Protection Concepts and Pedagogical Practice – Discourse Analytic Perspectives on the Prevention of Sexual Vio-Lence in Residential Child and Youth Care Institutions

The Institute for Educational Science of the University of Münster executes the research project “Protection concepts and pedagogical practice – discourse analytic perspectives on the prevention of sexual violence in residential child and youth care institutions” which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The aim is to trace the relation between protection concepts and pedagogical practice. This relation is not considered to be hierarchical in the first place – in fact, the dimensions represent two levels of professional practice each with their own way of forming the prevention of sexual violence. From this point of view, it is not only a question of if or why protection concepts appear in pedagogical practice, but rather of how they do. Thus, the analysis concentrates on potential similarities, transformations, paradoxes, oppositions and interdependencies between both levels of practice. With this double focus in mind, a discourse analytic method (figure analysis) is used to analyze the interaction between pedagogical practice and its contexts based on discursive practices. The sampling consists of two groups in three residential child and youth care institutions in order to take a differentiated look at the way the prevention of sexual violence is formed. In addition, three empirical approaches are used to generate the set of data: Besides the collection of protection concepts, ethnographic field explorations as well as group discussions are executed in the participating groups and institutions. Based on the generated data the discursive practices will be operationalized empirically with the figure analysis, which allows to trace how both meanings and objects of speech are used and formed plus subjects are positioned with the help of discursive (i.e. narrative, differential, argumentative, metaphorical or conceptual) figures. Regarding the topic of the project, this method promises a broad insight into the patterns of forming and dealing with the prevention of sexual violence as well as the positioning of the actors involved. In order to make the results usable for pedagogical practice, the project provides different transfer strategies.