04. Inclusive Education
Symposium
Training Reflective Practitioners for a Sustainably Inclusive School
Chair: Lisa Rosen (RPTU I University Kaiserslautern-Landau)
Discussant: Ineke Pit-ten Cate (University of Luxembourg)
1 The challenge of inclusion and reflexivity
Inclusion/exclusion, interculturality and equal opportunities are social and educational key challenges in Europe. The research project "pro-inclusive-reflective" presents aims to promote inclusion in the long term by focusing on how to deal with heterogeneity, especially the experience of foreignness, in the first phase of teacher training.
Given the many contingencies in our society, the individual characteristics and symptoms of pupils and teachers alike, the challenges of supporting young people on their educational journey are enormous. This is only possible if teachers know how to deal reflexively with foreignness and fear of alterity in terms of culture, milieu, disability, or gender orientation.
Accordingly, we pursued the following objectives:
- promoting inclusion in schools,
- increasing necessary competences of student teachers to deal with heterogeneity and disconcerting foreignness,
- qualification of trainee teachers to supervise educational processes of future teachers, i.e. to become reflective practitioners dealing productively with their own alterity as well as the alterity of pupils and students.
2 Reflexivity as a necessary competence for teachers
Our research is based on the approach of the reflective practitioner promoted by Donald Schön (1987). According to our experiences it seems important to articulate reflective work when encountering others. Especially according to the psychoanalytic approach (Lacan, 2004) which addresses the unconscious as a real confusion with arising affects, desires and passions during the process.
Research on becoming a teacher as well as our own qualitative studies identifies recurring challenges for teacher candidates and their supervisors (Weber, 2008). Practice supervisors should be prepared to work with students on the following aspects:
- applying and reflecting on differentiated approaches,
- becoming aware of the relationship between knowledge and ignorance and developing an eye for their students' unique relationship to knowledge,
- learning to deal with affects, resistance to alienation, their own desires and the desires and enjoyment of their students',
- personal motivation to become a teacher and the matter of one's own style,
- students' ideas about heterogeneity, educational equity and the specific needs of children and young people.
3 Aims of the training program for trainee teachers
To supervise someone firstly requires a "commitment"; it requires a "yes" to singularity, to the alterity of the novice (Derrida, 2003). The training we have developed for reflective trainee teachers has the following aims.
Participants
- are aware of challenges that students face during their practice concerning alterity,
- be able to verbalize and reflect on their own imaginary-narcissistic expectations, projections, and transfers onto students,
- be aware of the importance of reflection when dealing with heterogeneity in a group or when designing inclusive settings,
- can apply methods of solution-focused practical reflections to support students in developing their own teaching style
- are aware of the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective, especially regarding action-determining phantasmas, structure of drives and unconscious resistance to alterity (e.g. social and cultural differences, disabilities, gender orientation) and are familiar with central concepts of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic educational work.
- are aware of functions, tasks and ethical positioning of supervisors.
Methodologically, the training will articulate psychoanalytic/depth psychological work on case studies of interactions between practice teachers and trainee teachers.
4 Process and purpose of the symposium:
- Discussion the importance of reflexivity focusing on verbalization.
- Working on the biographical-singular aspects, especially in the context of heterogeneity.
- Illustrating psychoanalytically orientated case work and how it can promote reflexivity of trainee teachers.
Discussion
What do colleagues think about our approach? What experiences have they made on this topic? What challenges are they facing? Are there any international differences?
ReferencesDerrida, J. (2003). Eine gewisse unmögliche Möglichkeit, vom Ereignis zu spreche. Merve.
Lacan, J. (2004). Le Séminaire, Livre X, L’angoisse. Seuil.
Pro-inklusive-reflective (2023). Module Coaching in Practicum: Reflexive Practicum for Inclusive Education. https://pro-inklusiv-reflexiv.eu/en/intellectual-outputs-2/
Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Jossey-Bass.
Weber, J.-M. (2008). Le tutorat comme métier impossible et de l’impossible. ULP.
Presentations of the Symposium
Supporting School Practice as Translation Work that Reduces Uncertainty
Bernhard Rauh (University of Regensburg)
Reflexivity is often emphasized in current teacher training, but the content is not always fully grasped and the conditions for the possibility of reflection in the sense of systematic reflection and analysis of school practice processes are not examined more closely. Practical support tends to focus on providing tips and tricks, thus creating a false sense of security. It often remains a pseudo-reflection, a mere linguistic duplication of existing ideas guiding action, if these are not linked to feelings and personal experience and are not linked to theories, translated into terms, or conceptually specified, which would be necessary for real reflection (cf. Hilzensauer, 2008).
The research project pro-inklusiv-reflexiv develops a concept for an accompanying internship course (“Praktikum”) in teacher’s training that focuses on promoting students' ability to become aware of the experiences and feelings associated with the internship and to express them in language. This translation work makes experience available and thus reduces uncertainty.
It serves the "primary task" (Rice, 1963) of promoting the subjectivation of students in the internship and thus initiating a process of reflexive professionalization.
The article reconstructs the easily disrupted path from pre-mentalizing to mentalizing thinking (Schultz-Venrath, 2013, p. 90ff.) based on scenes from internship seminars, paying particular attention to the emotional influencing factors.
The highly narcissistic vulnerability of students in educational and teaching situations that are so significant and demanding for their professional biographies, the omnipresent transference dynamics, a refusal to know as a collective attempt at defense, and the common students’ narratives about students as alien others are worked out in their function for the students' striving for security.
Finally, the contextual factors that inhibit and promote mentalization in school and university are discussed.
