Completed project · 2013–2015
Ethnography-based classroom research in pre-vocational programmes of the transition system
The project examines everyday pedagogical practice in the transition system. Almost 300,000 young people enter a corresponding programme every year. From the perspective of employers’ associations, companies and teachers, young people who do not manage a direct transition into training after general education school appear to lack training maturity.
Accordingly, the student body in one-year pre-vocational classes at vocational schools, where training maturity is promoted, is regarded as difficult and teaching as demanding. By far not all young people succeed in gaining access to dual training through participation in a pre-vocational programme. Despite the high socio-political relevance of the transition system, little is known so far about the pedagogical processes in pre-vocational programmes. Everyday institutional life has so far mostly been examined retrospectively by means of interviews and surveys of students and/or teachers. In contrast, the project realises an ethnographic approach that looks at the micro-level of pedagogical interactions by means of participant observation. For this purpose, one-year pre-vocational classes in comparable (technical) occupational fields at two vocational schools are ethnographed over the course of a school year, combining different survey methods (participant observation, audio and video recording, document analysis, interviews and group discussion). The focus is on pedagogical practices by means of which the training maturity of young people is promoted. The project serves to prepare an application for third-party funding.