240065 FS FM1 - Research Seminar (Part 1) - Research Design (2022S)

The French sociologist and Bourdieu disciple Didier Eribon made waves with his autobiographical study "Return to Reims". In his book, he showed the difficulties that social advancement continues to be subjected to despite a high level of education from the working class - and how this encourages right-wing populist tendencies. This contrasts with the promise of fair educational opportunities and open access for all, which was widely supported in post-war Europe and is still reaffirmed internationally today, not least in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, it seems that educational pathways continue to be marked by strong social inequality, because social forces of persistence are stronger than meritocratic promises, in the global North as well as in the global South.

From the perspective of critical social sciences, education is seen as an unequally distributed good. Both internally, within Europe, and in the North-South relationship, access to education as well as opportunities within the education system are distributed in such a way that education rarely allows for an improvement of the social situation, if it does not even contribute to the aggravation of inequalities.

On the other hand, however, education as a process of personal self-determination and subject formation should and may also be unequal; uniformity and purpose orientation undermine the emancipatory character of education. Inequality in the sense of differentiation is a prerequisite for freedom and for empowerment to go one's own way.

This research seminar will deal with this double aporia of education. Specifically, we will start from the situation of educational inequality on a global level documented by quantitative research (UNESCO, PISA, PIRLS and other studies) to address selected categories of difference and social groups. Special attention will be paid to the "inheritance" of education, i.e. to the transgenerational transmission of social, cultural and economic capital, thus to educational biographies. Here, reference is made to the work of Pierre Bourdieu.

Transgenerational educational patterns and aspirations will subsequently be investigated using methods of qualitative social research and biographical research: In addition to the analysis of documents and self-testimonies, there will be observations and interviews, possibly also work with methods of generative image work and scenic research, which will be brought into a meaningful mix of methods. The methodology is influenced by Paulo Freire's approaches, which are guided by the question of oppression relationships as well as liberation potentials.

In this way, individual as well as group-specific educational paths are to be traced. We follow Didier Eribon's and Annie Ernaux's paths of reflection to think individual biographies together with structural forces. Sometimes this research leads back to "foreign" milieus of origin or refugee regions in the Global South, and thus also to a consideration of educational policies in the context of origin.

In the sense of a self-critical and reflective research approach, this FOSE is conceived as a "hermeneutic double helix": Two spirals of research reinforce and promote each other, which is why the process of research itself is reflected upon in parallel, documented and insofar also researched within the framework of the accompanying research supervision.