This paper is based on the qualitative study Orientations of teacher students in regard to education culture. It has been part of the recently completed research project Culture in Teacher Education. The research aims on professional education for teaching in regard to reflection and acting within the "the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their actions” (Geertz, 1973/2016, p. 145). The research examined the guiding orientations of student teacher-students for professional cultural acting. How do they reflect the fact that they are transmitting implicitly cultural meaning and a cultural based order while they are bound by their own cultural background? In which ways do they reflect on the gap between their own experiences and future needs of young people? The findings show that belonging to the supposedly stable context of their origin is the crucial point within the narrations in terms of culture: Being a member of a specific and given community appears as focus for students while discussing culture.

The background for the research is located in a diagnose of time in a perspective of globalization as pivotal for all processes of life within the society. For young people, growing up requires finding ways to connect with the world and the multiplicity of their interpretations. At present, this process is challenged by dynamics linked to the globalization, which shapes the conditions of life in manifold ways: The spatial interconnectedness for all manifestations of life is widely recognized, for instance by the concept of glocalization (Robertson, 1995). The perspective on social dimensions reveals a close link between individualization in modernity and pluralization of lifestyles. Especially for the latter point cultural learning is particularly important. It is about the ability to handle differences in variable ways, to decode structures of meaning and to build meaningful connections in community relations.

Given this situation the school-based function of enculturation (Fend, 2006) and the professionalism of the teachers are challenged in many ways. As one example serves the fact that education systems are organized along national traditions and interests within a globalized world (Green, 1999). Since young people need to get opportunities for gaining competencies to get along with the spatial and social complexity of the world, teacher are asked to evolve a habit in respect for local, national and global perspectives on cultural significance, and their linkages (Costa, Kühn, Timm & Franken, 2018; Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2013). In other words, teaching in the 21th century needs cultural reflexivity as part of professionalism in order to be able to fade out the dichotomy of world-societal requirements and individual learning needs.

In contrast to this professional need the results of the research show that being a member of a community that is clearly different from others is pivotal within the frame of orientations (Timm & Scheunpflug, 2020). While belonging in general can be seen as basic need for humans, the shaping within the conceptions of teacher-students show a belonging to one specific community which is completely different from other. In view of these problematic finding we have to ask teacher education as one stage of getting professional: For the conference we will present results of the ongoing research. There we focus on learning settings which might lead to biographical reflection while emphasizing the dichotomy of between local and world societies  dimensions in terms of culture. We will bring up proposals for rethinking teacher education which address the gap between the orientation for conserving the narrow own world on the one hand and the challenges of dealing with culturally hybridized glocal communities on the other hand.

The aim of the study has been to reconstruct the teacher-students´ implicit orientations in view of their implicit cultural bounded professional work. This objective in mind a qualitative-reconstructive research design was chosen. Data for the study were collected through group discussion (Bohnsack, 2000) and analyzed by using the documentary method (Bohnsack, Pfaff & Weller, 2010). This method refers on differences of knowledge and its status: the communicative knowledge of one’s person contains theoretical knowledge, it can be learned and explicitly expressed by the person. The conjunctive knowledge has an implicit structure: As the habitus this knowledge implicitly structures the practice and it is acquired in collective practices. In regard to this, group discussion is seen as collective practice, in which the collective orientations are embedded. For the study 28 group discussions with 113 participants were included in the sampling. The data were based on theoretical sampling method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Starting with groups according to their discipline as history, English, arts, further groups from education sciences with the focus on cultural education and finally groups with the common of voluntary services or political activities were chosen. The group discussion is introduced with open questions. The evolving narrations show two relevant aspects for the research: First, the concretions within the broad thematic field displays the aspects that are especially relevant for the groups. The mode of the discussion process covers the implicit knowledge, which can be reconstructed by reflective interpretations. Through a multi-stage comparison procedure, the interpretations are increasingly abstracted and abductively lead to an ideal-typical type formation of sense-genetic types. In two interpretation groups the results were validated communicatively in accordance with the standards of qualitative research.

The study led to a sense genetic typology. Five ideal types have been reconstructed along the basic type of dealing with cultural dynamics: agents of dwelling in the cultural status quo; agents of close-up experiences; passers-by in cultural seclusion; agents of hybridizing transformation; passers-by of helpless problematization (Timm, 2021, accepted). The results reveal that being a member of a community that is clearly different from others is a crucial point within the frame of orientations for the teacher students. These communities of belonging can be described as collective self. Within the implicit knowledge the conception of community is shaped by strict lines of differences. As within this conception cultural overlapping, hybridization, and multi-belonging isn’t included principle tensions in the face of current and future diversity emerge. The imagined communities (Anderson, 1983) are founded by an emphasize of ethno-cultural aspects, but as orientation, the modus of difference can also be seen in regard to subject relations, the difference of expertise, the task of educating besides of teaching. A second emphasize within the pattern of orientation has been reconstructed as habitual adherence to the own cultural background (Timm & Scheunpflug, 2020 ). Influenced by these focal points the didactical thinking excludes the implicit transmission of the culture, mainly the dominant cultural meaning and order of the majority culture. In the same time, groups with orientations open to multiple ways of belonging show experiences, from which we can draw some stimulus for teacher education, especially for gaining a reflective approach to one’s own cultural background to develop competencies which are necessary for a perspective of cultural reflexivity as glocal teacher.

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