Care as infrastructure – after-school child care centers in the context of all-day care

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Florian Eßer; Professor Dr. Gunther Graßhoff; Professor Dr. Dominik Krinninger
• Subject Area: Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism ; Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 525656655

While for some time after-school child care centers (that in German are referred to as “Hort”) were being considered as outdated in educational science as well as in the field of child and youth welfare services, they are currently receiving new attention. This is, among other things, due to the pending implementation of the legal right to all-day care for primary school children. It is one of the basic assumptions of the project that the after-school child care center with its only vaguely defined pedagogical profile can fill an organizational gap between child and youth welfare on the one hand and school on the other. Insofar it can be taken as a social arena in the mesh of attributions, expectations and historical developments between politics, federal educational organization, municipal social planning and parents as well as children. From an international perspective the after-school child care center is specific in its position in the structure of pedagogical institutions in Germany. It is an organization between school and child and youth welfare services – thus it is connected with both the educational and the social system. International studies, however, offer insights into the complexity of the welfare mix in the context of "extended education". Therefore, in the proposed project, the after-school child care center is analyzed as a social area in the local institutional infrastructure of care. The conceptual vagueness of the after-school child care center and its unclear demarcations will be taken as a starting point in order to empirically analyze the expectations of different actors, who in turn belong to different social worlds, in the infrastructure of all-day care. The aim of the project is to analyze the legitimation figures and the functions of after-school child care centers via three case studies in three cities or districts in Germany. This analysis is done from the perspective of the social worlds that constitute the respective after-school child care centers in their local environment. As the legitimation figures of after-school child care centers have no in depth professional and institutional embedding they do need justification and are produced in the respective social worlds and the social arena of their interconnection as well as their confrontation with the other social worlds on an everyday basis on site. For each case study, four social worlds– children (1), families (2), professionals (3), administration & politics (4) – are to be examined. In the combination of the three case studies and the recorded different legitimation and functional complexes, overarching figures of the constitution of the after-school child care center as a social arena will be elaborated. The comparative analysis will also capture the significance of the different policy contexts. The applicants together have developed the systematic-analytical approach proposed here in recent years and have already presented it to the scientific community.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Wolfgang Schröer