Insights into the study
About my Master Thesis: Elementary Pedagogical Competences in a Post-Migrant Society
In her Master's thesis, Melanie Bair investigates how diversity is reflected in the social everyday life of kindergartens and how elementary educational staff in elementary educational institutions deal with equality and diversity of children. Melanie Bair also investigated the individual value systems of elementary education staff in relation to their patterns of action and orientation.
Interviewing kindergarten teachers, observing children
To answer these questions, Melanie Bair worked qualitatively by conducting interviews and observations at a kindergarten in Tyrol. She analysed the interviews and the observation protocols in the sense of the documentary method. The qualitative study illustrates that diversity is recognised in the kindergarten studied, but is only reflected in an abbreviated way in the children's everyday social life.
As a result of the work, Bair states that it is advisable to shed more light on interactions, as well as the jointly lived everyday life in elementary educational institutions, with regard to diversity. In this way, the elementary education staff can be supported and guided.
About My Master's Thesis: "Der Krüppel" (The Cripple)
In her Master's thesis, Sophie Schubert analysed the journal "Der Krüpel" of the first Austrian cripple community. This journal is a special form of historical source and also serves as a discourse space for people with disabilities in the 1920s and 1930s in Red Vienna.
The magazine "Der Krüppel" (The Cripple) was published in the years 1927 to 1938 in the so-called Red Vienna. As a newsletter of the "First Austrian Cripple Working Group", it represents an organ of people with disabilities who reported on their own situation. As a journal, "Der Krüppel" offers a special form of historical source, which can also be understood as a discourse space for people with disabilities in the 1920s and 1930s in Red Vienna.
Understanding thinking in the past
The analysis of journals opens up the possibilities to go back in time and understand how thinking was done, decisions were made and attitudes were taken at a certain point in time. Within the framework of a discourse analysis according to Landwehr (2018), individual articles from various issues of the journal "Der Krüppel" are analysed with regard to the question "What ideas about the education of children with disabilities can be found in the journal "Der Krüppel"?" from an educational research perspective and related to the historical context of the 1920s and 1930s in Red Vienna.
The results of the analysis reveal two areas of tension in relation to ideas of education. One area of tension concerns the institutional space between family and school education, the other the care that was current in the 1920s and 1930s in relation to community education. In addition, it becomes apparent that certain repetitive statements about the education of people with disabilities were made in the social and political context of the time, but that the tone of the statements changed from demands to legitimations with the political change from the 1930s onwards, and that certain statements no longer (could) appear. A strong relationship emerges between the historical context and the discourse on education in "Der Krüppel", which limits the affected person's perspective recognisable in the journal.
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