This service and transfer project imparts knowledge and competencies to teachers with regards to diversity in the classroom. It achieves this through making teachers familiar with the instrument of biographical storytelling.

Hypotheses

(a) The importance of religious, cultural, social, ethnic and gender-based differences is, in specific societal contexts, the result of discursive revaluation. In the most unfavorable case these differences could be naturalized, could legitimatize exclusion and thereby initiate conflicts. This can also be avoided however, through the initiation of reflection processes. These processes aim at making these visible differences, which function as societal markers, negotiable through the sensitization of diverse biographical experiences, which are the product of changing predominant social circumstances. This sensitization can be achieved through biographical storytelling.

(b) With the German immigration community the question of how to appropriately handle diversity and above all how it should specifically be handled in school is posed. In school it is also decided what history gains importance, as well as the reason why and the context in which it does so. In the meantime it is understood that diversity cannot be swept under the rug with the help of cure-all formulas (“we’re all humans”). Within an educational context, biographical storytelling directly offers an appropriate instrument of diversity management. An individual who has learned to reflect upon their own biographical experience in the mirror of the experiences of others is thereby enabled to recognize the dependence of their own positioning. This is achieved through methodically instructed telling, listening and dialogue; role-play; creative writing; the relaying of background knowledge on intercultural communication; the functionality of memory and oral history.

Objectives

The service and transfer project has two goals:

• It hopes to anchor innovative forms of diversity management in the everyday practices and routines of teachers.
• An implicit effect of the workshops is also to empower teachers to develop discerning positions on the depiction of diversity in educational media.

Methodology

The realization of these objectives is only achievable through close cooperation with disseminators of teacher education and teachers themselves. Workshops, which will serve to refine the concepts, will be conducted in a pilot phase. Long-term, the project aims for the institutionalization of collaboration with institutions specializing in the further training of teachers and teacher unions.

Integration in Existing Research

Biographical storytelling as a method of diversity management brings two approaches together:

• This method was originally developed by Paulo Freire and primarily implemented in Brazil and the USA. Paulo Freire assumed that these methods allow learners of all ages to connect new knowledge with personal experience.
• Dan Bar-On developed a very similar concept in Germany and Israel. He initially focused on bringing children of Holocaust perpetrators and victims in dialogue with each other through biographical storytelling. He later applied the concept to the promotion of communication between Israelis and Palestinians.

Cooperation: California State University (E. Quintero)

Time Period: 2008 – 2011

Financing: GEI and California State University

Contact: