The "grammar" of stationary education in context

The analyses will adhere to a multi-level model: On micro-level, focus will be placed on pedagogic and diagnostic practices to be analyzed on the basis of «pupil» files and other relevant archive documents. On macro-level, organizational forms (supervision, management, etc.) as well as pedagogic concepts and «programs» (group, school, vocational training, work, etc.) will be examined. On this level, the project aims at explaining continuity and change from the perspective of evolving relationships between stationary education and the environment. Focus will be placed on the analysis of evolving institutional, discursive, idealistic, personnel, and disciplinary-scientific networks.

The project will adhere to governance and neo-institutional approaches. It will assume that two critical junctures were of essential relevance to the LA, i.e. the fundamental change in welfare policy and the social and special educational needs discourses that, in the 1920s, led to the foundation of the LA. External developments (e.g. the campaign on children’s homes, the change of expectations towards professionalism and changes to the institutional environment, etc.) in the 1970s and 1980s led to a repositioning of the LA.

The analysis is to describe and explain continuity and change to the practices and concepts before the background of a change of context. It will be based on the assumption that the organization of children’s homes and of pedagogic concepts was influenced decisively by the environment and changed, whereas the pedagogic challenges of everyday life in such children’s homes remained fairly unchanged. Continuity and change are to serve, theoretically, as the «grammar» of stationary education.

We expect to contribute new insights into the scientifically hardly investigated field of stationary special education as well as illuminating the connection between practices in such homes and staff training. Special emphasis will be placed on the changing context to explain change and continuity in the practices and the concepts of such children’s homes. The explanatory models and the "grammar of stationary education" are to find special use in the field of formation of professionals in the field of education.

The "grammar" of stationary education in context – continuity and change by the example of the Landerziehungsheim Albisbrunn in the 20th century