References:
Hilzensauer, W. (2008). Theoretische Zugänge und Methoden zur Reflexion des Lernens. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag. Bildungsforschung, 5(2). https://bildungsforschung.org/ojs/index.php/bildungsforschung/article/download/77/80/
Rice, A. K. (1963). The Enterprise and Its Environment. Tavistock.
Schultz-Venrath, U. (2013): Lehrbuch Mentalisieren. Klett-Cotta.
Case Analysis with Student Teachers: Reflecting on One's Own Actions and Unconscious Motives
Jean-Marie Weber (University of Luxembourg)
From various qualitative research projects, we became aware of the ethical problems of mentoring trainee teachers (Weber, 2008; Pirone & Weber, 2018). Consciously or unconsciously, mentors are partly responsible for barriers in the training process of trainee teachers. For example, without being aware of it or intending it, the mentor uses the trainee teachers as a mirror of his own ideas and professional gestures. In fact, he wants to format the latter from the motives of reflection: "Do it the way I tell you and you will complete your traineeship". This is reminiscent of the sculptor Pygmalion who fell narcissistically in love with his statue.
This poses a number of challenges for the practice counsellors, which go beyond the didactic skills of the subject. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the question arises, how the practice counsellors position themselves as knowers and a "subject who knows" (Lacan 2011). Does they rather inscribe themselves in a discourse of the (authoritative) master, the scientist, the hysteric or the analyst who encourages the trainee to construct his singular knowledge of action? Considering trainee teachers as knowers, to what kind of role they are assigned to? How does a practice counsellor face his “otherness and how does he or she face the students and his "otherness" and how does he promote student teachers as singular subjects of desire?
Therefore, we have developed a framework that enables practising teachers to reflect on their conscious and unconscious ideas, desires, affects (e.g. jealousy, fear) and transference in complex and conflictual situations with trainee teachers. The group shares case studies, thus acting as a "echo chamber". They read case studies out lout and each participant the protagonist what part affectively touched them. For example which aspects of pleasure, desire, transference or discourse they noticed.
Ultimately, the practice teacher should also be able to verbalise and communicate their own style through this work. This includes positioning themselves ethically, asking themselves to what extent they can support the trainee teacher in their desire/enjoyment of becoming a teacher who may be confronted with the unfamiliar and the uncanny. It also involves being able to deal responsibly with the question of whether their trainee teacher is capable of accompanying pupils in their educational processes later on.
References:
Lacan, J. (2001). Le Séminaire, Livre VIII, Le transfert. Seuil.
Pirone, I. & Weber, J.-M. (2018). Comment être juste dans l'acte éducatif? Une question pour le sujet au-delà d'une compétence professionnelle de l'enseignant. Spirale – Revue de recherches en éducation, 61(1), 53–68.
Weber, J.-M. (2008). Le tutorat comme métier impossible et de l’impossible. ULP.
Capacity for Action in the Face of Uncertainty and Fear of the Unknown
Margit Datler (University of Vienna)
Refugee pupils often attend inclusive classes, as many of them cannot be taught in mainstream classes due to their traumatic experiences (Rohr, 2020). There they meet adolescents who themselves have cognitive, physical and/or socio-emotional problems and who live in precarious family situations, too.
First-year students who complete their school practice in inclusive classes encounter a reality that is often alien to them, irritating, and frightening. They need support to be well equipped to meet the pedagogical, didactic, social, and emotional challenges. The practical module, which was developed and evaluated in the "proinrepra" project works at the “basic tool” - the person of the student. Everyone is born into an environment with different political, economic, cultural, and social (relationship) possibilities. Growing up, everyone has developed personal likes and dislikes, conscious (and unconscious) strategies for coping with conflicts and stress, values, ideas about themselves and others. And everyone is always striving to create, stabilize and optimize the highest possible subjective level of well-being and to avoid, prevent and minimize discomfort (Fonagy et al., 2002). These theories of depth psychology also apply to teachers, pupils, and the organization of relationships in inclusive classrooms.
In the seminar, the eight modules (summarized here in three topics) lead propaedeutically to a reflective and transfer-oriented supervision of the internship.
(1) I, as a prospective teacher, and my biographical history: Thematic tasks (experiences, action strategies, wishes etc.) are worked on and theory-based discussed.
(2) Focus on the individual pupil/student: We ask: " Why did pupils behave as they did in this situation? How they might have experienced themselves?” The aim is to come closer to understanding the student's subjectivity, motives, and resources. Through reflective dialogues the experiences of the placement are transformed into experiences that are available for later pedagogical situations. Teachers must realize that 'absolute' knowledge about a student can never be generated in any case discussions; one must be content with well-founded assumptions about a student's feelings and behavior and learn to endure and cope with the uncertainty that can be reduced but not eliminated.
This applies to (3) Focusing on oneself as a teacher and teacher-student interactions in the classroom: Workdiscussion-Protocols are written and discussed. Conscious and unconscious elements that help to shape the course of the interaction are to be uncovered and their significance recognized.
References:
Fonagy, P. Gergely, G., Jurist, E., Target, M. (2002). Affektregulierung, Mentalisierung und die Entwicklung des Selbst. Klett–Cotta.
Rohr, E. (2020). Flucht als Trennungserfahrung und der pädagogische Umgang mit unbegleiteten minderjährigen Geflüchteten. In D. Zimmermann, M. Wininger, & U. Finger-Trescher (Eds.) (2020). Migration, Flucht und Wandel. Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische Pädagogik 27 (p. 107–122). Psychosozial.
