Pre-Conference (10.03.2024)

Crises and Transformations in the Central German Mining District. Ethnographic insights into landscapes in transition

Sun. 10.03.24, 15:30 – 17:00, Frankesche Stiftungen (House 31)

Participation included in the congress fee.

Life in the 21st century, as scientists and the general public diagnose and discuss, provokes crises and transformations worldwide. In an interdisciplinary panel, we locate this global moment in the region of Central Germany and show how crises and transformation are experienced here. Using ethnographic case studies, we identify three contemporary practices that reshape landscapes and lifeworlds. First, we trace how the phase-out of lignite-fired power generation is flanked by specific policies and programmes for structural change (just transition) and what new practices of governance are provoked. Second, we focus on how categories of landscape, nature and culture are reshaped and negotiated in post-mining landscapes. Third, we examine how (post-)industrial toxic legacies manifest themselves at the local level, and how the management of those legacies is addressed. Overall, our findings offer situated examples of living and surviving in a time marked by crises and transformations. What questions and challenges arise from these observations for educational science and the subsequent congress of the German Society for Educational Science will be discussed in conclusion.

Crises of Experience as a Cause for Transformation? – Theoretical considerations in the context of professionalisation research

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Julia Košinár

Sun, 10.03.24, 15:30 – 17:30, Franckesche Stiftungen (House 31)

Costs: 15 €

From a professional theory perspective, the crisis or the handling of crisis situations is of great importance. Uncertainty, contingency, risk and openness are constitutive features of teaching and pedagogical activity (Luhmann & Schorr 1979; Oevermann 2002; Kurtz 2006; Paseka, Keller-Schneider & Combe 2018). This limited plannability and controllability puts student teachers and young teachers in particular in crises, whereby a de-dramatised understanding (Combe & Gebhard 2009) is to be followed here. With this understanding, the crisis describes a field of tension between not knowing and knowing, not being able and being able, into which the acting subject gets through experiencing their own limits of routine and coping possibilities, but which at the same time provides “learning energy” (ibid.).

In the workshop, we will first look at the “structural elements” of “experiential movements” (Combe & Gebhard 2009: 553) as elaborated by the authors based on Dewey’s theory of experiential learning. This model has already been applied to professionalisation research (Košinár 2014; Schmid 2021) and proves to be viable for empirically tracing lines of development. Here, processes of change are first described descriptively and only normatively turned by applying constructions of professionalism (e.g. developmental task concept, Keller-Schneider & Hericks 2011; structure-theoretical heuristics, Kramer & Pallesen 2019).

In the second part of the workshop, we will look at the extent to which the opening of the new, which emerges in the course of dealing with and resolving crises, indicates a transformation process. Longitudinal studies in teacher:in-service education research consistently point to the fact that, due to the high stability of incorporated structures and imprints, transformations are hardly depicted (e.g. Hericks et al. 2018; Košinár 2019; Košinár & Laros 2020). Kramer (2013) has presented different modes of reproduction and transformation in relation to Schüler:inhabitus.

Descriptive case studies of trainee teachers will be used to trace the crisis resolution process and to explore the extent to which recognisable movements can be located in Kramer’s categorisation. Participants are welcome to contribute their own empirical examples. Information on the exact procedure and preparation will be sent to participants by email in good time before the workshop.

Crises and transformations from the perspective of systems theory – a multidimensional perspective against the background of social space-oriented school development (research)

Speaker: Dr. Matthias Forell

Sun, 10.03.24, 15:30 – 17:30,
Franckesche Stiftungen (House 31)

Costs: 15 €

Crisis is – especially in challenging times – a much-used term. Its usage is mostly inconsistent and its use often linked to warnings of (anticipated) catastrophic consequences. This is shown not least by composites such as climate crisis or corona crisis, from whose word creation the superordinate object can be derived, with which the crisis thus designated is connected. The title-giving collective nouns often name the (assumed) causes or triggers of crises or emphasise the areas on which the (expected) effects will have a serious impact. This rather pejorative perception of crises manifests itself in their drastic character, which challenges the accustomed and desired regulatory framework of a system in many ways. By substantially disrupting its functional order, crises in such an understanding not infrequently pose an existential threat to systems.

For a differentiated understanding and as an instrument for classifying and categorising crisis-related causes and effects, this workshop will adopt a systems-theoretical perspective on the temporal, spatial and structural dimensions of crises. The taxonomy of crisis thus created will then be applied to various crisis situations in the school context along this analytical grid and interpreted as an integral component of social systems and as a marker for the necessity of (selective) reforms. Taking into account the tension between school as an autopoietically closed self-referential (social) system and simultaneous partial selective opening to its (complex) environment, the perception of the school social space is of particular importance; especially against the background of (forced) structurally changing transformation processes, which (can) be accompanied by the loss of the specific identity of the (individual) school system.

No special theoretical or empirical knowledge is required. Likewise, no specific preparation is required. In the workshop, we will work together on the system-theoretical foundations as well as their conceptual classification in the context of crisis and transformation.

Transformation and crisis from the perspective of educational theory

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hans-Christoph Koller

Sun. 10.03.24, 15:30 – 17:30, Franckesche Stiftungen (House 31)

Costs: 15 €

When educational science currently talks about education, the “consensus formula of educational theory” (Thompson & Jergus 2014: 14) is that it is essentially to be understood as the transformation of relations to the self and the world. This understanding – partly interpreted in different ways – has become established above all in the context of biographical research in educational theory (Koller 2018). The central assumptions here are that education is to be understood as a crisis-like event that challenges the development of a new relationship to the self and the world, whereby education is distinguished from simple, additive (dazu-)learning in which existing relationships to the self and the world are merely modified, confirmed or expanded. With this currently dominant theoretical conception, education is conceivable mainly in the context of discontinuous experiences that question familiar relations of self and world, stimulate reflections and initiate subsequent changes in relations of self and world. This is postulated as the opposite of confirming experiences, which merely lead to a rather unreflected continuation of the usual and thus cannot be regarded as educational experiences.

However, this understanding of theory not only limits the theoretical view of education to “special figurations” (Fuchs 2015: 19), but also contributes to the fact that only very few subjects can be ‘attested’ to educational processes, which raises the question of whose educational processes can come into the focus of educational theoretical reflection and empirical analyses in this way.

The workshop is aimed at both theoretically interested and empirically researching participants, introduces the central arguments of the concept of education and then discusses the accompanying theoretical narrowness and blind spots. Participants will receive information on the exact schedule and preparation in good time before the workshop by e-mail.

Educational cosmos since 1698: Tour of the Francke Foundations

Sun. 10.03.24, 3:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Meeting place: Frankesche Stiftungen, Historisches Waisenhaus, House 1

Participation included in the congress fee.

With the construction of the orphanage, August Hermann Francke laid the foundation stone for a worldwide reform project. What began in 1698 as a poorhouse and orphanage developed within 30 years into a unique school town with global reach. The tour of the Francke Foundations introduces you to its history and present and takes you across the historic grounds of the Lindenhof, surrounded by half-timbered buildings, to the most important sights and monuments. Of course, we also show you the highlights of Francke’s treasures here in Germany’s only completely preserved Baroque cabinet of curiosities as well as in the Historical Library’s backdrop magazine.