Dealing with transition in formal meetings of parents and pedagogic staff

Abstract

ABSTRACT Talking about a specific child’s development and current issues is an organisationally integral part of the partnership between parents / families and educational institutions with respect to children’s upbringing and education. In Germany, the programmatic emphasis on the equality of all participants in annual formal meetings of parents and pedagogic staff in early childhood education results in a double-bind situation between safeguarding a child’s well-being, the staff’s authority and professionalism, and families’ claims, hopes, knowledge and expectations. By analysing these formal meetings using the ‘documentary method’ (Bohnsack, R. 2017. Praxeologische Wissenssoziologie. Opladen, Toronto: Budrich), we qualitatively and longitudinally reconstruct how staff and parents outline transitions among children with special needs in inclusive settings. The article implements a perspective of ‘doing transitions’ (Wanka, A., M. Rieger-Ladich, B. Stauber, and A. Walther. 2020. “Doing Transitions: Perspektiven und Ziele einer reflexiven Übergangsforschung.” In Reflexive Übergangsforschung. Theoretische Grundlagen und methodologische Herausforderungen, edited by A. Walther, B. Stauber, M. Rieger-Ladich, and A. Wanka, 11–36. Leverkusen: Barbara Budrich) and shows how the reconstructed discourse characteristics of problematisation and de-problematisation work together in terms of safeguarding.