Session Information
05 SES 14 A, Symposium: Tackling Inequalities Through Educational Diversity
Symposium
Contribution
Given the highly stratified and segregated German education system and its complex federal governance the last two decades has been characterised by strong forces to networking the diverse sectors, settings and modalities of formal, informal and non-formal education socio-spatially into so-called "local education landscapes" (Olk, 2017). Even if the inequality-reducing effects have not yet proven (Duveneck, 2023), the will to counter the high correlation between educational success and social origin in Germany by systemic and social space related networked offers is unbroken (Coelen et al., 2022). Strengthening cooperation between schools and child and youth welfare services plays a key role here, which has developed into particularly complex cooperative relationships in elementary and primary education. Not only that the services of early childhood education and care (ECEC), which are administratively assigned to child and youth welfare, work more closely with primary schools in a transition-related perspective. The relatively newly developed services of school social work, inclusive school support and all-day care at schools are also predominantly provided by services of non-formal education. Against this background, the case study presented here highlights a local initiative in which an ECEC centre and a primary school in a highly stressed urban location have joined forces to create educational provision in a most inclusive and inequality-sensitive way. The presentation highlights the complex linkage of actors, concepts and practices of formal, informal and non-formal education/learning resulting from this alliance, which goes beyond the usual cross-sectoral cooperation based on trust and common goal formulation (Kolleck et al., 2020). Rather, what can be observed in this ‘education house’ is a complex "boundary work" (Langley et al., 2019) between the diverse organisational units of this alliance, which has enabled them to use the three policy megatrends after the German "PISA shock" - massive expansion of early education and all-day schooling, as well as the gradual dismantling of the special school system - to develop a highly comprehensive 'neighbourhood hub' (Clark et al., 2022) which intersects informal, nonformal and formal education in a localized integration of ECEC, school and social services and area based relations as well. In particular, the presentation will discuss how this cross-sectoral alliance makes it possible to combine a place-based approach with the network-based approach driven by education/social policy in a way that could help to further develop the understanding of "locality" in "local education landscapes" with a view to inequality-sensitive education in early years.
References
Clark, K., Cahill, R. & Ansell, D. (2022), Early Childhood Development and the Role of Neighbourhood Hubs for Supporting Children’s Development and Wellbeing in Disadvantaged Communities: A Review of the Literature Life Course Centre Working Paper No. 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4118008 Coelen, T., Hemmerich, S, Jestädt, H., Klepp, S., Million, A., Zinke, C. (2022). Bildungslandschaften in Campus-Form aus schulischer Perspektive. Die deutsche Schule 114 (1): 46-60. doi:10.25656/01:24322 Kolleck, N.; Rieck, A.; Yemini, M. (2020). Goals aligned: Predictors of common goal identification in educational cross-sectoral collaboration initiatives. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 2020. Volume 48 (Issue 5). S. 916-934 DOI: 10.1177/1741143219846906 Olk, T. (2017). Educational Landscapes and the Reduction of Socio-spatial Educational Inequality in the City. In Million, A., Heinrich, A., Coelen, T. (eds) Education, Space and Urban Planning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38999-8_22 Langley, A., Lindberg, K., Mørk, B. E., Nicolini, D., Raviola, E., & Walter, L. (2019). Boundary Work among Groups, Occupations, and Organizations: From Cartography to Process. Academy of Management Annals, 13(2), 704–736.
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