Biennale 5
logo INRP (3488 octets)

Ritualization in a school's everday life

Auteur(s) : GOHLICH Michael, WAGNER Monika

Lobi89.gif (730 octets)

Thème : L'intervention pour les apprentissages - aider à apprendre
Groupe thématique : Analyse de la contextualisation pédagogique
consulter la version longue

Mots clés : ritualizations, primary school, peer group

bull2.gif (117 octets)   The aim of our research is to understand the sense of rituals and ritualizations in a school's everyday life. Influenced by, among others, Turner's ethnological ideas about rituals, "communitas" and transition and by Goffman's socio-psychological ideas about interactive rituals, we see ritualization as a repetitive process of interactive patterns which constitute, perform and symbolize the meanings, values and norms of a group or an institution. Our project can be described as a field research within three classes (year 4 to 6) of a Berlin primary school. As methods of research we make use of participatory observation, video(analysis) and conversations with the observed about selected video material.
bull2.gif (117 octets)  The focus of our observation lies on transitions, for example spacial border-crossings between corridor and classroom, border-crossings between breaktime and school-lessons, social border-crossings between boys and girls, children and youth, german and immigrant cultures. Throughout our study we are more concentrated on the children than on the adults, more on the pupils than on the teachers.
bull2.gif (117 octets)  First provisional results have been:
bull2.gif (117 octets)  Ritualization functions as a connecting passage from child to pupil and viceversa. As analyzing categories we differentiate rituals of the institution from those rituals, peer groups in schools perform. As we could observe, these rituals are both, interlaced and oppositional, varied by situations and groups.
bull2.gif (117 octets)  In practice this means that there are varieties in the intensity of individual and collective physical movement, of verbal speech and in the level of loudness. The mode of ritual performances is constituted by body gestures, facial expressions, postures, accessories, positioning, orientation and movements in the room.
bull2.gif (117 octets)  These aspects and results will be demonstrated by video-material.