Following the results of national and international school benchmarking studies like PISA, IGLU, and TIMSS, a partnership between school and family is an aim of national and international school policy. How can the cooperation between school and family develop from parent involvement to a real partnership on an equal level with specific rights and responsibilities on each side (as organizations like PTA proclaim)? Recognition on both sides is an important condition for that development.

Axel Honneth presented a theory of recognition which forms the basis for the empirical view on recognition. Therefore, the theory of recognition by Honneth is the theoretical framework of the dissertation project, which is presented here.

Recognition, according to Honneth (1995), appears in three terms: Love (in a school context the more appropriate term is: emotional esteem (Helsper, Sandring, Wiezoreck 2005)), Rights and Solidarity. Emotional esteem refers to sentimental links between two people. An individual earns recognition in the form of emotional esteem just for himself/herself and his/her character, for example sympathy. The second term defines humans to be subjects with rights and obligations, regardless of individual traits like abilities, origin or success. Separate from this, the third term of recognition is measured by the value of a person to the society. Students receive social esteem from their academic achievement, for example, through marks or certificates. For the relationship between parents and teachers, the view of recognition theory is new. It has to be theoretically clarified based on the data collection in this dissertation project.

In a school context, only a few theoretically-based surveys exist about recognition in Germany. The greatest and most important one is about recognition in teachers acting in class: here Prengel (2013) shows different types of recognizing behavior, which vary between teachers although they work at the same school. One of the key findings is that every fourth action of a teacher is harmful for the students, so that they are obstructed in their learning. This shows the importance of recognition especially in conferences about learning development.

Since the 2010/11 school year, conferences about learning development between teachers, students and their parents are binding elements in school policy in Hamburg. The conferences are called “Lernentwicklungsgespräche” (conferences about learning development). Once a year teacher, student and parents come together to reflect on the individual learning development of the students and define the next learning objectives. In contrast to international equivalents like student-led-conferences (Sliwka, Klopsch & Yee (2016), teachers are responsible for moderating the course of conversation.

As a new type of conversation, german studies about these conferences are limited. Bonanati and Häbig have dealt with the part of the students in conferences about learning development. Bonanati asked from a linguistic perspective how students participate and how self-assessment in the conversations proceeds (Bonanati 2015, 2016). Häbig considered conferences about learning development as an instrument for student performance (Häbig 2014, 2016). The part of parents and the working relationship between students, teachers and parents will be investigated in my study.

Having that in mind this paper presents a reconstructive study about the questions:

Which orientations of teachers and parents can be reconstructed in the conferences?

1. How important is recognition in conferences about learning development?
2. What kinds of recognizing behavior can be reconstructed in conferences between teacher(s), students and parents?
3. What part do parents play in the conferences?

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