Due to growing intercultural diversity in Europe, the confrontation with conflicting cultural-based values and attitudes has increased. Therefore, building up as well as keeping positive relationships has become more and more challenging. Nevertheless, conflicting intercultural relationships are often tabooed, especially in the school context. As teachers are key figures in passing on cultural, social and educational values and attitudes, teachers need to handle and position themselves towards those conflicts. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to explore the phenomenon of intercultural teacher-student relationships as well as its challenges and success factors in formal educational contexts. The starting point of the project were results of a pilot study, carried out at the University of Innsbruck. In order to identify tabooed topics in teaching profession and gaining access to phenomena which remain unspoken and therefore do not get into the focus of formal education, five group discussions (cf. Bohnsack, 2010) with teacher students (N=48) were conducted and analyzed applying qualitative content analysis (cf. Mayring, 2010). The main result was that academic teacher education does not prepare teacher students properly for the handling and arrangement of delicate school-based relationships. Having taken current sociocultural developments into account (e.g. migration crises), the findings of the pilot study have initiated a follow-up project on conflicting intercultural teacher-student-relationships, which should provide new insights and ideas on intercultural and social education to be integrated in academic teacher education. The conceptual foundation of this follow-up project will be outlined in the present paper.

References:

Bohnsack, R. (2010). Gruppendiskussionsverfahren und dokumentarische Methode. In B. Friebertshäuser, A. Langer, & A. Prengel (Eds.), Handbuch Qualitative Forschungsmethoden in der Erziehungswissenschaft (pp. 205-2018). Weinheim und München: Juventa.

Mayring, P. (2010). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken (12.th.). Weinheim/Basel: Beltz.