Guest Lecture: What pedagogical knowledge do we need in order to reconstruct and defuse children's transitions to school?

6th September 2022 

15:30 - 16:30 

Location: K-208, Stakkahlíð - Menntavísindasvið 

About: 

We have known for a long time that social participation opportunities are closely linked to educational success. Nevertheless, it is still problematic for schools to compensate for socio-economic inequalities and to enable children to have successful educational biographies regardless of their origin.

The secondary analysis of Icelandic OECD long-term data (1975-2002) by Grundmann, Bittlingmaier, Dravenau & Groh-Samberg (2004) shows that interactions between socio-economic and school disadvantages persist despite structural reforms (inclusion). Compensatory teaching approaches have a particularly dramatic effect in the school entry phase. If the educational attitudes and practices of the milieu of origin are not precisely taken into account in the overall pedagogical concept of a school, negative attitudes towards educational opportunities will become more negative in the long term. Uri Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory seems to be confirmed here.

The OECD report "Pedagogical Knowledge" emphasizes that beneficial pedagogical action relates to motivation, previous experience and characteristics of the family background (Guerriero & Revai 2017), because the socio-ecological contextualization of neuroplasticity is the "key to education" (Ansari et al. 2017, 200). So the OECD continues to look for the solution in the structure of lessons to compensate for disadvantages.

The German education system is one of the most socially disadvantaged in Europe. Here, the educational administration is increasingly trying to delegate the compensation to socio-pedagogical specialists. Since 2013, a growing number of elementary schools (grades 1-4) have been equipped with school-social-work due to a state social program and decisions by the educational administration. In this way, the ecology of the living environment is taken into account in schools, but it is delegated to socio-pedagogical specialists without being taken into account in regular lessons or in the design of the school entrance phase. Teachers perceive them as a relief and not as a pedagogical cooperation partner.

My lecture gives a brief introduction to the function and tasks of school-social-work in primary schools. Based on the central findings of Grundmann et al. (2004) I will explain which areas of disadvantage cannot be mitigated either by teaching or by delegation. Using the concept development (1977-1984) of a state elementary school, I will show how an action concept structured in terms of both school and socio-pedagogical principles, which follows Bronfenberenner's Ecological Systems Theory, can actually defuse disadvantages and enable educational success from the moment they start school received the German School Prize for its overall pedagogical concept.