Aesthetics of inclusion: ECER presentation script

Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites Paper Presentation at ECER 2021 on 08/Sept/2021; 02:30-03:00 pm in Session 04 SES 11 A Link to Literature (page 6) ================================================================== SLIDE 1 | Opening, greeting and thanks Hello, my name is Ann-Kathrin Stoltenhoff, I am a postdoc researcher at Europa-UniversityFlensburg in the north of Germany and I’m thankful for the opportunity to present a current project, that is in the stage of conception for a while now, so I am looking forward to discuss my work in progress with you after my presentation. The project focusses on the «Aesthetics of Inclusion» and within it, I want to develop a transdisciplinary Empirical Approach to School Websites. This project is part of my cumulative habilitation within which I examine the interconnection of Knowledge, Mediality and Difference in pedagogical contexts from a discourse and hegemony theoretical perspective referring to the works of Foucault, Laclau/ Mouffe and current perspectives inspired by poststructuralism and the idea of culture as practice (Hörning 2004, Hörning/ Reuter 2004, Schatzki/Knorr-Cetina/Von Savigny 2001). So this is a bit out of the box of traditional educational research but at is focuses on how we construct differences within educational settings in a digital media society. SLIDE 2 | Structure of the lecture My lecture starts with a short foreword, to locate my scientific research. After that, I’ll explain theoretical positions that are crucial to the understanding of my research subject. That will be followed by an explanation of methodology and method. Before going into the discussion with you, I will also share current challenges I am facing in the process. SLIDE 3 | Foreword My aim is to investigate how the human condition aka Conditio Humana is negotiated within the dispositive Inclusion in educational contexts in Digital Culture. I understand Inclusion as a dispositive according to Foucault and the school websites as elements of this dispositive. In the sense of Foucault, a dispositive is the network, which links various discourses, institutions and media with one another (cf. Foucault 1978) . An important element of my work are education, media and cultural studies approaches that deal with difference, subjectification, inequality, processes of in- and exclusion and vulnerability processed through and represented via media. This 1 Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. kind of research has been taking place for many years in a society that describes itself as a media society and is experiencing profound processes of change that Krotz (2014) described as Mediatization, while Stalder (2016) speaks of a ‘digitality of culture’ and Pirani and Smith (2013) of a „Digital Media Society“. These perspectives, which can be subsumed under Digital Media and Culture Studies, form important reference points for my work; as well as post-structuralistinspired approaches from Feminist technoscience (Braidotti 2014, Haraway 1995, Wajcman 2004) und Digital Design Theory (Armstrong 2016). SLIDE 4 | Theoretical Research Perspectives My research perspective is based on the work of Foucault, Laclau and Mouffe. Central to Foucault's approach are - I quote Großkopf (2007, [2]): "(...) questions about the construction of reality, knowledge or symbolic order through discourses as well as the question of power that unfolds through discourses“. According to Wrana (2012, p. 196), discourses always include modes of action "in which the meaning and the objects of knowledge are constituted as well as the subject positions of the discursive actors". So a discourse and dispositive analytical approach not only explores relatively stable orders, but also - I quote Bublitz (1998: 9) - "the practice of symbolic production of objects, their materialization and their re-production through the constitution of meaning and meaning in a complex social practice“. This understanding of discourse and dispositive analysis is supplemented by a hegemony theoretical perspective on society and the social in the sense of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe who draw their attention more strongly than Foucault to the social as a result of discourse struggles. Based on their work, the analysis of certain practices or their materialization - e.g. in the form of a website or a school book - can be used to analyze how a certain discursive formation comes about and is fixed by a continuously reproducing practice. SLIDE 5 | Mediality as research gap So, referring to Gere (2001), Krotz (2014), Stalder (2016), Trend (2001), and other representatives of Digital and Media Culture Studies, I assume that discourses, power relations and powerknowledge are always processed through the media and shaped by specific medialities. From my point of view, the specific mediality of discourses in the context of educational studies dealing with difference, inclusion, heterogeneity, vulnerability, ableism and inequality has not yet been adequately recognized and therefore represents a research gap. So what I look at is how Doing Inclusion (Dorrance/Dannenbeck 2013), Doing Media and Doing Human work together and mutually condition one another while producing certain images of the human. 2 Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. SLIDE 6 | Methodology: Websites as Elements of the Dispositive INCLUSION Reconstructive Educational research about Inclusion (Blasse et al. 2015, Budde et al. 2017, Wulf / Roßbach 2015) suggests that the way in which schools create inclusion is strongly influenced by the logic of traditional binary categories of difference such as gender and disability, and thus at the same time A-historical and apolitical: within the dispositiv Inclusion, “Difference” is often framed as an individual personality trait. For example with the phrase ‹picking up all students where they are› on the homepage of a school based in northern Germany. Contrary to perspectives which see physical differences as essentialist features, the Disability Studies advocate a post-structuralist perspective on disability, which understands this category of difference as a socially constructed (cf. Waldschmidt 2007, 2021). This perspective is shared by other disciplines: Transdisciplinary research at the interface of disability studies, educational vulnerability research, educational, cultural and media studies prove that and how images – I quote Ochsner and Grebe (2013: 8) – “as part of a diverse discursive and media network” contribute to the visibility or invisibility of disability (cf. Renggli 2007, 2013) and thus to the production of knowledge about disability and inclusion (cf. Aktas 2020, Aktaş / Waldmann 2018). SLIDE 7 | The question of the human in Digital Media Culture The core of the debate on Inclusion is – in my opinion – the not entirely new question of the essence of the human aka Conditio Humana. In the face of a Digital Media Society (Pirani/Smith 2013), this question is also being re-established in educational science. So starting from these contexts my research interest is directed to reconstruct how the Conditio Humana is negotiated in the context of inclusion and digitization by making certain images of people visible in certain media contexts, for example on public school’s homepages that I understand as materialized practices according to Laclau and Mouffe. So my central research question asks: «What contribution make school websites, in their specific digital mediality, to the discoursivity on the human in the context of a diverse society shaped by digital media?» SLIDE 8: Method For the analysis of the homepages that are elements of the dispositive Inclusion, I refer to Gille (2012), who writes the following on dispositive analysis (translation: Stoltenhoff): «For a critical media analysis, a dispositive analysis, in comparison to a pure discourse analysis, results in new and expanded perspectives (...): The focus is primarily on the interaction of the heterogeneous elements and thus the strategic function of the dispositive 3 Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. that builds, consolidates and scrutinizes power structures and can change. In this sense, power is by no means to be understood as centralistic or static, but rather as a networklike, productive structure (cf.Foucault 1978: 126)» (Gille 2012). My media dispositive analysis of school websites includes texts, images, graphics, user interface design (cf. Galitz 2007) and user experience design (cf. Marcus 2014) including aspects of accessibility according to the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). I place the focus of my analysis on the “interplay of technological and social, aesthetic and epistemological factors” (Freyermuth / Gotto 2013: 7) of new media. SLIDE 9 | Data basis The data basis consists of around 16 homepages of public German schools and a corresponding number of homepages of Danish schools, since in Denmark a largely inclusive school system for all children and adolescents between the ages of six and 16 has existed for several years with the elementary school (Folkeskole). The qualitative empirical investigations focus is on • a digital mediality, • an accompanying changed imagery and • a transforming discursive order of seeing (cf. Schulz 2005) against the background of new media-technological and media-communicative practices of “linking image (visuality) and bit (information)” (Hartmann 2013: 259 translated by Stoltenhoff) • and how within this specific mediality a new image of the human can become visible in a possibly new aesthetic. SLIDE 10 | Steps of Analysis Following the development of a transdisciplinary theoretical perspective, an analysis method based on Hepp (2010), Gille (2012) and Traue (2013) is developed to investigate the school homepages. In the first step, comparisons of the homepages with print media (flyers or similar) of the respective schools are made. In the second step, an international comparative perspective is adopted, from which German and Danish school websites can be compared. In the third step, it will be checked whether the guidelines of the WCAG have been successfully implemented. The results of the qualitative empirical investigation are processed taking into account the previously developed theoretical perspective. They will be contextualized with regard to current questions in educational anthropology about the Conditio Humana. 4 Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. SLIDE 11 | Current Challenges Before we move to the discussion, I want to share with you some of the current challenges. One of the most important tasks of the empirical part is to look at the material as impartially as possible and beyond established categories of difference. It is not easy being sensitive to the reproduction of stereotypical images and readings of the human and at the same time remaining open to queer, abject and marginal aspects in order to be able to grasp and analyze them appropriately. To do this, I refer to the work of reconstructive educational research on heterogeneity (Budde, Fritzsche and others) and to the work of Paul, Schaffer, Engel and other representatives of a queer art, culture and media research practice that is characterized by "a lust for contradictions, inconsistencies [and] ambiguities ”(Paul / Schaffer 2009, p. 7 translated by Stoltenhoff). SLIDE 12 | questions and discussion I thank you very much for your attention. 5 Stoltenhoff, Ann-Kathrin (2021): Aesthetics of Inclusion. An Empirical Approach to School Websites. Literature back to front page Aktas, U. (Hg.) (2020): Vulnerabilität. Pädagogisch-ästhetische Beiträge zu Korporalität, Sozialität und Politik. Bielefeld: Transcript. Aktaş, U./Waldmann, M. (2018): Das Zur-Sprache-Kommen deprivilegierter Subjektivität in der digital medialen Kultur. Inklusionstheoretische Perspektiven der Medienpädagogik. In: MedienPädagogik. Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung, S. 19-37. 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