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. Yet in education, the discourses are still often negotiated separately. Drawing on disciplinary educational debates across Germany, Austria and Switzerland (the DACH region), this conceptual paper argues that sustainability-related aims in education—particularly SDG target 4.7—remain conceptually under-specified when digitality (as a socio-technical condition) is approached primarily as a toolkit. Conversely, it suggests 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. The paper therefore proposes the Digitainability Framework as a heuristic for reflection, analysis and design—not as a competence model. It specifies a double perspective: sustainable digitality (the design of ‘onlife’ environments) and sustainability under conditions of digitality (the negotiation of sustainability conflicts in media-shaped, increasingly platformised publics). Across both perspectives, the framework makes explicit four intersecting framings—cultural, power-related, discursive, and agent-related—and keeps sustainability in view across social, ecological, and economic dimensions. A brief example on social media and climate discourses illustrates the framework’s analytical and design potential.