Conference Agenda

The topic of sibling conflicts and how parents address them in everyday familial education is of considerable cultural relevance across Europe and internationally. This is reflected in contemporary media such as television series (Succession), in social-media discourses (#siblingfights), and in the high demand for parenting guides (Markham 2015). This widespread interest can be explained, first, by the fact that many children in Europe live with at least one sibling[1], and that (violent) conflicts between siblings occur frequently (Hoffman et al. 2005, p. 1103). Second, sibling researchers argue that conflict is inherent to sibling relationships: because they are “involuntary and fateful” (Leitner et al. 2011, p. 12; translated by author[2]), there is “a pressure to come to terms with one another; thus, solutions to conflicts must be found” (ibid.). For these reasons, sibling conflict appears as a socially significant phenomenon.

Given the social and cultural significance of sibling relationships and conflicts, it is surprising that research and theoretical development on this topic within educational science is precarious (Bossek 2022). It remains a desideratum in the European and international context – only few qualitative studies exist (in sociology: Edwarts et al. 2006, Punch 2007; Winther et al. 2015). My reconstructive study (Bossek 2025) responds to this research gap and I’d be delighted to present partial findings at ECER 2026.

The success of parenting guides suggests that conflict practices between siblings are not simply the result of cognitive development. Humans do not possess an innate “genetic heritage” (Sünkel 2013; tba) containing the ,competencies‘ needed to resolve conflicts ,constructively‘. Steck and Cizek (2001, p. 174; tba) observe that children “are not born with the ability to resolve conflicts verbally”. That means that they have to learn these cultural practices and their corresponding knowledge. This learning process is shaped not only by socialisation (unintentional interaction) among siblings and by observing how parents deal with conflicts themselves, but also by familial education as a form of interaction with the intent to provoke learning processes (in the sense of the German-speaking term (Familien-)Erziehung). My presentation therefore centers family education as an intergenerational practice and asks: How do parents act in conflict situations between their children? What do they teach them and how are they pointing out objects of learning?

Answering this question requires a theoretical framework that allows the description of familial educational practice and aligns with the study’s methodological design. In my study, families, sibling conflicts, and family education are examined from the perspective of praxeological sociology of knowledge (Bohnsack 2017). Praxeology distinguishes between communicative knowledge – explicitly articulable, generalised knowledge, such as family rules, ideals and educational goals (what is done or should be done) – and conjunctive knowledge: implicit, non-verbalised knowledge that guides action (how things are done). Conjunctive knowledge provides (indirect) insight into practice and is shaped through socialisation and education. In their practice, subjects strive toward positive horizons (ideals) and distance themselves from negative horizons. Within this framework, a typical modus operandi develops – an action-guiding set of orientations, including specific “forms of conflict management” (Grundmann 2022, pp. 350-351; tba).

Building on this theoretical basis, I developed a praxeological definition of education (Erziehung), drawing from Operative Pedagogy (Prange 2012; Biesta 2022, pp. 75-89), and conflict, drawing from sociological conflict theory (Simmel 1908/1964; Tyrell 1976/2008). The resulting heuristic tool I call ,educational configuration‘ (Erziehungsgestalt) guides the analysis of the narrative interviews used in this study, as it allows to reconstruct educational practices.

[1] In the EU, 37.6% of children live with one, and 12.6% live with two or more siblings in the same household (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Household_composition_statistics (12. Nov. 2025)).

[2] Hereafter abbreviated as ,tba‘.

Social control is currently a relatively broad topic of discussion in educational contexts. In school and social pedagogy, extensive research has examined responses to undesirable behaviour in educational practices. There are studies on coercion, punishment, disciplining, and other means to respond to deviance in educational settings. Jonathan Simon (2007), e.g., identified a new kind of “penal pedagogy” as schools in the US adopted a punitive, police-like form and logic to tackle deviance. This took place despite empirical studies showing that deviant behavior can hardly be prevented with ‘tough’ measures. However, punitive interventions reproduce or even reinforce discrimination: children and young people who were already affected by exclusion and who belong to marginalized groups bear the brunt of punitive educational control (e.g., Kupchik 2016).

