Session Information
32 SES 03 A, Inequality, Diversity and organizational Learning in Primary Schools
Paper Session
Contribution
The WHO (2020) assumes that in Europe at least every third to fifth child at primary level is affected by family violence experiences in the narrow sense. For Germany, the ninth family report notes an "increase in psychological maltreatment, physical abuse and neglect" (BMFSFJ 2021, 291f.) of children, while the values for identified sexual abuse seem to remain comparatively stable. With the report, domestic violence and high-conflict cases in separation and divorce proceedings are also classified as child welfare risks for the first time. For Europe, we must therefore assume a significantly higher proportion of children affected by violence that we encounter every day in the education system. In addition, the number of unreported cases that are exposed to violent attacks and hurtful behavior by adults in institutionalised public contexts (e.g. religious communities, clubs, day-care-centres, schools) must be added. The range of forms of adult violence to which children can be exposed is structurally multiplied, since gender relations, social conditions of inequality and culturalisation in the sense of "doing difference" (West & Fenstermaker 1995) influence risks.
However, child protection is not only an extremely diverse field of pedagogical work on the side of the addressees, but is also determined by organizational diversity. In the school context, actors from different pedagogical professions and habits come together and are expected to work more or less closely with the organizations of social work in interorganizational cooperation. However, although the European discourse assigns schools an "important role in protecting children from violence" (Dimitrova-Stull 2014, 7), German teachers only rarely have legal and action security in dealing with child welfare risks or knowledge of counselling options in interorganizational cooperation with the youth welfare system (e.g. Zimmermann 2019). Contrary to the high number of cases and unreported figures, primary education is only involved in the provision of help in approx. 10% of cases, despite comprehensive contact with all children of primary school age (Federal Statistical Office 2022), but with 5% - 20% tolerates violating actions of professional, semi-professional and voluntary actors in lessons and everyday school life (Wysujack 2021): Which (counterproductive) pedagogical perspectives and practice patterns justify the neglect of child protection in school organizations?
While every day-care-centres in Germany have been legally obliged to follow a child protection concept since 2021, the perception of children's experiences of violence becomes an organizational grey area and at the same time a "risk for academic failure" when they enter primary school (UBKSM 2022). Despite the legal norms for active cooperation of school actors with the help system, which have been valid in Germany since 2012 and which would allow primary schools as organizational network partners a central position for the design of communal protection concepts (Retzar 2011), school organizational identities do not seem to perceive the structural mandate for participation in child protection as an "intermediary practice" (Evers & Ewert 2010, 117). The organizational heterogeneity of child protection ranges from interventions in individual cases, to structural cooperation concepts, to design options of teaching units, assessment practices and design of programmatic elements of everyday school life (Spies 2022). As multipliers of teacher education, schools also pass on the conceptual gaps of child protection to future generations: We present here interim findings of a qualitative research project on knowledge levels and practices of school actors, which are passed on to future teachers as organizational intervention and prevention perspectives on child protection. We pursue the question, which organizational perspectives and practices do school actors represent when they explain their action and organizational maxims in child protection in the context of their training mandate?
Method
In order to be able to capture the multiplicative and diverse dimensions of organizational perspectives, 19 primary school teacherstudents in the Master of Education at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg conducted a total of 32 guided, problem-centred interviews (Witzel 2000) with 19 teachers, 3 head teachers, 7 school social workers and 3 special school teachers during their practical semester at 19 primary schools in Lower Saxony. The research design is a mixed-method study based on three methodological approaches: (1.) SWOT analysis (Spies & Knapp 2019), (2.) content analysis and (3.) reconstructive-hermeneutic interpretation. 1. SWOT analysis: After transcription of the problem-centred interviews, which were conducted in the mode of guiding explanations of practice, the empirical material was subjected to a SWOT analysis in the curricular setting of research-based learning in the first evaluation step with the mediation of the school development tool. In this analysis, strengths, weaknesses, risks and opportunities of the multiplied child protection practice in the cross-locational school organizational community were identified and examined with regard to school development options and further training needs. 2. Content analysis: In the second step of the mixed-methods study, the practices visible with the SWOT analysis and the ambivalences to the assessment are currently being examined content-analytically. In doing so, the narrow systematisation of the first analysis step is broken up and examined in depth. In particular, inductive category formation is pursued in relation to the material in order to develop orders for the secondary analytical interpretation (Logan 2020; Medjedović 2014) of the data set. The reception of the requirements and expectations of school-based child protection contained in professional discourse and legal norms provides the basis for the development of supplementary deductive categories as a basis for the interpretation. The secondary analysis of the problem-centred interviews follows the content-analytical interpretation according to Kuckartz (2018) in the MAXQDA procedure. We expect statements to be able to understand, stimulate and support organizational learning processes. 3. Reconstructive-hermeneutic interpretation: Methodologically, the content-analytical secondary analysis is deepened in a final evaluation step through the reconstructive-hermeneutic processing of the material. In this process, particularly striking anchor sequences are reconstructively evaluated in a research group in the format of the collegial interpretation workshop using the objective-hermeneutic method (Wernet 2006) in order to be able to capture latent meaning structures of the presented patterns of language, interpretation, action and interaction of social practice.
Expected Outcomes
The data show that the school's access to the child through lessons and everyday pedagogical life is hardly used as an opportunity to notice changes and to recognise burdens or dangers. It becomes evident that neither the factor of active support nor "primary prevention (self-esteem and education)" (UBKSM 2022) are part of the self-image of the school organization. With the help of the SWOT analysis it becomes visible that although on the surface problem awareness is tried to be presented, already in this step of analysis weaknesses and risks on the organizational level are predominant. According to this, primary schools cannot fulfil the expectations formulated for them. For example, only a few inter-organizationally structured, cooperative procedures of risk assessment are explained, but possibilities of organizational cooperation and diversity are devalued. Individually goal-oriented case assessments are the exception, while children's participation rights are not taken into account and behaviourist programs to reduce prevention and heterogeneity requirements are incorporated into organizational procedures (critical of this: Spies 2022). Teachers and school headmasters, as central representatives of the organization, accept the aggravation of child endangerment situations in order to conceal professional excessive demands and to cover up organizational failures. Instead of intermediary practice, delegation models seem to be established, especially in multi-professional teams. Gaps in knowledge and reflection, uncertainties, pragmatism and shifts in responsibility are passed on unquestioningly to subsequent generations of teachers and justified by organizational requirements. With this study and the goal of increasing the appreciation of organizational diversity, we were able to make visible diverse organizational pedagogical approaches to the understandings of professionalism of school actors, which make it possible to work out tailor-made impulses for further training concepts and to provide structured scientific support and advice to schools in their school development and cooperation processes.
References
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