Digitainability in Education: A Framework for Sustainability and Digitality as a Twin Transformation

Digitainability is increasingly invoked at the intersection of sustainability and digital transformation. In education, however, the two discourses are still often negotiated separately. This conceptual paper addresses that gap by focusing on educational debates across Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the DACH region) and by developing a conceptual–synthetic argument based on a purposive reconstruction of key reference texts. It argues that sustainability-related educational aims—particularly SDG target 4.7—remain conceptually under-specified when digitality is primarily understood as a toolkit rather than a socio-technical condition. It also contends that the digital transformation in education can only be assessed and shaped responsibly when sustainability and justice are treated as integral to the analysis and design of educational processes. Against this backdrop, the paper develops the Digitainability Framework as a heuristic for reflection, analysis, and design. The framework proposes a double perspective: sustainable digitality (the design of ‘onlife’ environments) and sustainability under conditions of digitality (the negotiation of sustainability-related conflicts in media-shaped, increasingly platformised publics). Across both perspectives, the framework makes explicit four intersecting framings—cultural, power-related, discursive, and agent-related—while keeping sustainability in view across its social, ecological, and economic dimensions. A brief example illustrates the framework’s potential.