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Self-description of the Institute for Social Pedagogy (IfS)
The Institute of Social Pedagogy focuses on the area of cross-cultural, sociopedagogical learning and development promotion of the concrete social and societal context. The institute’s multicultural team operates multidisciplinarily. A further focus is to learn from each other - practitioners and theorists cooperate in a common, reciprocal process on par with each other.
The institute’s thematic focuses are:
- the establishment and development of concepts for further education and training in the field of pedagogical assistance, in particular supporting the educational process of IDEA (see below) and the method’s advancement
- the development and testing of socio-pedagogical processes for job seekers to build and support structures for self-help, to strengthen self-efficacy, and to integrate into the labor market
- the monitoring and initiation of the diversity approach, the intercultural exchange, and the communication between the modern host society and minorities
- the development and scientific support of concepts and projects concerning antidiscrimination and anti-racism
- the support of socio-pedagogical processes in the intercultural work environment by scientific advice and third party evaluations
The members of the institute are:
- Prof. Dr. Clemens Seyfried (psychologist)
- Özkan Kalkan (sociologist)
- Dane Krause (social pedagogue)
- Ercan Umaç (social pedagogue, therapist)
- Dr. Mikolaj Bednarski (cultural scientist, economist)
- Jürg Montalta (director)
- Alexander Klose (attorney)
- Miriam Schroer-Hippel (psychologist)
IDEA
In cooperation with the non-profit association Gesellschaft für interkulturelles Zusammenleben e.V. (Society for Intercultural Coexistence) the IfS develops the basic skills enhancement program IDEA and accompanies its practical application. IDEA aids students to go through an educational process corresponding to their abilities and enhancing these skills to form a strong and sustainable identity. The children and adolescents should not merely be "supplied" with educational programs, but empowered to find their independent ways by participating in educational measures. The concept lays an emphasis on an individual-related, holistic approach, linking it with specific work modules. IDEA works on the causes and is not limited to the fight against symptoms. By means of a daily special training lesson in the schools’ classrooms in small groups of 4-6 students, supervised by a person of trust, the motivation for learning is built up in a continuous manner. Furthermore, based on the individual skill levels, IDEA initiates a supportive learning process in the subjects German and mathematics.
Contact: Dr. Britta Marschke
TBL
TBL (Trust-Based-Learning) centers the factor trust as the determining variable for learning and development processes. A special challenge at this is the difficulty of operationalizing trust-enhancing behavior. The method investigates within concrete situations what different pedagogical target groups experience as building of trust and to what extent the reflection of this dimension constitutes for respective trust-building behavior by the pedagogic personnel. In the TBL concept this analysis is at the beginning of learning and development processes, so that once clarified, it counteracts the methodic overload of learning paths. It is assumed that after the individual, internal approval for a specific objective the learning work can be initiated. This inner consent is bound to confidence dimensions (e.g. self-confidence and interpersonal trust). Anent measures to integrate people into the working world with the connected necessary learning steps, the trust dimension should be the starting point for the learning process. The task is to create theoretically substantiated and practical development concepts for individuals with the need for learning steps. The elaboration of these trust dimensions and the guidance to a conscious approach to trust development - including the individual cultural biographical contexts - for all actors involved in the learning process are further goals of TBL.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Clemens Seyfried
Rife
RIFE (Reflection Instrument for Education) provides an instrument for measuring the reflection competence in pedagogical contexts. RIFE can be used as a selection process component for educational professions. The instrument focuses on those individual dispositions, which are considered relevant from both, the discourse and the experience perspective. It deals with both, the willingness and the ability to reflect on concrete pedagogically relevant situations. The criteria for the reflection process are among others descriptive, interpretive, and explanative statements, which can be differentiated with respect to the awareness of one's own observer status. Based on this focus, the selection of personnel in socio-pedagogical fields of work can illuminate and elaborate the reflection competence criterion as the core competence for the actors involved. The goals are the instrument’s use and further development for the applicants of educational professions.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Clemens Seyfried
SURE
The SURE model (SUbjective RElevance) was tested with students pursuing teaching professions in their practical vocational training. The evaluation results show consistently positive effects. SURE is a concrete and clearly structured approach for the advancement of operational competence in pedagogic work situations. The conception allows on the one hand for high self-control considering the integrity of each person and on the other hand provides a "roadmap" structure as a well-defined procedure. SURE assumes that solutions to problematic situations are within the actors themselves and that only those developmental steps have a long-term effect, which highly relate to the actors’ self-competence. For the further work it will be of interest to what extent the individuals in different fields of work experience the model as supportive for the concrete work and in which areas the concept calls for modifications.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Clemens Seyfried
Creation of compatibilities
In order to sustainably bring together unsuccessful applicants and companies with open apprenticeship training position, the IfS develops an instrument searching for the cause of the lack of compatibility between trainers and rejected applicants, as well as apprenticeship dropouts. The concept empirically analyzes the reasons for rejecting applicants, the real criteria for being accepted to the training, as well as the causes of premature termination of the apprenticeship, both from the enterprises’ perspective as well as from the juveniles’ point of view. Besides the question of social and professional basic competences, the applicants’ and apprentices’ migration background is problematized in its practical relevance.
