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Inclusion as a Challenge for Integrative Child Day Care Facilities

Term: 03/2017 to 09/2019

Project management and coordination: Prof. Dr Henrik Trescher

Implementing institutions: Institute for Special Education Goethe University Frankfurt, Lebenshilfe Frankfurt am Main e.V.

Associates/Partners/Contributors:  Teresa Hauck, MA, Michael Börner, MA

Research assistant(s):  Stefanie Schneider, BA; Iris Sonja Pfeuffer, BA; Leonie Winter

Financing: Lebenshilfe e.V.

Project description:

Inclusion, understood as the process of deconstructing barriers to participating in discourse, is a process that ultimately affects all areas of the social lifeworld and harbors multiple challenges and crises for the subjects involved in discourse. This does not exclude institutions that are assigned to the area of what is referred to as 'early childhood education'.  In cooperation with Lebenshilfe Frankfurt e.V., the research project "Inclusion as a challenge for integrative day-care centers" seeks to shed light on the living practice within what are known as 'integrative day-care facilities for children'.  To this end, the study focuses on three structurally contrasting day care centers run by the cooperation partner and examines them on three levels: a) the level of the educational personnel (staff interviews), b) the level of interaction (ethnographic observations), c) the level of structural conditions (analysis of action concepts, building structures, etc.).  The aim of the project, which is designed to run for two semesters, is to gain as comprehensive an insight as possible into the life practices of the institutions through the three chosen approaches and to reflect critically on these against the background of the demand for inclusion.  In this context, the aim of the project is to feed the results obtained back into practice in various ways (for example, through exchange meetings with the actors involved) [Anna Lamb1] and, building on this, to develop perspectives and strategies for the inclusion-oriented ongoing development of the respective institutions together with the cooperation partner.