The first of three European Dialogue Labs in the Agile EDU project took place online in the morning of 10 November 2023. The aim of the event, hosted by European Schoolnet, the project coordinating body, was to enable the 37 invited participants to share and discuss perspectives, successes and challenges in relation to common issues arising from the first series of Country Dialogue Labs in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Spain, and, in doing so, to experience the dialogue approach to developing mutual understanding in complex policy areas. This summary is based on plenary presentations, transcripts of recordings of discussion groups, feedback from rapporteurs and contributions to the conferencing chat feature. The four commentaries on the discussion groups are the work of European Schoolnet and draw out a few main points across the discussions. 

Prior to the dialogue lab, participants were provided with the EU Dialogue Lab 1 (EU DL1) 

programme, information about the project and the literature review and conceptual framework, one of its first outputs.

Project manager Alex Kirchberger (European Schoolnet) welcomed participants and outlined the 

rationale and key features of the three-year Agile EDU project co-funded by Erasmus+ running to 

December 2025. Phase 1 is research and dialogue, building the instruments to build a set of case 

studies (e.g., My school choice (SE), Feide (NO) and Adaptive learning technologies (NL)) and 

learning stories based on a literature review and workshop, a survey of ministries of education and four country dialogue labs, ending with EU DL1 which closes this first phase. In later stages there are validation workshops and further dialogue labs, leading to guidelines and recommendations, a 

MOOC on educational data and its uses and a final conference. The literature review defines terms such as educational data, datafication, data literacy and platformisation and includes an analytical framework comprising three pillars: data regulation, rights and privacy; data in use for teaching and learning; data governance.Professor Kay Livingston described the Dialogue Lab approach: structured one day workshops (half a day if online) for knowledge exchange and idea generation, underpinned by theories of learning, 

sociolinguistic theories, and theories of community building and engagement. Reflective questions 

are designed to stimulate and focus dialogue between different stakeholders with multiple 

perspectives. DL reports make participant views, comments, and experiences on the specific topics visible. Although this is the third project that uses this approach at country level, this is the first one at European level. A number of common themes emerged from the four Country Dialogue Labs (CDLs) to date, for example, definitions vary, opportunities and challenges in using data for learning, a lack of strategic planning and the need for research to identify how data use improves learning and which data should be collected by whom and for what purpose.