Educational Offers for (primary school) children as Socio-Material Arrangements at Holocaust Memorials

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Alexandra Flügel
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 465638463

The proposed study aims to reconstruct the specifics of educational offers for (primary school) children at Holocaust memorials and thus provides a basis for the further development of the peda-gogy of memorial sites for children as well as for a didactisation of historical-political learning in the context of out-of-school-learning in primary schools. Historical-political education in Holocaust me-morials is currently determined by three developments: Firstly, its relevance in terms of educational policy is increasing, partly as a reaction to an increase in right-wing populism and extremism, na-tionalism and antisemitism, while visits to Holocaust memorials, which are mostly school-related, are linked to high impact expectations. Secondly, regarding the so-called 'end of contemporary tes-timony', Holocaust memorials are facing a change in the culture of remembrance and thirdly, (pri-mary school) children are increasingly being addressed as visitors by Holocaust memorials. In both, the discourse of primary school pedagogy and the discourse of memorial site pedagogy, chil-dren are described as a special, vulnerable clientele that has to be specifically considered when dealing with the history of national socialism. However, there are no published concepts for peda-gogical work with children at Holocaust memorials, so far. In terms of a didactisation, there is a lack of empirical knowledge, in particular concerning the special characteristics and action requiere-ments that are associated with these new educational offers for (primary school) children at Holo-caust memorials and that are at the same time embedded in the high impact expectations for a changing work of Holocaust memorials. The research project on educational offers for (primary school) children at Holocaust memorials addresses this gap. By means of an ethnographic re-search approach it will be brought out how remembrance of national socialism history is processed in the practical realization of educational offers at Holocaust memorials. The praxeological research perspective considers the sensually perceptible materiality of Holocaust memorials and implies an understanding of their educational offers as socio-material arrangements. The research interest is also directed towards the question of how (primary school) children are addressed as visitors, thus linking the study to childhood theory research, in which pedagogical situations are examined in terms of generational practices. To enable a contrasting comparison, the study considers educa-tional offers for (primary school) children from three different Holocaust memorials that vary in terms of their historical reference. As a further element of contrast, both school-related and non-school-related pedagogical offers are included in the sampling in order to explore the relevance of the school context when dealing with the history of national socialism in an out-of-school-learning situation at Holocaust memorials.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants