How do politicians and teachers perceive the role of ethnic and religious diversity in education? Drawing on a qualitative vertical case study of Berlin’s secondary school ethics classrooms, the publication “Aiming for Diversity” by Annett Gräfe-Geusch argues that two distinct logics of diversity – one inclusive, one exclusive – prevail in political and educational spaces.
Dear Annett Gräfe-Geusch, what questions do you address in your publication “Aiming for Diversity”?
“Aiming for Diversity” asks why we see diversity inclusive education policy being made in Germany, yet empirically find rather exclusive and discriminatory educational practices. To look at this gap between policy and practice, the study followed a comparative approach: it first analyses how a specific policy initiative (ethics instruction in Berlin) was conceived and debated in a state government. The study then looks at how this policy was implemented in different school contexts. Rather than situating my research only in school contexts where the student body is ethnically and religiously diverse, I also consider contexts where students are (perceived to be) ethnically and religiously non-diverse.
I find different taken for granted assumptions or, as I call them in the book, logics in policy and practice about how to deal with diversity: one is inclusive and the other one is exclusive. In the policy debates I observed how the inclusive logic produced an inclusive policy outcome. In practice both logics are operating however, depending on the context they become visible in different ways.
How did the idea for the publication come about?
I have always been interested in why specific societal groups are excluded in certain contexts. As a sociologist of education, it was thus only natural to look at this question in school settings. I found this question especially relevant in the German context, because of Germany’s history. And I am not necessarily talking about the beginning of the 20th century, but about the much more recent struggles of German national politics with immigration and integration. For example, it took a long time for German politicians to even frame Germany as a country of immigration and thus accept the relevance of immigration for the country.
So within this larger political setting I then searched for specific ways in which Germany was addressing migration-related diversity in its schools. I quickly discovered ethics instruction in Berlin, which presented itself as a perfect case study.
Ethics instruction was a hotly debated topic in Berlin’s parliament before its implementation. The political debate around ethics instruction was framed within the larger issue of femicide within migrantized communities (the media referred to it as “honour murders”) that were widely discussed and reported on in German media in the early 2000s. Politicians focused more broadly on the issue of ethnic and religious diversity specifically and how ethics instruction could provide a way to teach about peacefully living together in a multi-diverse city. This presented the perfect way for me to find answers to my larger research question and to focus on the gap between education policy and practice.
Which findings surprised you most during your research?
What really surprised me in my data was that both inclusive and exclusive logics operate in both diverse and non-diverse school contexts. They, of course, have different effects on teaching in each context. But in education science we often focus only on how teachers and schooling address (migration-related) diversity in diverse classroom settings. This is somewhat logical, because it is exactly in those settings where discrimination, racism and other forms of exclusion are (re)produced and experienced by students. However, to also see in my data how exclusion was implicitly taught and framed in settings where no diverse students are present, was really interesting, especially considering the more recent normalization of discriminatory and racist narratives by the populist far right.
Which questions would you like to pursue following this research?
I am still working on the larger question of how schools and educational settings more broadly deal with diversity. Since the research for this book, however, I have expanded my understanding of diversity to encompass a much broader scope. In recent studies I have examined not only at ethnicity and religion, but also at ability/disability, sexual orientation, gender and age, as well as care responsibilities, regional affiliations (East/West Germans) and socio-economic status. My concept of diversity in all of this is always constructivist, meaning, I am really interested in how specific identity markers are (re)produced to be “diverse” which oftentimes goes hand in hand with some form of othering and exclusion. My research further investigates how this exclusion is embedded in the organisational structures that all youth in society encounter at some point or another. These questions, of course, also touch on broader issues, such as what kind of society we want to live in and thus how we organize participation in our democracy.
That’s why I have chosen Budrich as my publisher:
Budrich provided a really supportive structure for realizing this publication. I actually met the editor responsible for my book at a conference, and we had been in contact about the publication ever since. Budrich also suggested that the book could fit into the book series “Studies on Difference, Education and Culture” which indeed was a perfect fit for my research. So, I had a really good experience publishing with Budrich and would choose them again for future publications.
About Annett Gräfe-Geusch
Annett Gräfe-Geusch is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Intercultural and Comparative Education at the Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg. She is also a researcher at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research in Berlin. Her research focuses on education, diversity, discrimination and organisations from a comparative perspective. She has conducted research in secondary schools, non-profit organisations, foundations and the federal administration.
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Aiming for Diversity
Inclusive and Exclusive Logics on Ethno-Religious Diversity in Berlin’s Secondary Schools
by Annett Gräfe-Geusch