The presentation takes this development as its starting point. It asks what actually happens when social control is exercised in educational settings. From a praxeological perspective, it can be assumed that abstract rules and guidelines can only provide partial information about how social control is actually implemented. It seems more fruitful to focus on practices, which are only loosely linked to such provisions (Lacey & Zedner 2023). Practices are the medium which not simply implements or reproduces norms and rules, but these are negotiated in and adapted to complex social situations ("indexicality", Garfinkel 1980).

Against this backdrop, the presentation draws on empirical examples to portray social control as a kind of practical ’achievement’ in different educational contexts. It reconstructs how students, education professionals and others interactively bring about practices of social control. The exercise of control is a central part of educational practice, but it has specific characteristics that distinguish it from other contexts of action, such as police control. Institutional education is characterized by long-term social relationships, for example in school classes or residential care. In addition, it is usually crucial for educational practice to work interactively and participatively with children and young people, connecting with their interests. Exercising control is ambivalent: it can stigmatize, undermine trust, and have exclusionary effects. It is therefore important to pay close attention to how professionals act as controllers and what kind of relationship they have with children and young people in this context. The higher social status that teachers, for example, enjoy at school is not simply a given; professionals often have considerable leeway to act as controllers—or to refrain from doing so. For research, this means reconstructing “asymmetries-in-action” (Tam & Smith 2025). When they perceive deviance and respond to it, educational professionals must enforce their definitions of a situation and categorize those they are educating as deviant. This creates a double differentiation: professionals position themselves as controllers and distinguish between deviant and non‑deviant young people. Social control and personal differentiation are therefore closely linked and must be considered in analyses of responses to violations of norms in institutional educational contexts. The presentation focuses on how this can be achieved.

We understand social control in accordance with Cohen (1985) as the preventive or reactive handling of behaviour that is interpreted as undesirable or deviant. Perceived violations of norms lead to specific practices aimed at restoring a desired state. Social control involves more than sanctions such as expulsion or warnings; it is based on differentiations of situations and individuals, and it inaugurates persons as superordinate agents of control – who are themselves subject to control, as educational staff are permanently monitored by parents, students, supervisors, headteachers etc. The aim of the presentation is to demonstrate this complexity based on a praxeological footing and by drawing on empirical data from different fields of educational practice.

This paper examines how affective self‑work is governed laterally among prisoners in a newly established women’s community rehabilitation unit in Finland. Rehabilitation in this space is explicitly centred on communal participation, emotional openness, and shared responsibility, creating a dense affective environment in which prisoners become sensitised to one another’s feelings, conduct, and emotional commitments.

The paper addresses the question:

How is affective self‑work controlled laterally among prisoners, and how do shared feeling rules shape belonging and legitimacy within the community?

I argue that the community’s normative and moral order is structured around what Hochschild (1983) terms feeling rules and emotion management: expectations to be emotionally present, to regulate anger and frustration through talk rather than withdrawal, and to “give of oneself” in ways that sustain communal bonds. Emotional labour becomes not only a personal responsibility within rehabilitation but also a collective project, in which prisoners actively shape and enforce these expectations among peers.

The theoretical framework brings together three strands:

1. Emotional labour and feeling rules (Hochschild). This provides tools to understand how emotional expression, restraint, and reciprocity become morally evaluated practices within a therapeutic carceral setting. Expectations around emotional openness, composure, and contribution mirror a moral economy in which emotions function as “gifts” and obligations within a community.
2. Affective practice (Wetherell). This approach highlights emotions as embodied, relational practices rather than inner psychological states. It guides attention to the micro‑practices through which emotional attunement and misattunement are negotiated.
3. Lateral governance and the “tightness” of contemporary penal power (Crewe; Crewe & Ievins; Ievins). In reinventive or therapeutic prison settings, incarcerated people contribute significantly to the governance of everyday life. Power is distributed horizontally, as prisoners monitor, guide, and correct one another’s behaviour in alignment with institutional aims.

