PoLiS: Postmigrant Literature
Empowerment through Postmigrant Literature (and Literature Didactics)
Project at a Glance
Project Description
The collaborative project “Empowerment through Postmigrant Literature (and Literature Didactics) (PoLiS): Participatory Development of an Online Professional Development Programme for Embedding Diversity-Sensitive and Anti-Discriminatory Literature Teaching”, conducted jointly by the University of Paderborn and the University of Education Schwäbisch Gmünd, aims to develop a participatory online professional development programme for (prospective) teachers. The programme seeks to contribute to the postmigrant, attribution-reflective, and anti-discriminatory development of schools in a migration society by conceptualizing and strengthening literature education as a diversity-sensitive and polyphonic space of empowerment.
The project is based on the observation that migration-related barriers to access and participation continue to exist within schools and classrooms. In public discourse, migration is frequently portrayed as the cause of social problems, contributing to the construction of deficit-oriented and disempowering images of the “migrant other.” These representations have a lasting impact on educational institutions and reinforce existing inequalities.
The project is guided by the assumption that literature education in a migration society requires perspectives that move beyond established difference- and deficit-oriented approaches. Such perspectives can most effectively be found within the paradigm of the postmigrant. The project therefore aims to provide an empirical foundation for the theoretically developed concept of postmigrant literature didactics and to make the resulting insights systematically accessible to (prospective) teachers.
To this end, two subprojects investigate both teaching- and learning-related processes of engaging with postmigrant literature. Using episodic, focused interviews with teachers and students, the project seeks to reconstruct professional, disciplinary, and discursive forms of knowledge. Based on these findings, tailored professional development modules will be designed and implemented in collaboration with stakeholders from the literary field and educational practice.
The project addresses two central questions: How should professional development programmes be designed in order to (a) establish postmigrant literature in schools as a resource for empowerment and resistance to externally imposed identities, and (b) equip (prospective) teachers with the pedagogical content knowledge and instructional expertise required to create postmigrant-oriented teaching and learning environments that effectively enhance participation regardless of students’ social positioning?
Organisations
Subproject: TEACHING-Side Perspectives
Paderborn University
Subproject: LEARNER Perspectives
Sponsors
The project “Meta-project Migration, Integration, and Participation in Education” is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family, Seniors, Women, and Youth and the European Union through the European Social Fund Plus (ESF Plus) as part of the “Integration through Education” program.
