Session Information
99 ERC SES 08 D, Participation in Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The presented study is based on the observation of the implementation of an intercultural project offered in secondary schools in Germany. Intercultural competence has been deemed as one of the possibilities to tackle the forces that broaden the gap between migrated and established members of society in a time of political and societal uncertainty all over Europe.The primary argument of the paper is however, that the intercultural education currently offered in schools is not an exercise in reducing individual stereotypes in order to strengthen societal unity; rather, it involves the active engagement with, utilization of, and reflection on social situations from the perspective of the societal diversity discourse which carries the danger of strengthening mechanisms of exclusion by reproducing not only differentiating categories but the idea of dividing difference which is embedded in a social imaginary no longer attuned to societal reality (Schmidt/Wächter 2023). Though the study is working with a program designed for a national context, conclusions for the improvement of intercultural education in a European context will be drawn.
The research was triggered when it became clear that teachers and instructors of the program reinterpreted situations of conflict brought up by students during discussions by applying the predominant categories of differentiation such as “migrational background” or “nationality” even when these categories were not initially invoked by the participants. This divide between the participants' narrated experiences and the interpretations by instructors and teachers suggests that the courses can be viewed as reinforcing the existing discourse and socializing students into it.
The central argument of this paper is that intercultural education in schools, at times, falls short of its stated objectives. Instead of achieving a deeper understanding as theorized by Bredendiek (2015) and Deardoff (2009), it often serves as an initiation of learners into the discoursive system that perpetuates societal differentiation. More specifically, the program engages in the addressing and discussion of categories commonly employed in public discourse to interpret social problems, thus training participants to argue along those lines. Consequently, participants become socialized into the discourse and the associated narratives, as well as the societal roles imposed upon them through the lense of social identities.
Throughout the program, participants attended three distinct sessions, wherein group dynamic exercises and discussions aimed to enhance understanding and acceptance among students of diverse backgrounds and identities. Despite the program's claim to be grounded in current research on intersectionality and the constructed nature of societal categories, it adhered to traditional methods and beliefs of intercultural education which are widely criticized by Mecheril/Rangger (2022) and Gogolin/Krüger-Potratz (2020). They characterize current intercultural education as it is performed in schools as accepting a seemingly ontological differentiation between "us and them," focusing solely on acceptance rather than understanding or deconstruction of differences. Despite its claimed departure from problematic traditions and Eurocentrism, the program seemingly faces the same pitfalls as similar predecessors. The observations reveal that participants, enrolled due to conflicts within the group as perceived by the teachers, seldom attributed the conflicts to the categories discussed by the program. Instead, it was the explicit discussion of categories such as nationality or culture that incorporated them into the participants' argumentative patterns. Often, it was the teachers or instructors who actively reinterpreted participants' discussions through the lense of discursive categories such as "culture" or "belonging."
Method
The data the study is based on was gathered through participatory observation of projects in eleven different secondary schools over three school terms. Three workshops each were observed. The schools were chosen in a way to cover a wide range of school forms and social contexts such as faith based, private and public schools, rural and urban areas. Following the grounded theory approach (Bryant/Charmaz 2019), categories of observation were formed from within the field and discussed by a panel of observants. A critical discourse analysis (Jäger 2015) was performed on the texts that were produced during the observations. The protocols of observation were enriched using audio tapes of the dialogues within the classroom which were transcribed verbatim at crucial points within the workshop. The categorization of the data was peer reviewed among the observants and colleagues who had not been in the situation. The analysis was done using MaxQDA.
Expected Outcomes
The paper argues that the discourse of diversity or difference is pervasive in the observed schools and intertwined with the institutional setting (Emmerich/Moser 2020; Emmerich/Hormel 2013; Gomolla/Radtke 2009). While the discourse asserts the insignificance of categories, it paradoxically reinforces their use and transforms the handling of diversity into a moral metagood (Nieswand 2021). This mechanism stops intercultural education from adapting to theoretical developments and transforms schools into spaces that perpetuate established discourses. The paper will try to address some suggestions how trainings of this kind can be approved by changing the construction of identity to a Social Identity Approach (Hornsey 2008) in order to harvest their potential for improving societal unity and fighting discrimination within schools. A European perspective is thereby important as one solution suggested is the promotion of a European outlook on diversity rather than a more national one.
References
Bredendiek, M. (2015). Menschliche Diversität und Fremdverstehen. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien. Bryant, A.; Charmaz, K. (2019). The SAGE handbook of current developments in grounded theory. Los Angeles: Sage. Deardorff, D. K. (2009). The Sage handbook of intercultural competence. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage. Emmerich, M., Hormel, U. (2013). Semantik und Diskurs: Soziale Unterscheidungen zwischen Systemreferenz und Klassifikation. In: Heterogenität - Diversity - Intersektionalität. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. Gogolin, I.; Krüger-Potratz, M. (2020): Einführung in die Interkulturelle Pädagogik. Geschichte, Theorie und Diskurse, Forschung und Studium. 3. Ed. Opladen, Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Gomolla, M.; Radtke, F. (2009). Institutionelle Diskriminierung. Die Herstellung ethnischer Differenz in der Schule. 3. Ed. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Jäger, S. (2015). Kritische Diskursanalyse. Eine Einführung. 7.Ed. Münster: Unrast. Hornsey, Matthew J. (2008). Social Identity Theory and Self-categorization Theory: A Historical Review. In: Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2 (1), p. 204–222. Mecheril, P.; Rangger, M. (2022). Handeln in Organisationen der Migrationsgesellschaft. Differenz- und machttheoretische Reflexionen einer praxisorientierten Fortbildungsreihe. Wiesbaden, Heidelberg: Springer VS. Nieswand, Boris: Die Diversität der Diversitätsdiskussion. In: Handbuch Migrationssoziologie, p. 1–26. Schmidt, C.; Wächter, N. (2023). Die Moralisierung der Diversität im baden-württembergischen Bildungsplan. In: heiEDUCATION Journal. Transdisziplinäre Studien zur Lehrerbildung: Werte – Bildung – Neutralität, p. 55-79.
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