In recent years, educational research has increasingly focused on the conditions under which knowledge is produced, thereby encouraging a reflection on knowledge production that is not only methodological but also sensitive to power relations, temporality, and context. In this process, the circle of knowledge producers has expanded considerably. Alongside universities and public institutions, organizations, commercial actors, and data-based technologies are increasingly involved in knowledge generation and decision-making processes. This development entails the privileging of certain forms of knowledge, while others are marginalized or rendered invisible. Against this backdrop, the present contribution positions itself within this discourse by discussing responsive and participatory research approaches in qualitative research from an educational science perspective.

The discussion draws on experiences and findings from the collaborative research project MIRASTO. Migrant Self-Organizations and Social Pedagogical Continuing Education. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European Union through the ESF Plus funding programme and is conducted in close cooperation between several German universities (Frankfurt, Oldenburg, and Braunschweig) and migrant self-organizations (MSOs). The responsive study aims to examine the relationship between organization and biography with regard to social pedagogical continuing education in migrant self-organizations in Germany and, based on the findings, to develop modules and materials for diversity-sensitive training in (social) pedagogical fields of practice.

The project focuses on continuing education programmes targeting newly immigrated academics who have acquired pedagogical qualifications and/or professional experience in their countries of origin. MIRASTO does not address MSOs merely as objects of investigation or fields of practice, but as actors who actively co-produce scientific knowledge. In this sense, the project explicitly seeks to explore responsive and participatory research approaches and to critically reflect on their potentials and limitations. Central to this endeavour are the perspectives of those individuals and organizations who shape and participate in the examined processes of continuing education and professionalization, and whose experiences, interpretations, and interests often remain marginalized. This approach not only holds the potential to provide participants with an empowering space within scientific knowledge production, but also to transform the relationship between knowledge production and society and to respond to key challenges of contemporary knowledge regimes in times of multiple, overlapping crises.

Engaging with the concept of epistemic violence enables a power-critical reflection on the conditions of knowledge production. Scholars such as Spivak (1988) and Haraway (1988) have pointed to hegemonic knowledge orders and the powerful positioning of knowledge, thereby making visible whose perspectives are systematically marginalized and which power asymmetries are reproduced within knowledge regimes. The disruption of these relations of power and violence, and their translation into power-critical research practice, can be facilitated through participatory research approaches. Such approaches primarily aim to strengthen the participation of social actors in scientific knowledge production, thereby implementing democratic principles within research practice and reflecting on—and potentially reducing—power asymmetries between academia and practice (von Unger 2014; Terhart & Proyer 2023). Participatory research enables the integration of diverse research perspectives across institutional and systemic boundaries, opening up new forms of knowledge production in which scientific, practical, and experiential knowledge are not hierarchically separated but are related to one another in a dialogical manner (von Unger 2014).

At the same time, the contribution critically reflects on the limitations and tensions inherent in participatory research approaches.

The collaborative project MIRASTO follows a qualitative, responsive, and participatory research design. Its methodological foundation is the approach of qualitative multi-level analysis (Hummrich & Kramer 2017), which is further developed within the project through responsive and participatory adaptations informed by power-critical reflection. The analysis focuses on the following aggregated levels of the social: (a) social spaces and organizations (migrant self-organizations), (b) interactions (groups within staff) and (c) individuals (participants’ biographies). To address this complexity and to operationalize a responsive research design, three closely interconnected sub-projects are conducted in close cooperation. The first sub-project examines the organizational cultures of migrant self-organizations (MSOs) that, in collaboration with universities, offer continuing education programmes qualifying immigrants for the social work labour market. It combines ethnographic social space analyses with an analysis of organizational-cultural positionings in relation to one another. These positionings are reconstructed through the triangulation of homepage analyses, interviews with MSO leaders, and group discussions with staff members (see Hummrich/Dehmel 2022). Responsiveness is implemented through structured feedback phases: interim findings are presented to the participating MSOs midway through the project, and their perspectives and critiques are systematically incorporated into the subsequent analyses. In this way, three migrant self-organizations are examined in their organizational and socio-spatial complexity. While sub-project 1 is concerned with levels (a) and (b), sub-project 2 focuses on the individual level (c). In close collaboration with MSOs, former participants of continuing education programmes were approached and biographical-narrative interviews were conducted. In some cases, the interviews were linked to social pedagogical conversations and interventions and embedded in comprehensive research-ethical considerations (von Unger 2018). To enable a power-critical analysis of the interview material, a participatory research workshop was established that integrated co-researchers into the interpretation process. The co-researchers are individuals with experiences of forced migration and/or migration who have themselves completed pedagogical training in Germany. In sub-project 3 the transfer of results is realized. In cooperation with actors in continuing education, diversity-sensitive training materials and programmes are developed on the basis of the research findings. Based on the interviews, a film will be collaboratively produced with the participants and subsequently made available to MSOs and universities for educational and public engagement purposes.

The findings demonstrate that responsive and participatory approaches in qualitative educational research hold significant potential for shaping research topics and objects at the interface between academia and practice in a power-critical manner. A key challenge lies in integrating marginalized voices without reproducing processes of othering. Research-ethical and self-reflexive engagements—continuously discussed together with MSOs and co-researchers—constitute an ongoing process that accompanies both the research itself and the presentation of results. Using concrete empirical examples, the contribution critically illustrates not only the potentials but also the dilemmas associated with such an expansion of qualitative multi-level analyses. These include issues of tokenistic participation, the reproduction or stabilization of power relations, working conditions and recognition, and forms of affective involvement. In doing so, the paper contributes to a differentiated understanding of participatory and responsive research as both a promising and a challenging approach within contemporary qualitative social research.

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