Michail Kontopodis (Email: [email protected])
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Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft und Psychologie Freie Universität Berlin F A B R I C A T I N G H U M A N D E V E L O P M E N T THE DYNAMICS OF ‘ORDERING’ AND ‘OTHERING’ IN AN EXPERIMENTAL SECONDARY SCHOOL (HAUPTSCHULE) Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Doktor der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt von Michail Kontopodis (Email: [email protected]) Fabricating Human Development Erstgutachter (First Supervisor): Prof. Dr. Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon, Arbeitsbereich Entwicklungs-psychologie, Fachbereich Erziehungswissenschaft und Psychologie, Freie Universität Berlin Zweitgutachter (Second Supervisor): Prof. Dr. Bernd Fichtner, Fachbereich 2: Erziehungswissenschaften, Universität Siegen Ort und Zeit der Disputation (Time and Place of Disputation): Berlin, 2. Juli 2007. 2 Contents Acknowledgements p. 4 Opening Intro Processing time: the dynamics of development as becoming p. 10 Map 1 Contexts and methodologies p. 38 1st Movement Map 2 Development as a technology of the self p. 57 Map 3 Communicating human development: the interactional organization of the self and of (non-) development p. 73 2nd Movement Map 4 Materializing time and institutionalizing human development p. 99 Map 5 Ordering and stabilizing human development p. 118 Map 6 Contrasting the School for Individual Learning-in-Practice with the Freedom Writers’ project p. 143 Finale Unlimiting human development p. 163 References p. 169 Appentix: Transcription and Coding of Oral Data p. 196 Disclaimer to Dissertation p. 198 To my parents Chrysoula & Jiannis, and to my brothers Manos & Dimitris And with respect and solidarity to Aanke, Barbara, Chriss, David, Florian, Nicola, Reinhard, Sélale, Wienfried and all the other teachers and students of the #School for Individual Learning-in-Practice# (name changed) Cover Picture: Composition of M.K.: a collage of two pictures drawn by students, a CV (see p. 152) and a graphic task used by teachers to initiate self-reflection by students (see p. 20). Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to many people who have assisted me in completing this work. First of all, I am greatly indebted to all the teachers and students for their trust, acceptance and help during my research in their school. Without them the research presented here would never have been possible. My dissertation is devoted to them. It is also dedicated with love and respect to my parents, Chrysoula Kontopodi and Giannis Kontopodis, and my brothers, Manos and Dimitris Kontopodis. I am very thankful to my parents, who, from the very beginning, supported in all regards my education with great engagement. I am also thankful to them and to my brothers for their understanding and acceptance during the long time in which I have been away from them. Following Bakhtin, I would argue that the ‘voice’ presented in my dissertation is not at all my own. Among others, my work echoes the voices of all the nice people who have inspired me through their works but also stood by me in a very warm and exceptionally personal way. These people are: Marios Pourkos, Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Bernd Fichtner and Christoph Wulf. Everything started long ago, in Greece, where next to Marios Pourkos I got to know about Bakhtin, Vygotsky, Gibson and other non-mainstream psychological approaches. My work is profoundly influenced by Marios Pourkos, who patiently continued to assist me, also when I moved abroad, till the last day of my dissertation—a fact which I deeply appreciate. After moving to Germany, thanks to Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon, I experienced what it means to combine scientific strictness with theoretical and methodological openness. I am grateful to Martin Hildebrand-Nilshon for the way in which he both gave me free space for theoretical and methodological ‘experiments’ and always carefully supported me when I needed it. His friendliness, guidance and his critical remarks to my work have always been of primary importance to me. Participating in his Research Group ‘Culture, Development and Psychology’, I had the opportunity to learn about diverse mainstream and critical socio-cultural and psychological approaches, reflect on issues of context, culture and qualitative methodology. I owe many thanks also to other participants of this Research Group: Anna von Behr, Jan Hutta, Harald Fabricating Human Development Kliems, Kataryna Rafailovits, Lisa Malich, Haydee Winkler—to mention just a few names; their comments on my work and our discussions have been precious to me and enabled me a better understanding of my research material. Since my first steps in Berlin I have been sensitively and patiently assisted, encouraged and