Based on the results of the developed instrument, the IFS will elaborate tailored action plans, in order to enduringly bring together unsuccessful applicants and seeking companies. The adolescents will on the one hand be trained in those skills, which have been identified as deficient. On the other hand, the applicants and apprentices with an immigrant background should be sensitized to their potential natural strengths. Based on the results of the study, training courses for the companies will be developed and implemented, in order to strengthen the human resources department and the training supervisors in their decision making, as well as in their communication skills, with the further aim of helping the corporations to establish a non-discrimination business culture.
Contact: Dr. Mikolaj Bednarski
School without discrimination
Discrimination is conceivable in various patterns within the educational area. With regard to the school system, the first enrollment and the admission to a secondary school (e.g. the Gymnasium) is to be taken into consideration. In everyday school life discrimination still occurs in the form of failed assistance (e.g. for students wearing a headscarf) but also by means of harassment (e.g. in terms of skin color). Finally, the students’ assessment process may have discriminatory features when students receive differing grades, diplomas or recommendations for different types of school despite equal performances. These kinds of conceivable discrimination patterns may overlap and thus be visible and detectable in a special way. An example is the formation of parallel classes when directly or indirectly linked to ethnic origin. In addition to the already in itself critical segregation based on the students’ origin, their religion, their native language or their language skills, one must fear that - contrary to what the schools claim - these students are not adequately promoted in classes, which rather act as "sidings". If classes are stigmatized in this manner, not only the teachers’ commitment is likely to wane, but also the assessment of the students is probable to deteriorate.
While the issue of "discrimination in schools" has so far been almost exclusively discussed in connection with the headscarf ban for teachers, the IfS strives to examine which possibilities there are for students to defend themselves against discrimination (not only but also) by means of anti-discrimination laws and which structural changes are necessary to overcome institutional discrimination in the area of education.
Contact: Alexander Klose
Art
When I was a teenager art saved my life. Lost in the world, isolated from the contact with people, I remained caught in a world of fantasy, until I found a way back to life working as an actor.
Since then I have been interested in working as a director with and among people. 30 years ago I started with small performances in the “Marzahn” of Berne, followed by art projects with young people in the ghetto of Philadelphia on a littered lot between charred buildings. Together with friends I founded a school for difficult adolescents in San Francisco. Being an artist I found that one of the reasons why many young people come to a slippery slope is that our society does not acknowledge their extraordinary talents.
Ten years later I staged a play in a secondary school in Berlin-Kreuzberg and wrote a report entitled “Die Kreuzberger Odyssee” (The Kreuzberg Odyssey) about this work with young people from 16 nations. Incidentally a company’s CEO read the report and was of the opinion that since I successfully handled the theater work with adolescents I would also be able to stage a play with the management board.
So I ended up in business and worked for ten years as an artist with hundreds of managers. My experience over all these years has taught me: we humans are very similar to one another by nature. Only the costumes and the stage designs vary. Fancy offices differ from the littered parking lot, designer leather shoes differ from the hippest sneakers. I see and recognize the people behind their stage settings and costumes and I don’t let myself be distracted from the relevant matters by trash or design.
When in 2007 the management board of the Inaternationale Bauausstellung (International Building Exhibition) in Lusatia asked me if I wanted to conduct art projects with and among people, I was thrilled: working with art where it is urgently needed, in a region ravaged by mining, in seven locations, on an area of one hundred by eighty kilometers in size!
During three years, seven thousand people participated, contributed and shared their thoughts, their worries, their excitement, their anger, their tears and laughter. In the end we were all astonished by what we finally succeeded after three years of the art project “Paradies 2”.
With my artistic working style I can imagine to conduct building projects in the future, to configure landscapes and city parks, to solve political conflicts, and to choreograph with children, adolescents, elder people, professionals and non-professionals.
Art belongs to everyone, it is an inexhaustible resource, food and nourishment for a thousand needs. When it is art, it shines.
Contact: Jürg Montalta
