Resisting homogenization in subject lessons in primary education. A critical ethnographic perspective

The aim of this contribution is to analyze how primary school students are able to resist practices of homogenization in major subject lessons, precisely in German lessons as a central subject in German primary education. Homogenization in education is justified as the precondition to establish meritocratic selection via performance (Gellert, 2013). This selective function particularly works in major subjects such as German and Mathematics. Examples for homogenizing practices are competitive instruction settings and standardized testing (Dietrich/Wischmann, forthcoming). Foucault (1995/1977) and Butler (1997 a, b) point out that resistance is potentially part of all human action: Through reinterpretation of the subject, the subject is always a subject of resistance, because it withstands prescriptions qua interpellation and redirects it into the iteration (Balzer/Ludewig, 2012). But some contexts are more favorable for the emergence of resistance than others (Butin, 2001). The conditions to resist for primary school students in the class room – especially in major subjects - seem to be marginal. This is preeminently true for structurally underprivileged children, where lower performance and language skills are attributed to. An ethnographic pilot study in a third grade German lesson gives first insights in the kinds of possible oppositional practices and their effects. The background of the study is the critical approach of performance ethnography (Hamera, 2011). References: Balzer, Nicole/Ludewig, Katharina (2012): Quellen des Subjekts. In: Ricken, Norbert/ Balzer, Nicole (Eds.) (2012): Judith Butler: Pädagogische Lektüren. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Butler, Judith (1997a): The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. University Press: Stanford. Butler, Judith (1997b): Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Performative. Routledge Chapman & Hall: New York. Butin, Dan W. (2001) If this is Resistance I Would Hate to See Domination: Retrieving Foucault’s Notion of Resistance Within Educational Research. Educational Research, 32:2, 157-176. Dietrich, Cornelie & Wischmann, Anke (forthcoming): Genese von Heterogenität im Fachunterricht – Ein Beitrag zur Kontextualisierung von Differenzierungspraktiken. In: bildungsforschung Foucault, Michel (1995/1977): Discipline & Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Random House: New York. Gellert, Uwe (2013): Heterogen oder hierarchisch? Zur Konstruktion von Leistung im Unterricht. In: Budde, Jürgen (Ed.): Unscharfe Einsätze. (Re-)Produktion von Heterogenität im schulischen Feld. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, S. 211–227. Hamera, Judith (2011): Performance Ethnography. In: Denzin, Norman K./Lincoln, Yvonna S. (Eds.): The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. SAGE: Los Angeles. Pp. 317-330.

Gemeinsam mit Valérie Tacke