guided by Dimitris Papadopoulos, to whom I owe my understanding of subjectivity, power and resistance but also personal decisions which have been particularly fruitful to me. I have gained precious knowledge on qualitative research methodology and theoretical issues through the PhD Workshops organized by the International Education Doctorate Program (INEDD) at the University of Siegen and owe many thanks to Bernd Fichtner for our inspiring discussions on Vygotsky and his careful readings of my works. Through the friendly remarks of Christoph Wulf on the issues of time, space and rituality, early enough I realized the shortages in my interpretations. I have been very fortunate in having access to his Research Group ‘Anthropology and Education’ where I learned a lot on issues related to education, rituals and performativity. In the issues related to materiality and discourse in institutions, I have been stimulated and kindly supported by Thomas Scheffer and the Research Group ‘Time, Discourse and Materiality’—an experience which I highly appreciate. I would also like to thank my colleagues Kathrin Audehm, Birgit Althans and Estrid Sørensen for their helpful commentaries in the different phases of this research work. My work on Vygotksy has been possible only thanks to the previous work of Peter Keiler and Manolis Dafermos. The early influences of Critical Psychology on my work I owe to Athanasios Marvakis. Jörg Niewöhner and Stephan Beck beautifully motivated and supported my writing in the last phase of this work, by providing me with the possibility of a next research project. I am very thankful to my young colleagues and friends Anna von Behr and Christos Varvadakis and in particular to Irit Dekel, for their patience in reading and discussing my texts and for their inspiring and helpful remarks. And for their patience, carefulness and engagement in proof-reading earlier and later versions of the manuscript I am deeply thankful to Kareth Schaffer and to Ewa Kowal. 6 Fabricating Human Development I would also like to thank the students Lea Willer, Surati Ferdinand, Victoria Bachmann and Alexandra Zagajewski for our co-operation in the context of their research-internships in the Section of Developmental Psychology of the Free University which I supervised. I feel especially thankful to my friends Susanne Richter, Jana Schuster, Moritz Motschall, Max Marmann, Dafni Sofianopoulou, Anna Salami, Jan Mehnert, Isidoros Sakkas and Martin Studte—for their support in various phases of this study. I am very grateful to my dance teacher and experimental dancer Bettina Mainz and the sound artists and friends Tomek Wochnik, and Iftuch Gabbai—my theory has been much inspired by their art and performances. My research would not have been possible without the scholarship of the Hellenic Republic State Scholarships Foundation (I.K.Y.)—which I am very grateful for. I thank Prof. Hlias Mpezevegkis and Giota Adamopoulou for their co-operation in all issues related to this scholarship. 7 Summary in English In our modern understanding of development, there is an overwhelming tendency to regard development in terms of irreversible time. The past and the future are presupposed and time is conceptualized as an arrow connecting them. In such a paradigm, it is impossible to create completely new entities in the context of new relations—only another way of combining already known properties of given entities is possible. Seen from this perspective, time and development are conceptualized in terms of sameness. The work presented here examines the question of how human development can be envisaged in terms of difference-in-itself. The aim of the study is to explore how human development can be conceptualized so that freedom, imagination and movement are reflected and generated at school—a question which proves important especially with regard to gender conscious education, as well as the education of social and cultural minorities and marginal subjectivities. This dissertation is based on a one-year long critical ethnographical study of everyday practices taking place at an experimental school for Individual Learning-in-Practice, in Germany. This school could be perceived as an example of emerging forms of schooling and institutional organization. The school’s material-semiotic orderings are studied throughout the dissertation alongside their relationship to the students’ development. Semiotic action is investigated in interrelation to material action, such as the spatial organization, circulation and production of documents and the use of graphics and files. The research follows an ethnographical methodology enriched by expert interviews, and video- recording. Data analysis is not separated from field research and theory building and in this way, a novel methodology of ‘mapping’ is introduced. Also, special attention is given here to