Project Details
Projekt
Equality or Excellenz. On the Simultaneity of Counter-Directional Rationalities in the German Education System
Applicant
Professor Dr. Ulrich Bröckling
Subject Area
General Education and History of Education
Term
from 2011 to 2020
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 184751107
Looking at the social construction of equality and excellence, the project examines the discursive formation and practical effects of two rationalities in the contemporary system of education in Germany that are both political and counter-directional. Taking up the theoretical position of Governmentality Studies and the system theory, the project analyses the rules of justification these counter-directional rationalities refer to, their intended and unintended effects, and their mutual interferences. The study also reveals the mechanisms of constructing distinction and coherence, inclusion and exclusion in the education system, and how they are organized.While the first phase considered levels of rationalities, the second phase (applied for here) will firstly analyse the institutional practices and forms of subjectivation associated with excellence and equality tendencies, and secondly analyse critiques of these tendencies and potential crisis points. In contrast to organisation-based research that revolves around institutions and agents, this study will examine which practices schools and colleges use to make organisational distinctions in terms of excellence and equality. In this way it becomes possible to describe the struggles within the education system that accompany the opposing tendencies of excellence on the one hand and equality on the other. At the level of subjectivation, this project will show the forms in which the claims for equality and excellence are translated into individual demands on teachers and students.
DFG Programme
Research Units
