2005 volume 2 number 2

To the topic "Bildungsbiographien und Bildungsverläufe"

Cathleen Grunert

This text gives a short overview about the articles to the topic "Bildungsbiographien und Bildungsverläufe" of the issue 2005 volume 2 number 2 of the "bildungsforschung".

Educational research in the area of tension between biography, career and curriculum vitae

Jochen Kade

Biography is too specific a term of reference for biography research in the context of educational science. Taking up Niklas Luhmann`s suggestion to describe education as a shaping of curricula vitae a theoretical perspective for a concept of relational biography research will be developed which appears to be adequate in a specific way for decribing the increased dependency of actions from decision and uncertainty of futures in the modern age.

Documentary Interpretation of Narrative Interviews

Arnd-Michael Nohl

The Narrative Interview (developed by Fritz Schuetze) and the Documentary Method of Interpretation (by Ralf Bohnsack) are two of the major methods of qualitative-empirical research on education. In this contribution I discuss why and how Narrative Interviews can be interpreted with the Documentary Method. While the Documentary Interpretation of Narrative Interviews draws back on elements of the Narration-Structure Analysis, it emphasizes comparative analysis and development of types.

Letter serials of graduates (1923) of a teacher pre-service training at Homberg - an 'interpretive explanatory' approach

Wilfried Hansmann

This article provides readers with first insights into historical documents that comprise recently revealed letter serials having been written by graduates of a teacher pre-service training. On the basis of these documents, I will present a methodological approach for reconstructing the teachers’ professional and educational biographies. From this vantage point, the following questions come to the fore: How did the ‘actors’ develop specific strategies of action that would help them to make their (professional) living? How did they in hindsight reveal and reflect on the historical processing of their lifetime before and after World War II? How did they try to shape their memories, build an identity of their own, and with that find concepts and explanations for their life stories? In order to answer these questions, I will take advantage of a praxeological cultural studies heuristic that aims at the connection of analyses on the micro-level with data on the macro-level, i.e. a micro-analysis of the situation-bound constitution of individual meaning potentials in the historical processing of the teacher careers with a macro-analysis of the institutional, organisational and cultural frames. The findings are supposed to run into a middle-range theory that systematically combines an ‘interpretive understanding’ with ‘causal explanations’.

Ways through the school system – the relation between institutionalized paths and individual school biographies within the German school system

Gabriele Bellenberg

This essay contrasts institutionalized tracks through the educational system with individual school biographies. These institutionalized paths through the different types of schools of the secondary educational system on the one hand can be analysed comprehensively by means of a wide range of publicly available statistical data. Individual school biographies on the other hand are difficult to figure out as these require either re-constructively organized or longitudinal studies. This article follows both research approaches focussing on educational biographies by the end of the Sekundarstufe I. A special stress is layn upon working out research questions that deserve further analysis.

Processes of transition of graduates of external vocational education programs with special regard to the commencement of a second vocational training

Stephan Schumann

The transition from vocational education to employment is of great importance to future working life. The following paper investigates careers of external trainees and full-time vocational school-leavers half a year after their final certificate. These programs are not part of the traditional German “Dual System”. Whether or not these students start a second apprenticeship is of special interest.

Biographical Processes of Aestetic Formation

Silvia Thünemann

This article explores biographical processes of aesthetic formation. It focuses on the difficulty to balance external expectations and individual development of creativity and presents a case study of a female musician called Caroline, which has been analysed with focus on the biographical circumstances of professionalizing in music using the biographical approach of Fritz Schütze. By reconstructing the biographical formation of Caroline the creative metamorphoses (kreative Wandlung) proved to be the most important structural process. Caroline’s life history shows a limited artistic metamorphoses after a longer period of heteronomy due to inherited schemes of behaviour of her family.

Biographic competence and PE teaching

Dirk Blotzheim

The debate on professionalism of teachers remains a main topic in paedagogy. Educating students in competence to cope with the requirements of their profession is the background of a study initiated at Dortmund’s Institute for Sports and Sports Science. Based on a competence model methods have been developed getting self- and professional competence. Biographic aspects as part of self-competence are worked up in the biographical narration. With this method students are taught to reflect and critically analyse their biography and consequently develop ideas for using their biography as a resource for their later profession. The method comprises narrative interviews with students for self-evaluation.