Conference Agenda

This doctoral research project investigates how institutionalised practices of recognition shape subject formation and reproduce educational inequality in higher education. Empirically, the study focuses on BIPoC students enrolled in the degree programme Pedagogical Practice in the Migration Society at Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany, a higher education institution in the Global North. The project is situated within transnational debates on racism, migration, and epistemic inequality, highlighting how Eurocentric knowledge regimes and historically rooted Global North–Global South power relations continue to structure who and what is recognised as legitimate knowledge in higher education.

The study is guided by three interrelated research questions:
(1) How do BIPoC students experience and negotiate institutionalised practices of recognition, and how do these practices shape their processes of subject formation?
(2) What role do institutionalised power relations and exclusion mechanisms play in reproducing intersectional forms of discrimination within the programme?
(3) How do ambivalences, contradictions, and ruptures between experiences of recognition and exclusion emerge in students’ subject formation?

The theoretical framework integrates social recognition theory (Honneth) with Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus, and symbolic power to analyse how institutional norms define legitimate participation and belonging. Intersectionality (Crenshaw) illuminates the overlapping effects of racism, classism, gender, and migration-related positioning, while Judith Butler’s notion of recognition as subjectivation provides a lens for understanding how institutions shape subjectivities through inclusion and exclusion. Decolonial perspectives (Quijano, Mignolo, Santos) are applied to critically interrogate the coloniality of power and knowledge that underpins recognition practices in higher education, highlighting how Global North institutions often reproduce epistemic hierarchies that marginalise BIPoC students.

Although situated in a programme in the Global North, the project engages international debates on educational inequality, racism, and participatory knowledge production. Its theoretical and methodological framework is designed to be transferable and offers points of comparison with initiatives across the Global North and Global South. The poster contributes to the NW 15 discussion by highlighting research partnerships as a strategy for critically examining institutional recognition practices and for addressing intersectional and transnational educational inequalities in higher education

In the current educational landscape, the ability of students to express their perspectives convincingly in written work targeted at a specific audience is a key indicator of functional literacy. However, in school practice, particularly among lower secondary students, weaknesses are often observed in constructing arguments, presenting evidence logically, and maintaining a coherent connection between claims and supporting data. This issue has become a pressing pedagogical problem for subject teachers.

To address this challenge, an action research study was conducted to develop argumentative writing skills among 9th-grade students. The study was organized based on the collaborative professional efforts of teachers of “English” and “Kazakh Language and Literature” subjects. Interdisciplinary cooperation allowed students to develop their ability to construct arguments across different subject contexts.

The theoretical foundation of the study was based on Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model, as presented in The Uses of Argument (1958). The Toulmin model includes three key structural elements: Claim, Data, and Warrant, which links the claim to the evidence. This model was considered an effective tool for structuring students’ thinking and fostering logical coherence and evidential reasoning in writing.

Accordingly, the study sought to answer the following research questions:

1. How does the use of Toulmin model’s transformative strategies develop students’ argumentation skills in audience-targeted writing?

2. To what extent do the structural elements of the Toulmin model contribute to logical coherence in students’ written work?

3. How does systematic application of the Toulmin model enhance students’ critical thinking in writing?

The main aim of the research was to improve students’ writing skills, enhance critical thinking, and evaluate the impact of argumentation instruction on students at different proficiency levels through the use of Toulmin’s transformative strategies.

The study involved 27 students aged 14–15, from which three students representing high (A), medium (B), and low (C) academic achievement levels were selected. Three research lessons were conducted within the action research framework, introducing Toulmin’s transformative strategies step by step and monitoring changes in students’ writing.

Results indicated that systematic use of the Toulmin model improved the quality of students’ arguments. In particular, the structure of writing among medium- and low-level students became clearer, and they demonstrated increased ability to provide evidence-based reasoning. The findings support the effectiveness of using structural models to develop argumentative writing and recommend their integration into school practice.