190082 SE Education and Training with Impaired Senses, Behav., Cogn., Language and Social-Emotional Developm. (2024W)

aims, contents and method of the course:
This seminar builds on a long tradition of immersive, experimental, and participatory research and development seminars at the Institute of Educational Science. This time, it will be held for the first time in a school context, specifically in cooperation with a school center in Vienna and its vocational preparation year (BVL). This represents the 9th grade of special education and provides adolescents with special educational needs targeted and individualized preparation for vocational training and employment through the promotion of social skills. The vocational preparation year occupies a special (hybrid) role in the transition process between school and work. Many students with SEN who attend a BVL have previously undergone an integrative school career. Due to the lack of legal possibilities (apart from individual school experiments) for integrative/inclusive schooling at the secondary level, many students not only spend the 9th school year here but can remain in the BVL until completing the 11th grade, even though the curriculum is designed for only one year. The focus is intended to shift from academic learning to vocational and practical life learning, but it still takes place in the context and class structure of a school class with all the roles and patterns that can be found there. Accordingly, the fluctuation is high, and it is challenging for educators to motivate students. The Ottakring school center aims to gradually revise its BVL concept over the next few years. This is where this seminar will come in, focusing specifically on the perceptions, interests, and needs of the students. This will be done through small research and development projects jointly developed and implemented by the seminar students and the BVL students. After an initial meeting, it is planned that the students, together with the BVL students, will form small groups and work together throughout the remaining semester. The seminar is designed as an inclusive and participatory learning space with a high experimental character. The predetermined structure is oriented towards the preparation and implementation of joint participatory mini-research projects and iteratively goes through all phases of a research process (concretization of workable research questions, joint research, development and implementation of a research design, joint analysis, presentation, and documentation of the findings). The role of the course leader is largely to moderate and support this process, as well as to continuously reflect on the experiences together. This requires a high degree of self-responsibility from the participating students, as well as a willingness to engage in self- and group-organized learning processes, openness, and readiness for (self-)reflection and empathy. The seminar is based on the approach of inclusive/participatory research (Buchner, Koenig & Schuppener 2016), whereby, according to the motto of the self-determined living movement 'Nothing about us without us', people with disability experiences play an active role in setting the topics, designing, conducting, evaluating, and disseminating research projects. Accordingly, the BVL students will be actively involved throughout the seminar. Students are expected to continuously and critically reflect on their own and the collective negotiation and engagement processes in a (for many) initially unfamiliar and unfamiliar framework of collaborative work throughout the project.