial practice. In line with calls to ‘spread the word’ through icons on the #wfs website, in social media posts or prompts in livestream events, explicit media assets were provided to promote the hackathons and #wfs (e.g. digital banners and logos in #wfs’ professional corporate design). In our analysis, we came across many of such ‘second-order activities’ (Lewis and Hartong 2022, 954): practices directed at enabling and securing the hackathons’-specific spacetimes, its functionality, and #wfs’ authority, by drawing in as many actors as possible, keeping them engaged and establishing reach (e.g. via meetings, handbooks, notifications). All of this took place somewhat separated from the actual engagement with educational problems (e.g. discussing policies or developing technological (policy) solutions), which would be first-order activities.

Importantly, practices of creating an open and broad civic movement, and displacing responsibility for education (policy) towards anyone, simultaneously manifested in an increased proximity of #wfs and educational settings to for-profit actors (such as Procter & Gamble, Capgemini or SAP). Literature has abundantly highlighted the increasingly blurry lines between businesses, philanthropic or public interests over the last decades (e.g. Ball 2008; Cone and Brøgger 2020). With the hackathons, #wfs contributed to such developments by enabling proximity between for-profit actors and the education sector in very subtle ways: not only did #wfs frequently emphasize the importance and presence of companies in ‘the middle of society’ (#wfs YouTube 2020b, min. 52:48) and criticized ‘rejection reactions’ (#wfs YouTube 2020b, min. 9:05) towards cooperation and joint efforts of business, politics and society. With the hackathons, #wfs gave for-profit actors a platform to emphasize their desire to take over social responsibility and support political institutions and schools. Companies did not have to be physically present or actively involved within the hackathons’ practices and solution-finding processes but were nevertheless brought proximally closer through their logos being displayed on the #wfs website as partners/supporters; through judging the winning projects; or through employees participating in the hackathons or/and Slack Community, which enabled them to directly influence educational ideas and hackathon solutions. Furthermore, #wfs acted as a (relation enabling) mediator, opening up ‘the right gateways, expertise and resources’ (#wfs website 2020, October 28) for the hackathons’ solutions and teams, encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit inherent in (civic) hackathons. It did so by establishing new spacetimes, enabling to forge new connections between educational projects, schools and for-profit actors. Examples hereof include an online document with a spreadsheet that enabled teams and experts or (corporate) supporters to seek and find each other as well as a digital ‘#wfs Roadshow’ (a one-hour livestream event), during which projects from the second #wfs Hackathon could pitch their ideas in order to find (corporate) funding and/or supporters. These examples demonstrate that such spacetimes not only enabled for-profit actors to increase their relational presence in the education field, by opening up new low threshold gateways and opportunities for relation-making and presence. Educational staff, projects and schools were equally encouraged to actively open up to, draw in and increase their proximity to for-profit actors vice versa at the same time. Furthermore, these mutual relation-enabling spacetimes also served the designers of the winning projects (i.a. an EdTech Startup) by enabling them to implement their products or projects directly within schools or among teachers and students, hereby bypassing traditional government procedures (see also Johnson and Robinson 2014).

Yet, such a ‘naturalization’ (Hartong and Urbas 2023, 7) of relational proximity between non-public actors and education, does not exclude that #wfs equally sought for relational proximity to and presence at the traditional formal educational authorities: the KMK, the BMBF and the Federal Government Commissioner for Digitization. This specific form of proximity materialized, for instance, in involving all of these public authorities as official patrons for the #wfs Hackathons and making them permanently visible on the #wfs platforms by posting the official public institutions’ logos as well as embedding promotion videos of politicians. Furthermore, #wfs created relational proximity by regularly linking to the aforementioned federal political actors in most of its Instagram posts, which suggests that #wfs is simultaneously speaking for them (i.e. on their behalf) as well as reaching out to them (Schuster, Jörgens, and Kolleck 2021, 214). For politicians and institutions, conversely, supporting the hackathons further enhanced their presence and visibility as central educational authorities. Moreover, this gave them the opportunity to appear as innovative and open-minded policy makers (cf. above), and to shift some of their responsibility to other (new) actors. However, as we will show in the next section, while #wfs drew the public authorities into (some of) its spacetimes, it put them in a specific (rather legitimizing than creating) relational position. This points to the other side of the topological equation, to which we will turn in the following: practices that construct relational absence and distance.

6. Constructing relational absence and distance(s)

While #wfs clearly used its platforms to infrastructurally generate openness and as much reach as possible, the very same infrastructural operations were crucial for practices to establish (relational) distance, pushing things further away or even hindering relations. We hereby consider van de Oudeweetering and Decuypere’s (2019) claim that openness ‘is performed by particular workings of boundaries, rather than […] [their] absence’. In a topological vein, such bordering practices are not to be understood as territorial or operating through ‘the binary opposition “open and closed”’ (Lury, Parisi, and Terranova 2012, 11), but as ‘ongoing processes of re/de/bordering’ (Lewis and Hartong 2022, 950).

In line with this, our analysis highlighted different practices supporting what we call differential access. Regarding ‘ordinary’ (non-political) participants and supporters of the hackathons and the #wfs community, we found various infrastructurally materialized (bordering) practices enacting different opportunities to be folded in, gain access, and be present, within the different spacetimes. First of all, the sheer requirement of possessing (or having access to) the necessary hard- and software as well as user skills to be able to engage in a complete digital setting already challenged the inclusive participatory approach of civic hackathons, as the level of digitization still correlates with the level of income and degree (Initiative D21 2022, 28). This general argument is largely confirmed by our empirical findings, which constantly identified an imbalance between infrastructurally skilled and less-skilled participants. The former were more likely to become aware of #wfs and the hackathons at all, which were only promoted in online realms in the beginning, and faced less barriers for participating due to their own online presence (e.g. having a Twitter, Instagram, Slack or Facebook account or having a broad digital network), digital skills (e.g. with regards to digital competences such as how to create videos or digital pitches) and a general familiarity with the used platforms, digital workflows and processes (e.g. how to use Slack). Such preferential bias towards technologically savvy participants who have the technological and social skills needed in order to partake in such events has already been criticized in research on hackathons (for an overview, see Berg et al. 2021). This imbalance was reemphasized by ‘infrastructurally skilled’ participants being more present in the chat comments of both hackathons’ Slack Workspaces as well as by a strong variety of the levels of technological proficiency of the hackathons’ digital project submissions on Devpost (e.g. Devpost 2020).

#wfs seemed to be aware of such differential access and the imbalance between its participants, addressing this issue with FAQ pages, support channels, advisors, extensive guidelines, handbooks, and ‘onboarding’ meetings (e.g. #wfs handbook 2021). Throughout our analysis, we received a large number of notifications and emails ourselves, which addressed how the #wfs platforms could be navigated and used efficiently. Yet, again, these practices that aimed to overcome relational distances and boundaries and to draw in a heterogenous community at the same time supported another relational distance: by shifting the attention and time of ‘infrastructurally less skilled’ participants to such second-order activities (cf. supra) it thus further displaced them from engaging with the actual educational political challenges (first-order activities).

Apart from the aforementioned access opportunities, the analysis also demonstrated differential accessibility regarding the political authorities, as it was only some specific political representatives that were explicitly included (visible and present) and even these selected actors were not folded in equally. For example, we observed that #wfs was rather relationally distant to the KMK (and vice versa), compared to the federal level. This was demonstrated by an equal inclusion, positioning and thus ‘valuing’ of the KMK and the BMBF and the Federal Government Commissioner for Digitization (Bär), which stands in sharp contrast with the KMK’s superior authoritative position in the German education system (cf. supra). Furthermore, Bär – who officially did not have any legal authority in education policymaking⁹, yet heavily advertised digitizing education throughout her political mandate – was most frequently ‘present’ in livestream or hackathon promotion videos (see e.g. #wfs YouTube 2020a, 2020b, 2021) compared to the representatives of the BMBF and especially the KMK. When examining these differing relational proximities, it is of interest that the BMBF and Bär were ideologically ‘closer’ to the hackathons’ causes and #wfs’ aims. As they hold up specific ideas, such as wanting to overcome federally distributed (topographically defined) responsibilities in education as well as wanting to foster collaboration in education policymaking and innovation and digitization in the education sector, they support and legitimize #wfs’ own (political) aspirations.

The analysis further highlighted, that while (these few) political actors were included in the hackathons, this was only in very specific manners and specific places and times, as they were only present and explicitly positioned in a small number of specific and rather closed spacetimes. This included, for example, politicians acting as patrons and promoters in the pre-phase of the hackathons via embedded video messages, displayed logos or links, and references in social media posts (cf. supra), as well as greetings at the beginning of predesigned livestream-events. Apart from that, politicians were not explicitly involved in the (pre-)configuration of concrete challenges of the hackathons, organizational matters or the jury. In the specific spacetimes in which politicians where involved, the only opportunity for participants of the hackathons to relate to them was to subscribe to Zoom or Youtube and use the chat during live events. This hindered direct relation-building processes that could enable proximity between ‘society’ and government, which is crucial for deliberative democratic processes (Regmi 2023).

In addition, our analysis revealed further ‘hidden’ (thus closed) spacetimes due to non-transparent practices. Despite #wfs’ claims to involve everyone from the very beginning in equal ways, even ideologically close and infrastructurally skilled participants were sometimes kept at a relational distance. The most striking example was the creation process of the central policy paper – the ‘Target Image for the School of Tomorrow’ – of the second hackathon. This policy paper’s draft was developed and thus pre-configured by a so-called ‘Future Council’ before the hackathon started. While the council’s working mode, its ‘deliberative process’ (#wfs Target Image 2021, 7) as well as some speakers of its individual meetings were made visible (e.g. #wfs website 2021, July 7), there is no public list or exhaustive overview of its actual members, and only fragmentary information on some individual participants is available. Additionally, it should be highlighted that there was no information or option to apply or become part of this Future Council as an interested citizen at any point. To put it differently: this essential participation process, being the main policy content of the whole second hackathon, was placed completely out of reach for #wfs community members or hackathon participants.

7. Education policymaking reconfigured? Implications for education policy (research)

The aim of this contribution was to provide insights into how education policymaking is concretely enacted in, through and around online civic hackathons as well as to show the potential of a topological perspective to approach such complex and dynamic platform-based new forms of education policymaking. We hereby argue that a topologically informed investigation of how exactly relation-making processes and practices are brought into being, and how they are, thus, enacting powerful new policy spacetimes can enrich other relational approaches that have already pointed to new sites of influence and policy action (e.g. Ball 2008; Gulson and Sellar 2019; Peck and Theodore 2015).

More specifically, this article has shown, firstly, the strength of topology to systematically address digital relation-making. Secondly, it demonstrated how topology enables us to analyze and capture the multiple dynamics of the platforms employed by #wfs, including seemingly diametral movements – ‘drawing in’ and ‘pushing away’ – as part of the same topological equation. In doing so, the article contributes to our increasing understanding of how platforms are making new and novel connections between public policy and governance, and how they do so by at once reinvigorating and curtailing relations between actors that are often conceived as being separate. In other words, our analysis has empirically shown some of the changing spacetimes of education policy, when such policy is increasingly practiced via platforms that enact new forms of participation and exclusion (Gulson and Sellar 2019; Prince 2017). In that respect, our analysis has highlighted the importance of a relational approach towards power as relational authority, whereby this authority is at once enacted and facilitated through platformized relation-building, rather than through occupying formal positions (Ball and Junemann 2012; Hartong 2021). As such, topology allows us to overcome more traditional binary understandings of policy networks, which, for example, distinguish between governmental and non-governmental or public and private actors. Rather, it is exactly this ‘drawing in’ of different spheres that is met by new configurations of who is present, where, and how; that is to say, how proximity and relational distance are enacted. For instance, while the #wfs Hackathons did include politicians for purposes of legitimation, these politicians were chosen by their fit to the initiators’ ideas of schooling and education policymaking and they were positioned in very specific (closed) spacetimes.

It is important to reemphasize that the hackathon relation-building relied on its digital infrastructure rather than on individual actors, thus mediating interests and outreach in multiple directions. As an example, while #wfs enabled new forms of presence for private actors, it was not only private actors who used #wfs’ platforms to forge new relations, but also vice versa, with schools, principals, teachers, and students, actively reaching out to them within the hackathons’ spacetimes.

Through that focus on digital infrastructure as enacting and mediating policy power (Gulson and Sellar 2019), topology enhances our understanding of technological materializations, such as the agential effects of platforms (Decuypere, Grimaldi, and Landri 2021; Lury 2021). The usage of real-time technologies or the Slack Workspace, for example, allowed to reach and bring together people beyond barriers of institutions or traditional policy constellations. This displaced and reconfigured responsibilities and power, for example by enabling a new proximity between schools and private actors that bypassed bureaucratic and formal political processes as well as traditional political responsibilities. Simultaneously, actors traditionally rarely present in education policy processes (e.g. ‘infrastructurally skilled’ parents, software developers, social entrepreneurs, EdTechs) were able to engage in spacetimes in which policies were actually ‘made’ and to make their ideas visible.

Moreover, #wfs drew in and kept as many likeminded actors (‘infrastructurally skilled’ and ideologically close) as possible engaged to generate a broad, public movement (the #wfs community) and thus extend its reach. These very practices were crucial for #wfs in order to gain legitimacy and authority, which is in line with Allen’s (2016) argumentation that in order to generate and stabilize relational authority, one needs to generate a public presence and mobilize public support for one’s claims to make these claims stick and to generate pressure to spur political change. The format of the digital civic hackathons thus empowered #wfs to not only implement its idea of policymaking processes as collaborative, innovative ‘making’ of civil society with and for political authorities – problematizing existing forms of governance – but also to bring its ideas of and solutions for schooling on the political agenda (Endrissat 2018; Levitas 2013).

At the same time, the analysis revealed infrastructural materializations of various displacing and bordering practices, such as differential access opportunities. Despite #wfs’ claims to draw into reach and open up education (policy) to anyone who wants to make a change or get engaged, our study showed that this was not equally the case for everyone within the hackathons’ spacetimes. This similarly applies to bordering practices within #wfs that hindered the establishment of direct relations and communication with governmental actors. These findings stand in sharp contrast with the aspiration of civic hackathons to be deliberative democratic events, as successful deliberative processes rely on ‘a continuous flow of two-way communication between (…) political leaders and the lifeworld’ (Regmi 2023, 6).

By now, #wfs and its organizational team has stabilized its presence and authority, evolved into a policy actor of its own – the non-profit entrepreneurial association ‘wirfürschule gUG’ – and refers to itself as think tank and community. While #wfs is not initiating nationwide yearly hackathons anymore, it still operates with the BMBF and KMK as their official patrons and strives for a fundamental ‘update’ of schools (#wfs website 2023c). By offering school development consultancy, guidelines for how to organize school hackathons as development tools, and still acting as mediator who enables relations between schools, school actors and non-governmental partners, it continuously reaches through other educational spheres, such as concrete classroom practices.

Based on the presented findings, we want to close this article by highlighting the growing importance of digitally enabled policy instruments (such as online civic hackathons) of intermediary policy actors for education policy and, thus, future education policy studies. Addressing our title question 'Where are we heading?', we have shown that such platform-based forms of digital policymaking have the potential to de/reconfigure and blur traditional policy sites, actors and categories while supporting new authorities in education (policy) in high velocity and range. Future education policy studies should take such de/reconfigurations increasingly into account, especially with public authorities increasingly opening up for and promoting such new forms of digital policymaking, as is for instance noticeable in the recent European Commission funded project DigiEduHack. The present article has shown the relevance of a topological framework in order to do so.

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Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Annina Förschler

Annina Förschler is a PhD researcher at the Professorship for Transformation of Governance in Education and Society (Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg). Her research interests include educational governance, datafication and digitalization of education, with a particular focus on the growing influence of (intermediary) non-state actors on education policy and school development.

Mathias Decuypere

Mathias Decuypere is professor in education with a focus on school development and governance at the Zurich University of Teacher Education (Switzerland) and is equally affiliated to KU Leuven (Belgium). His main interests are situated at the digitization, datafication and platformization of education; and how these evolutions enact distinct forms of education policy, governance, and practice.

Notes

1. The concept, being a neologism of ‘hacking’ and ‘marathon’, is rather misleading: in a hackathon, the word hacking refers to the solving of (technical) problems in unusual and creative ways, rather than to hacking as the unauthorized intrusion or modification of software or hardware. Similarly, the word marathon is misleading: hackathons are to be characterized as an exhaustive sprint within a fixed time limit that aims to find quick solutions (for big problems), rather than as a long marathon (Code for Germany 2020, 2; Muuß-Merholz 2019, 149).

2. All original German statements and quotes from the gathered material as well as quotes from German scientific publications and names of associations were translated into English by the authors.

3. #wirfürschule translates as ‘#weforschool’ and will be abbreviated as #wfs in the following.

4. There have been other hackathons in Germany in the education sector before, but on a much smaller scale, partly on-site and e.g. aiming to jointly translate schoolbooks (e.g. Muuß-Merholz 2019, 149–155). The partial focus on educational issues in Germany’s first nationwide and the world’s largest online civic hackathon ‘#WirVsVirus’ (#UsVersusVirus) in March 2020 has to be mentioned in this context as well (https://wirvsvirus.org/hackaton/).

5. A commercial chat and collaboration platform (https://slack.com/intl/de-de/).

6. The ‘WayBack Machine’, a non-profit digital library of (expired) websites (https://web.archive.org).

7. Because we treat our digital data set like any other qualitative data research set, we do not link to the concrete material in the analysis, except when referring to literal quotes.

8. Verena Pausder, i.a. former CEO of a children gaming app company and founder of the intermediary policy network ‘Digital Education for all’ (https://digitalebildungfueralle.org) and Max Maendler, one of the founders of the commercial online teacher community ‘lehrermarktplatz.de’, by now renamed as ‘eduki.com’. Both are well connected within the German EdTech scene as well as federal political authorities. For the broader context of their policy networks, see Förschler (2018, 2021).

9. The established political position of the ‘Federal Government Commissioner for Digitization’ only existed between March 2018 and December 2021 and has yet not been reassigned by the current federal government. The office of the commissioner did not have original jurisdiction within the federal government and thus had to cooperate with the federal ministries.