The constitution of subject matters in political and historical teaching situations. A comparative reconstruction between France and Germany

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Carla Schelle
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 390319266

The proposed project aims at reconstructing political and historical teaching situations of subject matters in class which are communicatively and interactionally constituted by secondary teachers and pupils. The research ambition is to illustrate as to how an object can appear in comments, ideas as well as in contextualization. By choosing two countries with probably differing teaching methods, distinctions are expected on a micro level concerning the constitution of topics which are relevant for an understanding of oneself and the world. In order to reveal expected patterns and variances particularly well, school situations of both cultural contexts are going to be compared or rather contrasted with one another. At the same time it will be examined whether passed on developments and normative frameworks (e.g. national, local syllabus) in each cultural context are to be found in those practices of lessons regarding the constitution of the subject matter. The project belongs to a comparative and interpretative empirical teaching research based on audio and videotaped observations as well as on transcriptions chosen and analysed by reconstructive methods. The study joins some already existing qualitative studies in the field of a comparative Franco-German empirical teaching research.Some key questions are:1. How is a subject matter in political and historical lessons communicatively constituted and how, on the long run, is the topic interactionally kept up?2. Can patterns of constitutions of subject matters be detected and if so, which ones?3. Is it possible, by comparing or contrasting reconstructions, to discover similarities or differences in these patterns, perhaps variances for the constitution of subject matters in political and historical lessons in Germany and France?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants