Care is a key concept in contemporary social discourse. In the face of social transformations and multiple experiences of crisis, care practices and discourses are once again coming into focus - particularly as a response to individual and social dependency and vulnerability. While care has already been widely discussed in philosophical, socio-educational, nursing science and queer-feminist contexts, research in school pedagogy and educational science is still in its infancy.

The core idea of the "Futures of Care in Education" research cluster is to develop cultural theory-based perspectives on care practices in school educational spaces and on the professionalisation of school actors. Care refers not only to the distribution of care work, but also to care as a basic structure of human coexistence. This brings care practices into focus as theoretical and empirical categories, particularly with regard to their material conditions, their discursive and practical realisations and their subjectivation effects.

In the research cluster, we analyse care as a format and medium of future-oriented pedagogical professionalism. From a perspective informed by cultural theory and genealogy, we take a look at care relationships in school educational spaces. The concept of care is defined praxeologically and understood as a politically relevant pedagogical mode of action under institutional conditions.

The cluster focuses on three main areas:
(a) Relationality: care relationships are reciprocal, but not symmetrical. Analytically central is the "third" of the care relation - the learning cultures - in orientation to inclusive and discrimination-critical perspectives of school educational spaces as well as to a reflection of pedagogical practices.
(b) Historicity: Curriculum Studies perspectives are used to examine the discourse and how care relationships are created and institutionalised in curricula.
(c) Materiality: Care materialises in artefacts, architectures, spaces and media cultures. Questions of selection, responsibility and design of material environments are relevant here.

In terms of cultural theory, care is understood as a relational and socio-material structure of discourses and practices that influence the inherent logics of schools and teaching as well as subjectivisation and addressing processes within school learning cultures. Relevant lines of discourse are general pedagogical, relational, difference-reflective and inclusive perspectives. A common thread linking the three focal points and neo-institutional, future learning is the focus on intersectional inequalities. Based on the analytical framework of Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL), the project emphasises educational approaches that are critical of power, discrimination and migration society. The aim of the research cluster is a sharpened care-pedagogical view of knowledge systems in school educational spaces, in particular their relationality, curricular form and material nature.

Contact

We would like to ask other interested colleagues to get in contact with the following persons: