FOR 1612:  Mechanism of Elite Education within the German Educational System

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2011 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 184751107

The Research Unit aims to analyse the processes of construction and creation of excellence and distinguishment from elementary education up to universities. In six research groups, we will analyse under the perspective of the mechanism of elite education - in which we include the choice of educational institutions, the institutional choice of applicants, processes of distinguishment and construction of coherence - the political, scientific and public educational discourses on elite and excellence, the cooperation between families and institutions in the area of elementary and primary schools, the segment of exclusive gymnasiums, universities, with an excellent profile and a claim for elite as well as social dissociation in juvenile peer worlds. These exclusive educational sites will be systematically compared to contrasting cases, in order to be able to work out their special nature. The consequences and the meaning of these processes will be viewed out of the perspective of the institutions themselves, the professionals and also the recipients of the education.
The method of our Research Unit is an innovative combination of microanalytical qualitative studies with a system of discourse analysis. In theory, the concept of the mechanism of elite education will enable us to connect macrosociological theories and diagnoses about changes in the education system with positions of praxis-, interaction- and actor-theories. As matters of education policy were strongly affected by the 'topic elite and education', there has been less research within the German educational and social sciences, thereby the Research Unit gains to take it up systematically.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Distinction in Institutional Settings in Early Childhood Education and Care (Applicant Mierendorff, Johanna )
• Distinction in the German 'Gymnasium'? Processes of Creating Habitus in 'Exclusive' Secondary School (Applicant Helsper, Werner )
• Elite Formation and Hither Education Institutions (Applicant Stock, Manfred )
• Equality or Excellenz. On the Simultaneity of Counter-Directional Rationalities in the German Education System (Applicant Bröckling, Ulrich )
• Excellence in Primary Education. The 'best school' as a matter of negotiation in the discourse of school choice (Applicant Breidenstein, Georg )
• Exclusive Educational Careers of Young People and the Role of Peer Cultures (Applicant Krüger, Heinz-Hermann )
• Mechanism of elite formation in the German Education System (Applicant Helsper, Werner )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Werner Helsper, since 10/2015