Introduction
  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 repeating process of interactive patterns which constitute, perform and symbolize the meanings, values and norms of a group or an institution. The mode of ritual performances is constituted by body gestures, facial expressions, postures, "accessoires", positioning, orientation and movements in the room.
  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 use the participating observation, video (analysis) and conversations with the observed about selected video material. We understand the entire process of assessment and evaluation as a method of generating types of ritualization. The analysis of material takes place in a multi-staged interpretive process, with comparative analysis (establishing homology and contrast) as an integral part.
  The focus of our observations lies on transitions, for example, spacial border-crossings between corridor and classroom, temporal border-crossings between breaktime and school-lessons, social border-crossings between boys and girls, children and youth, Germans and migrants. Thereby we concentrated more on the children than on the adults, more on the pupils than on the teachers.
  In the following, we try to make the initial results apparent through using the interpretation of a video extract. The video extract shows pupils of year 5 in their classroom during transition from breaktime to a lesson, officially starting at 10.25.
  The video extract
  Ritual treatment of collective and individual territory
  In the narrowest sense of school ritual, the video extract only allows us to recognize the three steps of starting a lesson: 1. The teacher enters the classroom, the pupils sit down and become quiet 2. The teacher rings the bell and the pupils become completely quiet 3. The teacher says "Good morning" and the pupils reply in chorus.
  However, temporally prior to the ritual initiated by the teacher, one can establish a wealth of ritualizations which contribute substantially to the constitution of the social space of a class. In so doing, three levels are interconnected: the temporal transition from breaktime to class time; the spatial transition from corridor to class room, and internally from class-room to each pupil's seat; finally, there is the status transition from child or youth to pupil. Our contribution concentrates on analyzing the children’s transition from the context of ”break” to that of ”lesson” through their use of space and the interactions taking place within it. In the course of this, we are able to distinguish between collective and individual territories.
  How the children treat the door as a threshold is of particular interest for our initial question about how classroom territory is constituted. At first glance, during the time prior to the teacher appearing, this process seems to take the form of a disorderly muddle, a constant coming and going, with pushing, jostling and hold-ups just like in the rush-hour. Looking more closely, we can identify recurring patterns: 1. Some children pass through the door into the classroom and, continuing at the same constant pace, distance themselves further from the door towards the cloakroom section and their seats; 2. Other children follow the same pattern but turn an arc in the room, return to the door, finally stopping in the threshold area and fiddling around with the door; 3. Some of these children then finally leave the classroom again while 4. other children, if appearing at all, chiefly stay in the area around the door, repeatedly going in and out over the threshold. The social interactions are embedded within this use of space.
  The pattern described under point one can be regarded as an element of school-affirmative ritualization. Comparing a number of video extracts enabled us to establish that there was a core of children in the class acting in this way. By unhesitatingly entering the classroom, taking off their coats, sitting down at their desks and then taking out their school materials, these children help constitute the classroom territory as a place of learning and signal to the others present that at least they themselves have assumed the status of pupil.
  The patterns described in 2 and 3 can be made quite clear by using the example of a boy in the class, who we will call Uzman. His behavior shows forms of action and interaction which bring the classroom borders into focus and secures them externally. Uzman comes into the classroom, wanders around there, goes out again, comes back in, and, all in all, spends a lot of time fiddling around with the door. He closes the door from inside, without a teacher being present in the classroom. This alone can be interpreted as a securing of the classroom borders. The following interactions too speak for such an interpretation: When Martina, a pupil, opens the door from the outside and comes in, Uzman moves towards the door, whereupon Martina immediately shuts the door behind her. Directly afterwards, Uzman opens the door, though only partially, looks outside, takes one step across the threshold, returns immediately and once again closes the door behind him. This securing of borders finally finds its dramatic climax in the territorial dual between Uzman and a boy belonging to a different school class. When this boy opens the door and yells into the room, Uzman orders him out with extended arm and shouts. This ritualized securing of the border area contributes to the constitution of the classroom since it signalizes to all those present who, in the school’s terms, belongs to the room, and that this territory requires specific permission for access.
