Main Content
Session Information
11 SES 17, Leaving School: Impacts of social categories and power relations in reconstruction of educational biographies of adolescents in Iceland and Germany
Symposium
Contribution
This symposium analyses the educational biographies of 16-18 years old adolescents at the end or shortly after completing secondary school in Germany and Iceland. The research is done from different theoretical perspectives and through related empirical approaches (intersectionality, subjection, inequality).
The overall aim is to gain insights into the life worlds and school experiences of adolescents in Europe through the framework of educational biographical reconstruction processes (Krüger & Marotzki 2006) of the two countries. We are interested in the question of what it means to grow up in Europe under the given unequal social conditions, and to go through an education system. Especially, we focus on the meaning of social categories, such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation etc., in the life world and in the school life of adolescents.
The symposium is about assessing how young people perceive and order “their world” (normatively, strategically, morally, culturally, etc.), or how others structure and order the world for them. This means understanding how the adolescents view education, learning, school as a life world and as a place of discipline, as well as their advancement options. Therefore, it is both the educational biographical analysis in the narrower sense that is relevant here, as well as the adolescents’ social life situations (economic, social, cultural, health), the language(s) they speak and the normalization and subjection processes they undergo (e.g., in the positioning of students ’with migration background’). The three sub-projects also analyze processes of inclusion and exclusion, such as exposure to discrimination prejudice, and violence at school and beyond.
The central themes linking the three sub-projects are the educational biography analysis (Lutz et al. 2017), the identification of homologous biographical experiences, for instance in form of institutional discrimination (Gomolla/Radtke 2009), and how they are produced in Germany and in Iceland.Each sub-project’s data was independently collected and evaluated separately but then the emergent themes were synthesized into one coherent whole text. The education system is here considered a structurally crucial allocation mechanism for and in a social order, which contributes to the production and reproduction of social inequalities (Bourdieu/Passeron 1971). This does not only take place in decisive transition thresholds in the education system, but also in subtle and inconspicuous processes (hidden curriculum) of the daily school routine, which involve subjection and normalization effects. Under consideration of intersectional approaches (Hill, Collins & Bilge 2016), of culture and conflict theories (Willis 1981, Bourdieu 1994) and of subjection theories (Butler 2001; Rose 2016), experiences and processes of normalization and recognition are identified.
The questions concerning adolescents’ school and life worlds is discussed and analyzed in the symposium within the background of profound social change processes in Europe and worldwide. These include the transformation of work in the course of digitization and automation, leading to drastic changes in gainful employment and training, especially among young people (Jürgens et al. 2017). Also, the fact of increasing social inequality (Piketty 2017), the precariousness of life and work conditions in terms of employment relationships, housing, health, social security systems (especially since the 2008 financial crisis), the threat of climate change, as well as changes in migratory movements and related discourses, the resurgence of racism, nationalism and the retraditionalization of gender roles are considered relevant contexts.
Subprojects
- On the reconstruction of educational biographical interviews with male working-class youth after completing their school career (Udo Gerheim & Anke Spies)
- Subject positioning and othering along the category ‘with migration background’ - experiences of adolescents in everyday school life (Anja Steinbach & Anke Spies)
- Icelandic-born students of immigrant background: Links to heritage language and culture (Anh-Dao Tran, Hanna Ragnarsdottir & Samuel Lefever)
References
Alvaredo, Facundo/Chancel, Lucas/Piketty, Thomas/Saez, Emanuel/Zucman, Gabriel (eds.) (2017): World Inequality Report 2018. Executive Summary. World Inequality Lab. Bourdieu, Pierre (1994): Die Feinen Unterschiede. Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Bourdieu, Pierre/Passeron, Jean-Claude (1971). Die Illusion der Chancengleichheit. Untersuchungen zur Soziologie des Bildungswesens am Beispiel Frankreich. Stuttgart: Klett. Butler, Judith (2001): Psyche der Macht - Das Subjekt der Unterwerfung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Gomolla, Mechthild/Radtke, Frank-Olaf (2009): Institutionelle Diskriminierung. Die Herstellung ethnischer Differenz in der Schule. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Hill Collins, Patricia / Bilge, Sirma (2016). Intersectionality (Key Concepts). Malden, MA: Polity Press. Jürgens, Kerstin/Hoffmann, Reiner/Schildmann, Christina (2017). Arbeit transformieren! Denkanstöße der Kommission ‚Arbeit der Zukunft'. Bielefeld: transcript. Krüger, Heinz-Hermann/Marotzki, Winfried (Hg.) (2006). Handbuch erziehungswissenschaftliche Biographieforschung. Wiesbaden: VS. Lutz, Helma/Schiebel, Martina/Tuider, Elisabeth (Hg.) (2017). Handbuch Biographieforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer. Piketty, Thomas (2014). Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert. München: Beck
Programme by Network 2019
00. Central Events (Keynotes, EERA-Panel, EERJ Round Table, Invited Sessions)
Network 1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Network 2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Network 3. Curriculum Innovation
Network 4. Inclusive Education
Network 5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Network 6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Network 7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Network 8. Research on Health Education
Network 9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement
Network 10. Teacher Education Research
Network 11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
Network 12. LISnet - Library and Information Science Network
Network 13. Philosophy of Education
Network 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Network 15. Research Partnerships in Education
Network 16. ICT in Education and Training
Network 17. Histories of Education
Network 18. Research in Sport Pedagogy
Network 19. Ethnography
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Network 22. Research in Higher Education
Network 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Network 24. Mathematics Education Research
Network 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Network 26. Educational Leadership
Network 27. Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Network 28. Sociologies of Education
Network 29. Reserach on Arts Education
Network 30. Research on Environmental und Sustainability Education
Network 31. Research on Language and Education (LEd)
Network 32. Organizational Education
The programme is updated regularly (each day in the morning)
Marginal Content
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.