Space and spatiality are constitutive dimensions of educational activity. Accordingly, questions about the socio-spatial constitution and design of social spatiality inevitably become virulent in the school context. In the last two decades, there has been a clear shift in the social sciences from absolute to relational conceptions of space, focusing more on the appropriation of social space by the actors involved and less on its local dimension as a static and predetermined structure (Kessl & Reutlinger, 2022; Dirks & Kessl 2012; Löw, 2001). Accordingly, social spaces are only produced through the individual and collective use (appropriation) of reified places by interacting actors. Nevertheless, the community surrounding a school is characterised by the infrastructure of its (geographical) catchment area, i.e. the living spaces of the respective pupils as well as their personal characteristics. These can be divided into groups and distinguished from one another, for example, on the basis of differences in parental income, the distribution of families receiving transfer payments or the proportion of single-parent households. Bourdieu (1991) speaks in this context of a "distribution structure of the various types of capital [...] in an ensemble of subspaces" (p. 28). The advantage of this perspective is that the schools community surroundings can be clearly described and operationalised, for example by calculating social indices (Schräpler & Forell, 2023). In this way, the challenges faced by schools can be made transparent and targeted for support. Determining social indices and making them transparent carries the risk of the so-called identification dilemma and thus of stigmatisation (Norwich, 2013). The aim of this contribution is to develop a recognition-theoretical approach to the schools community surroundings that moves away from a one-dimensional view of pupils as a product of their (social) origins (and accompanying performance limits) towards a bond-oriented focus on their strengths and potentials that creates a culture of diversity (Stojanov, 2011). On the basis of a multi-level modelling of the single-schools community surroundings, the structural condition of school is expanded by its interactive moment through the interweaving of their objective and subjective dimensions. As a result, social practices move to the centre of the consideration of schools community surroundings, which - shaped by the attitudes and patterns of the involved actors and their milieus - can be understood as a space of (im)possibility (Helsper 2009). Finally, in the tension filed between relations of recognition and experiences of disregard, a recognition-oriented paradigm of school culture is presented and discussed with regard to its potential for empirically developing a resource-oriented adaptation of the schools community surrounding.

Schools in a challenging situation are schools under socio-spatial pressure (e.g., high unemployment rate, low average income) (van Ackeren et al., 2021). In doing so, this and the two subsequent contributions are guided by findings from school effectiveness research (based on Mortimer, 1991), according to which good student performance can be achieved at schools despite unfavorable location conditions, provided certain factors are taken into account (e.g.,positive and shared school culture, data generation and use, external support structures) (Harris & Chapman, 2010). On this basis, the article approaches the concept of social space first from a systems-theoretical and finally from a recognition-theoretical perspective. The focus is on the interaction in subjectively and objectively intertwined dimensions of school social space.

Against this background, the single-school can be understood as a social space within a social space insofar as the school social space can be defined by the various networks of interaction within and outside the school, which are framed and influenced by site-specific conditions (Forell, 2023). In understanding the fundamental conceptual, theoretical, and empirical interconnectedness and conditionality of the school with its surrounding community, a context-sensitive and social space-oriented school and classroom development can thus be linked to the Anglo-American discourse on school-community partnerships and community schools (Becks, 2023). Considering the frequently cited finding of a (close) link between students’ socio-economic background and their educational success at school, it seems indispensable to deal decisively with the social space at school to break down the structural conditions that promote the reproduction of social inequality. From this, the research question that overarches this and the two subsequent contributions can be derived: How can a context-sensitive interaction between involved actors at schools in challenging situations be promoted?

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