The examination logic. Analyses on sociality and knowledge constitution in oral teacher examinations.

• Applicants: Dr. Hannes König; Dr. Tanya Tyagunova
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 539109467

The proposed research project aims to empirically reconstruct the logic of university examination and evaluation practice in the context of oral teacher training examinations. Its focus lies on oral examinations as a special case of university examinations because, due to its sociality, this examination format is considered to test both subject-specific knowledge as well as social-communicative competencies and because the presentation and assessment of knowledge and competence is exhibited here in an exposed manner. The project aims to investigate how the two dimensions -and the social-interactive organization of oral examinations as a formalized procedure and the constitution of examination-relevant subject-specific and educational knowledge in the examination interaction - relate to each other. The starting point of the study is the suspicion that the processing of knowledge in the university practice of the oral examination is essentially structured by the examination logic: As an institutionalized procedure, the oral examination is primarily aimed at making the knowledge to be articulated usable for the examination practice itself. This can stand in tension to the officially anchored function of the oral examination as a place of selection and control of profession-related knowledge and skills. Oral examinations in teacher training represent a particularly interesting case in that teacher training, in addition to its specific professional practice claim, is characterized by the heterogeneity of the subject structure and the knowledge references. The re-search project realizes an exemplary approach by focusing on oral module and final examinations in the subjects German, mathematics, the respective subject didactics, and educational science in teacher training. Methodologically, the project combines objective-hermeneutic analytical approach with ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The empirical basis of the research project consists of audio recordings of oral examinations, supplemented by open interviews with the participants of the examination situations and by examination-related artefacts and documents of the ex-amination regulations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants