Ethnographic Studies on Substitute Teaching (VerUnES)

• Applicant: Dr. Richard Lischka-Schmidt
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573024717

Substitute teaching refers to teaching that deviates from the regular schedule, e.g., to lessons in which teachers teach a different class or subject than usual. This type of teaching has received little attention so far. The project addresses this gap, focusing on short-term substitute teaching when the teacher and school class do not or hardly know each other. The central research question is: How is substitute teaching constituted as teaching socially and subject-specifically, i.e., how do teachers and students produce substitute teaching as teaching in their interaction? We can assume that substitute teaching is characterized by increased contingency due to the lack of temporal continuity, which in turn affects social and subject-related continuity. Consequently, the order of classroom interaction is more fragile and requires more explicit negotiation, resulting in teaching and learning practices that are partly differing from those of regular teaching. Against this (primarily system- and practice-theoretical) background of teaching theory, beginnings of lessons, disciplining, subject-specificness, and working consensuses in (substitute) teaching are particularly interesting. These four phenomena are central to the (re)establishment of a common order of classroom interaction. They are thus of outstanding importance for research into the constitution of (substitute) teaching, both from the perspective of the actors and their problems and from the perspective of teaching theory. Following the focus on the practical creation of substitute teaching as teaching, the project is based on an ethnographic research design. The project’s core is the observation and note-taking of substitute lessons and lessons that follow them, as taught by the regular teacher, to explore the research question by comparing substitute and regular teaching. During the project, two field phases of a total of nine months will alternate with phases of analysis. The resulting field notes are examined sequence-analytically following Grounded Theory after they have been openly coded for systematization and the reasoned selection of sequences. To answer the research question about the constitution of substitute teaching, the project will, during the analysis phases, first immanent-empirically examine problems of acting in substitute teaching and how they are addressed. Secondly, this is elaborated immanent-theoretically into a conceptualization of substitute teaching in terms of teaching theory. Finally, from a general theoretical perspective of teaching theory, it is asked to what extent a temporal and thus social and subject-related continuity, as well as concrete persons and not just roles, make up a constitutive condition of classroom interaction so that the description of teaching as organized interaction can be refined.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants