190083 VO BM 5 Theory Development in Education Science (IP) (2025S)

The lecture introduces educational theory formation, conveyed through key conceptual figures and frameworks in the field of inclusion and inclusive education. Drawing on Annedore Prengel’s (1993) Pedagogy of Diversity, inclusive education is not understood as a specialized approach for specific (marginalized or at-risk) groups but as a general pedagogy that takes the fundamental diversity of all learners as its starting point. Education is conceived as a space of recognition and becoming (of all people in interdependence), where equality and difference are not seen as opposites but as mutually constitutive principles.

Similarly, inclusion is not defined as a fixed (goal-oriented) category but as a dynamic, complex, and entangled process of shifting boundary acts, which manifests differently depending on the specific connections and interactions (intra-actions) between human and non-human actors in various contexts (Koenig & Schön, 2024). The aim of this lecture is to familiarize students with an inclusive educational mindset and theoretical foundations, enabling them to grasp inclusion as both a relational phenomenon and a transformative practice on individual and collective-systemic levels.

The course situates inclusive education within contemporary discourses and debates on global societal challenges amidst affectively charged, multi-crisis phenomena of the Anthropocene. It begins by addressing discussions on diversity, "wokeness," and identity politics, which are often polarized in instrumental ways. Inclusion is thus not only considered a social or educational policy concern but a broader societal challenge, serving as a focal point for navigating issues of belonging, power, and future-making in an inevitably plural world.

Against this backdrop, the lecture engages with current contributions from inclusion research that shape educational theory formation and world-making perspectives, including:

The Trilemma of Inclusion (Boger, 2019), which highlights contradictions between the principles of deconstruction, empowerment, and normalization, demonstrating that only two of these dimensions can be realized simultaneously.
Jasbir Puar’s (2017) biopolitical understanding of debility, capacity, and disability, which illustrates how societal normalization processes produce and regulate certain bodies along neoliberal logics of productivity and value.
Arseli Dokumaci’s (2023) concept of Activist Affordances, which explores how disabled people subvert restrictive structures through everyday practices, creating spaces for resistance and agency.
Critical posthumanist perspectives in Disability Studies (in Education) and inclusion research (Goodley et al., 2021; Naraian, 2020), which challenge anthropocentric notions of inclusion by emphasizing the role of material, technological, and discursive entanglements in educational processes.
The lecture examines inclusion across the entire lifespan, both from the perspective of marginalized groups and in relation to (inclusive) pedagogical fields of action. The relationship between theory and practice is explored through a dialectical understanding, particularly with reference to Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, which does not view theory as an abstract body of knowledge but as a tool for reflection and transformation of societal realities.