Practices of classroom attentionality

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Malte Brinkmann
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 395491305

This project is situated in the field of qualitative classroom research, especially in research on attentionality. It aims at reconstructing types of shared attentionality in a qualitative, videographical and ethnographical perspective. These types can further be correlated to certain school subjects, social milieus and to the processes in which teachers attribute non-attentionality as a pathological state to students. In the field of qualitative research in attentionality, the project can address three desiderata: for the first time, practices of shared attentionality can be described as correlations between showing and becoming attentive, by including didactical and thematical perspectives. In addition, inclusive and exclusive practices of creating attentionality or non-attentionality can be described. Based on these two aspects, it becomes possible to reconstruct pathologizations by including perspectives of social milieu and individual learning dispositions of students.To achieve this, a model of shared attentionality or inter-attentionality was developed in previous research. With this model, bodily and material dimensions of practices of attention within classroom interactions can be described and qualified. In the tradition of German theories of Bildung, attentionality can be described as the starting point of learning. Attentionality can also be described within the context of classroom situations and interactions and thus be explored in its didactical and educational value. The project uses a phenomenological, videographical approach, which adds perspectives from pictorial science and film studies to the common methodology of qualitative classroom research. This combination of perspectives can be implemented in qualitative research and allows focusing on bodily and material dimensions of classroom interaction.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants