Support in Interactions in the Context of Inclusive Instruction. Reconstructions Regarding the Establishing and Processing of Support Practices.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Saskia Bender
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 350952989

In order to cope with the strongly increasing heterogeneity in inclusive classes, pedagogues often establish support relationships between students. This research project focuses both on the establishment of this method of instruction by the teachers and on the interaction practices between the students, using a qualitative-reconstructive research design. The data base is video-graphed documentations of lessons which have been transcribed for the reconstruction. The project aims both at a typological differentiation of the meaning structures of support-delegations by the teachers and of assistance practices between students on lower secondary schools; in this regard, their phases of life are differentiated and their ability of reciprocity is contrasted. Beyond those different types, structural homologies with regard to the meaning of support activities for students with or without a limited capacity of reciprocity and with or without special needs will be looked for, as well as the spaces of interaction which are opened or closed by various structures of meaning. As a frame, the project focusses on the potentially triadic (teacher/student/student) dealing with the structural asymmetry and ambivalence of the support relationship in class, against the background of a theory of support in schools, and differentiates it both empirically and theoretically. Moreover, results regarding a difference between speaking about support as a normative claim and supporting as performed practice are to be expected. Research, which focusses on the newly emerging typical practices in inclusive schools, a result of the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006, by means of reconstruction, is rare. This project will make a significant contribution to research on educational injustice in schools and to a reflexive research on inclusion.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants