Privilege and exclusion in educational practices: Research on social inequality in teacher education

Abstract

This article presents a research project in which research about social inequality in schools and universities is done together with students. The aim of this project is to examine the reproduction of social inequality in educational institutions in order to develop habitus reflexivity and to question and reflect on one's own actions as a teacher. Privileging and exclusionary mechanisms in educational processes are made accessible on the level of students’ experience as well as in the context of theories of social inequality, and translated into one’s own research. Accordingly, the paper focuses on students’ experiences with categories of social differentiation and looks for possibilities to initiate reflective processes based on insights into the structural dimension of social inequality.