Drawing on anthropological conceptions of pilgrimage, our ethnography of professional development at an Israeli Holocaust Memorial follows German teachers on journeys to Israel. Seeking transformative and transferable experiences to combat anti-Semitism in schools, teachers experienced the voyage as a secular pilgrimage rooted in Christian…

School attendance is linked with the expectation that the students do their homework at home after their lessons at school. For most students, 'at home' refers to the family context. For those young adolescents who do not grow up in their original families but in residential youth care, the latter is particularly relevant when it comes to doing…

Using Critical Design (CD) and Participatory Design (PD) as analytical and normative vantage points, this contribution reflects on how characteristics of both approaches can be useful for a reflective and inclusive engagement with educational technology in school development processes. Illustrating initial empirical findings from the research…

Eating practices are central to the everyday life of the addressees of pedagogical organisations. However, the eating practices of young people who live in residential care groups have rarely been the focus of educational research. This article presents the findings of an ethnographic research project on the eating practices of adolescents living…

In the context of the rise of right-wing populism, new debates on democratic education have emerged which focus on the role of affect. The paper puts forth a postfoundational perspective on affects and emotion, proposing an analysis of how democratic education practices mobilize certain feelings. In the empirical analysis of argumentation…

In the field of educational sociolinguistics there is a body of literature with a focus on children in complementary schooling. While timely, such work often does not often pay much attention to the parents who frequent the school setting, preferring to focus on the interactions between children. This paper addresses this absence by reporting on a…

Purpose: This article investigates the establishment of commitment in pedagogical practices through what are known as 'behavioural contracts'. Such contracts are seen as a participatory element of democratic pedagogy and are linked to the aim of strengthening students' self-determination. The objective is to demonstrate that as a pedagogical…

Previous research has established a connection between Standard Language Ideology (SLI) and prestige and power and has highlighted the existence of a dominant cultural narrative that idealizes Standard High German as a provider of cultural elevation and unity, viewing nonstandard Germanic varieties as exotic. Nevertheless, scholars have likewise…

This article traces discursive shifts in the ways in which imperialism and European colonialism have been dealt with in the classroom in relation to the German history textbook "Time for History" ("Zeit für Geschichte"), which was published in 2010. It explores how the textbook's representation of German colonial rule in…

In this paper, we make a theoretical and methodical case for combining Institutional Ethnography and Reflexive Grounded Theory to investigate linguistic transition processes of newly-arrived students in the German school system. Legitimised by a missing knowledge of German, the students are separated into preparatory classes in order to prepare…

International comparative ethnographic studies of ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) are difficult to conduct but worth the effort. Comparative studies featuring thick description and polysemic interpretations can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions, expand the menu of the possible, expose the provincialism of national approaches, and…

I draw on ethnographic data from a German school to explore discursive practices of educators that rationalize the illiteracy of 10-year-old, multilingual Ada. I juxtapose various moments of school life that "thickened" Ada's learner identities and find that special needs labeling often rested on pragmatic considerations of resource…

This article argues that an expanded view of linguistic landscapes provides a useful metaphor for exploring language policies. Following this view, "language policy" is defined as "linguistic landscaping" (i.e., placing language policy mechanisms which, together with already placed mechanisms, construct a metaphorical…

Purpose: The paper discusses the camerawork within a historic video case study as a meaningful practice of visualization of classrooms and also as an aspect worth consideration in current contexts of video-based classroom research and teacher education. Design/methodology/approach: The case study combines elements of video hermeneutics and a…

In the context of German linguistic policies, Heritage Language (HL) education ranges from formal and informal to non-formal offers. Families with migratory backgrounds seeking acquisition and maintenance of the HL frequently resort to educational or maintenance opportunities that are not institutionalized. In the region of Bavaria (Germany), the…