This doctoral project examines how subject-specific knowledge in primary school classrooms becomes a point of reference for epistemic problematisation. The focus is on the dynamics of stabilisation and destabilisation of knowledge in the conduct of lessons. Empirically, it focuses on practices that challenge subject-specific knowledge and make it the topic of verbal, oral articulation of dissent. As the communicative practice designed to deal with conflicting claims, oral argumentation plays a special role in this context (cf. Deppermann 2018). As such it is also a crucial communicative skill for participating actively in a democracy.

School knowledge obeys its own rules. This distinguishes it significantly from knowledge framed within a scientific context. The latter's (temporary) openness to results is generally completely absent in the former. Although there are subject-specific differences, knowledge in school is either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. It is already known. Discursive interaction patterns in the classroom, however, are considered pedagogically opportune (cf. Alexander 2018), as they are believed to have beneficial effects on the quality of subject-specific learning processes (cf. Clarke 2015). Nevertheless teaching proves to be resistant to forms of interaction that would offer more scope for communicative practices of articulating dissent (cf. Ford/Forman 2015). The IRE pattern (cf. Mehan 1979) in classroom interaction, on the other hand, proves to be functionally persistent. Among other things, it solves the problem of unambiguous knowledge preparation in the medium of oral communication. Furthermore, the written recording of knowledge, i.e. its transition from fleeting oral communication to materially solidified written form, represents a decisive step towards unambiguity (Proske 2013; Röhl 2015). This process of unambiguous knowledge production is usually described primarily as a linear event: In this approach, knowledge is first imparted through planned didactic narrowing, then through known information questions, then recorded in writing and finally tested.

The PhD project builds on this work, but attempts to place this process more firmly in an empirical perspective as a dynamic event that does not follow a single direction. For empirical purposes, particular attention must be paid to situational opportunities in the classroom in which well-established procedures of epistemic disambiguation practices stumble, falter, and have to be followed up. 

Against this background, how do subject-related negotiations take place and what problems do they solve in the classroom? How and where does scope open up for practices of knowledge-related articulation of dissent? Where does the factuality of school education oscillate? How is this processed by participants in different situations? What is at stake for classroom teaching when subject-related dissent is articulated? And what can be gained from addressing it in the classroom? 

Such studies are particularly missing for primary school teaching in whole class settings. The majority of studies examine communicative argumentation practices in non-classroom contexts (cf. Morek et al. 2017), in small school groups (cf. Kreuz 2025) or in secondary schools (cf. Heller 2025). 

Heuristically,  a praxeological understanding of classroom interaction is used, which takes into account not only human but also non-human actors (cf. Breidenstein 2021; Schatzki 1993).

The doctoral project follows an ethnographic research strategy (Breidenstein et al. 2020). Field trips lasting several weeks were conducted at two German primary schools and one independent democratic school between early 2025 and early 2026. I primarily observed lessons in two third-year classes. The sampling was based on the linguistic and social composition of the student cohort. One primary school is located in a heavily urbanised neighbourhood with a high proportion of immigrants, while the other is located in a socio-economically strong suburb of a large city. The first primary school teaches many children with special educational needs and children with L1 other than German – the second school does not. The sampling decision was based on the desire to create a contrast between the attributed educational language skills of the pupils. In line with a theoretical sampling strategy, I then included a free democratic school. This allows for a contrast between interaction patterns and references to school knowledge, which in some cases differ greatly from those in public schools. Further selective field phases will follow as needed.I put a focus on L1 German lessons, but participated in all types of classes. In addition to compiling extensive ethnographic protocols, I videotaped lessons. Audiographic and selective videographic access to situations in the field makes it possible to take a more detailed analytical look at fleeting verbal interactions. Two third-grade classes from the two state primary schools in the sample participated in L1 German lessons conducted by their respective class teachers, which focused on oral argumentation. The participation rate in the lessons was high, with around 20 pupils (out of 26 per class), which ensured that the interaction in the videotaped lessons was as natural as possible. Ten GoPros on tripods were used at the pupils' tables to capture the pupils' interaction in the group work phases from two angles each. During the plenary phase, two cameras were used to film from different angles. The cameras were used repeatedly in advance during the field phases, which lasted several weeks, to allow the pupils to become accustomed to the camera situation. The subsequent functional analysis of the material is based on iterative combinations of sequence analysis methods and coding methods borrowed from GTM (cf. Corbin/Strauss 2015). The evaluation of the audio and video material is based on ethnomethodological conversation analysis (cf. Bergmann 1981) and incorporates multimodal aspects of interaction (cf. Mondada 2007).

It is evident that argumentation as a subject-specific practice in primary school L1 German lessons is in crisis - even though it is part of the curriculum. This applies not only to communicative practices of argumentation, but also to exclusively oral teaching communication in general. In contrast to writing practices, they need to be explicitly designated as a subject of L1 German lessons in the course of classroom interaction. At the same time, the classes studied show that the lessons devoted to oral argumentation can be integrated into the interaction order more smoothly than expected. As a didactic learning object that has been incorporated into lesson planning, dissent practices appear to pose little or no risk to classroom interaction. Everyday objects in classrooms prove to be resistant actors around which subject-specific content can be intensively negotiated – for example, seat cushions in a mathematics lesson dealing with geometric solids. As such, they can become motors of intensive subject-specific debate. The likelihood of such opportunities being used as spaces for dissent practices is related to the timing of the lesson. Lessons that are under time pressure seem to reduce the likelihood of interactive subject-related dissent practices. Subject-related dissent practices can be taken up situationally as provocations of the social order in the classroom on the part of pupils. In such cases, they are interpreted by teachers as something to which they respond with disciplinary measures rather than subject-related elaboration. The educational language skills attributed to the pupils show no strong observable correlation with the extent to which pupils engage in the linguistic articulation of dissent. Numerous multimodal communicative resources are used, especially by those pupils who still have a limited German vocabulary, thus ensuring discursive participation.

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