Analytically, the paper focuses on a single ethnographic vignette — “the drawing incident” — in which a prisoner’s perceived emotional misalignment during a grief‑laden session prompted backstage irritation and direct peer correction. This incident offers a focused lens through which to examine how affective self‑work is regulated and how feeling rules are invoked, negotiated, and restored.

By foregrounding emotional labour as both a technology of the self and a technology of social order, the paper contributes to ethnographic discussions on affective governance, peer participation, and informal pedagogies within institutional learning environments.

Home and Consumer Studies (HCS) is a school subject in which students must often both produce and consume a finished product—such as a meal or baked goods—within a single lesson. While HCS lessons are formally structured around instructions, recipes, and teacher demonstrations, much of the work that students must carry out involves navigating uncertainty and acting without continuous guidance. As Berg (2024) notes, everyday schoolwork includes many moments where students must independently interpret and advance an activity. This study examines such a moment through a detailed video‑ethnographic analysis of four students preparing bagels, highlighting how learning in practical subjects extends far beyond following explicit recipe steps.

A recipe typically provides a procedural frame by specifying ingredients, measurements, and general sequences of action. Yet, as Borghini (2015) argues, this type of instruction can never fully replace the experiential encounter with the activity itself. A recipe is analogous to architectural terminology: it may describe steps or structures, but it cannot reproduce the lived experience of cooking, touching materials, or sensing when something “feels right.” Much of what novices must learn—how dough should feel, how to adjust movements, when to proceed—is rarely articulated by experts. Rather than treating this implicit dimension solely as a question of tacit knowledge, we reframe it as an educational and pedagogical issue: how do students learn what cannot be fully verbalized by instructors or captured by written recipes? (Andersson & Östman, 2015).

To explore this, the study draws on a pragmatist account of experience, especially John Dewey’s notions of aesthetic experience and inquiry (Dewey, 1934/1980). Learning is conceptualized as the coordination of sensory, material, emotional, and social aspects of a situation into functional wholes. From this transactional perspective, what appears implicit is not hidden; it emerges dynamically through the interactions between students, materials, tools, and the unfolding demands of the activity (Garrison et al., 2022). The analytical question thus becomes: how do students engage with this implicit dimension and navigate the spaces between different instructional cues?

Todd (2014) argues that educational research must shift attention to the liminal, in‑between aspects of schooling—moments where teaching, learning, and subject content are negotiated rather than prescribed. This perspective is particularly relevant for HCS, a subject tradition rich with embodied, material, and value‑laden forms of knowledge, such as judgments about taste, care, effort, and quality. By situating our analysis within this liminal domain, the study contributes to broader educational discussions about how knowledge is produced, distributed, and enacted through a subject’s cultural and material practices. This also relates to current conversations within educational research about recognizing shifting conditions and emerging potentials in school environments.

Our video analysis reveals that students’ progress depends on far more than executing the steps listed in the recipe. Their actions are shaped by posing questions, observing peers, negotiating division of labour, improvising when expected outcomes are not achieved, and evaluating the adequacy of their work. They coordinate perception, movement, tools, and materials, while also navigating pacing, sequencing, and decisions about acceptable quality.

This combination of cooperation and individual initiative echoes findings from research on creativity and exploratory learning, which emphasize the value of flexible environments, opportunities for self‑direction, varied uses of space and time, and freedom from constant pressure (Davies et al., 2013). Importantly, such creativity often emerges precisely when students work without direct teacher supervision or despite formal structures meant to regulate their activity. Overall, the findings demonstrate that students are often more resourceful, inventive, and context‑responsive than is generally acknowledged in empirical classroom research.