In many European countries, students hospitalized for significant psychosocial challenges receive ongoing school education. Although schools within psychiatric hospitals have been established for this purpose (Redelmeier, 2023), most scientific studies primarily examine institutional collaboration between psychiatric care and schools, as well as the transition back to mainstream education (Tougas et al, 2022). There are very few scientific publications on hospital-based schools and their educational concepts, likely due to the diverse educational traditions across Europe in this field.
We believe that education during inpatient treatment and psychosocial rehabilitation afterwards is crucial for the educational and psychosocial development of children and adolescents. To explore this empirically and theoretically, studies on other special forms of schooling, such as Pupil Referral Units in England, could also be included as references. These publications and studies typically emphasize the importance of professional relationships with children and youth (Bolton & Laaser, 2021), or focus on cooperation within networks (Okland & Otherholm, 2022). However, attachment, mentalization, and psychoanalytic-pedagogical theories suggest that classroom teaching itself plays a significant role in rehabilitation (Hechler, 2018). The focus here is on both the content being taught and the structure of the learning environment.
Emotions play a significant role in school lessons on multiple levels, particularly in the hospital school setting (Jopling & Zimmermann, 2023). On one hand, teachers' emotions are closely linked to the quality of their teaching. For instance, teachers with higher levels of anxiety tend to teach less effectively, whereas those with a stronger sense of self-efficacy deliver higher-quality teaching.   Secondly, students' emotions significantly influence their learning progress. These emotions originate from outside the classroom as well as from the school experience itself. In this study, conducted in collaboration with four schools in child and adolescent psychiatric hospitals, both teachers' and students' perspectives on the teaching process are surveyed.
The focus is on understanding the significance that teachers and students attach to teaching, as well as the emotions that dominate in different subjects. Additionally, examples of promising practices are identified that contribute to high-quality and stabilizing teaching in psychiatric hospitals.
The article positions itself at the intersection of school education with focus on emotions, didactics/instructions, and interdisciplinary institutional development.

The project employs a participatory mixed-methods research design, which integrates quantitative and qualitative research approaches for the purposes of triangulation and mutual hermeneutic influence. The development of research questions and hypotheses, the selection of instruments, and the analysis of data will be conducted step by step in collaboration with the participating schools. In the first qualitative phase of the study, we will conduct guided interviews with teachers from the participating schools. We will transcribe the recordings and analyse them qualitatively. The results provide the basis for developing a questionnaire, which will be evaluated in the study's second, quantitative phase. This article focuses exclusively on interviews conducted with teachers, which are first analysed using content analysis. Last but not least, we will interpret some of the data with an in-depth hermeneutical approach. In this paper, we will present initial insights into the results.

On the one hand, the research project engages with the discourse on emotions and didactics. In this context, it provides important insights into the emotional processes that accompany schoolwork in clinical settings. This not only addresses the emotional effects of didactic programs and teaching materials on students, but also explores the emotional interactions that develop within the classroom community and between teachers and students (Zurbriggen & Schmidt, 2022). Conversely, the proposed research aims to empirically enhance the previously identified 'deficient state of research' (Bakels, 2022) regarding hospital schools. By discussing the various professional and institutional experiences across Europe at the ECER conference, we can broaden our understanding of this topic. This will create opportunities for future research collaborations, which have not yet been established in this field.

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