  Finally, we turn to those actions and interactions we mentioned as the fourth type of pattern, sharing as a common characteristic the fact that there is no further entering classroom territory beyond the area close to the door. In this case, we have the girls, Ayla, Hatice and Medine, who, compared to their class-mates, appear to be older. They stay standing around the door, in close interaction with a boy from a higher class, who himself stops immediately after crossing the threshold. In contrast to Uzman’s behavior clearly demarcating the area in relation to a pupil from a different class, the interactions we are now dealing with apparently seek to maintain contact to the world outside the classroom borders. These ritualizations too, contribute to the constitution of space as class territory and place of learning, though they do so in the sense of negation, as resistance.
  Let us now turn to the way the children deal with individual territories. Following Goffman, we distinguish stalls - like, for example, chairs - possessional territories - like, for example lunch pack containers - and the territorial area of the body, which can also include clothes as an external skin.
  With respect to these individual territories, different stages are recognizable from the children’s behavior (similarly to class territory mentioned above) in the way readiness for lessons is created and pupil status assumed. At one end of the continuum, we can locate those children who, immediately after they enter the classroom, take off their coats, their external skin, find their seats, their stalls, take up the appropriate school sitting position and organize their personal school-related possessional territories. The next group of pupils, prior to the teacher appearing, temporarily lend the area of their stall a personal, living-room character by eating their sandwiches there. Both groups, predominantly consisting of the ‘smaller’ pupils, can be contrasted with the group of older-looking children who keep their jackets and coats on before the teacher appears. These are children who, as shown above, place the radius of their action near the door, extending it into the corridor and who also indulge in physical-expressive activities of transgressing personal-territorial borders, as, for example, by provocatively taking pens or playfully stealing headgear. Such ritualized behavior between children among themselves and with their individual territories is not so much related to their pupil status as to their activities as a member of a peer-group. Continuing to wear clothes assigned for outside and the occupation with them could be interpreted not only as protection from physical attack but also as a symbol of maintaining a peer-group activity system.
  In the respect of territory, we find elements of communitas not only in the joint use of main rooms, i.e. classroom, corridor, school building, school yard, but also in the occupation of chairs and - functionally removed - the desks of other pupils. Such an occupation of other’s stalls is permitted during the phase prior to the teacher entering the classroom whereas it later becomes critical, and that precisely when there is an increased use of clear markers for the context "lesson", i.e. in a phase when the temporary right of children for the particular stalls becomes a duty as a 'seating order' within the framework of the school’s organization.
  As you may remember in our video extract, as the lesson is about to start, a boy (Yussif) takes the empty seat of a girl (Ayla) at a point when clear markers for lessons are being set by the teacher taking up position in the vicinity of the blackboard and the fellow-pupils collectively assuming the quiet position characteristic in school. Yussif is acting precisely against the background of the duty of following the school regulated seating order. The lesson becomes the stage for his short, playful battle with Ayla, which corresponds to the ritual peer-group activities of provocative territorial infringement. After Ayla has made her territorial claim clear, both verbally and through gesture, Yussif finally transfers the territorial struggle away from the stall, to Ayla’s possessional territory, which he does by taking one of her personal possessions. It is typical that the object taken is related to school, in this case, a writing implement, which is why the demand to return it is urgent in view of the lesson about to begin. On the one hand, this scene can be viewed as peer-group ritualization, a brief physical-expressive interaction between the sexes. On the other hand - and thus interwoven with it - it may be described as a game with and about the assumption of pupil status, a game used by Yussif to temporarily avoid the individual-territorial bases of pupil status.
  Summary
  Let us summarize the above: our study asks about everyday ritualization of all those involved in school life, i.e., it inquires also and in particular into those ritualizations which children themselves create as a part of context transitions within school (e.g., from the context of "break" to that of "lesson").
  As an interim result from today’s lecture, we can identify ritualized forms of handling in respect of collective and individual territories. These ritualizations diverge as regards the stage of the transition from the break to the lesson. Thus, the pre-lesson phase is marked by greater physical intensity, territorial infringements and communal moments. However, they also diverge with respect to the development from child to youth and the readiness of a pupil to orient themselves to the context "lesson". How far the dimensions of gender and ethnic origin play a role in this processes will be an element of our further work.
  In conclusion, we can say the transition from child to pupil is not a single and linear process, completed by admission into a school or by entering the school grounds; it is far more a fragile process which largely determines a child’s everyday school life.