The Nursery as a Gender Political Module of the Workfare State of Functionally Differentiated Society / Differentiation-Theoretical Study of the Structural Susceptibility to Friction in the Day Care Centre’s Collaboration with Parents using the Case Study on Gender Pedagogical Goals of Education

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Christine Weinbach
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428187540

The renewal project "Differentiation-Theoretical Study of the Structural Susceptibility to Friction in the Day Care Centre’s Collaboration with Parents using the Case Study on Gender Pedagogical Goals of Education" continues the DFG-funded project ”The Nursery as a Gender Political Module of the Workfare State of Functionally Differentiated Society”. This has been running from 11/2019 to 10/2022. As in the 'mother project', the starting point of the study is the observation that the workfare state assigns to the day care centre organisation an active role in the welfare state’s institutional structure, and in doing so also pursues gender policy objectives: In its capacity as a people-changing organisation, the day-care centre is supposed to break down entrenched gender stereotypes in its education of the youngest, in favour of the individual choice of their own (gender) identity. It should also sensitise parents to their own gender-stereotyped perception of their child's developing young (gender) identity.The renewal project now places the object of investigation 'gender pedagogy in collaboration with parents' decidedly in the extended analytical framework of functional differentiation of day-care education. Thus, the process of professional development and organisational implementation of day care centre standards in their differentiation against family education comes to the fore: The collaboration with parents becomes structurally prone to friction. The renewal project understands the underlying structure of the day care centre's cooperation with parents as characterised by the functional breaks and institutional links between the welfare state, the day care centre as an organisation in the education system, and the family. Its objective is to work out this connection using the empirical case study of gender pedagogy in the collaboration with parents of a reform-oriented provider and three of its institutions, and to interpret the results by means of differentiation theory as well as gender sociology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants