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Observing justice in the primary school classroom

Beobachtung von Unterrichtsgerechtigkeit in der Grundschule

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Abstract

Justice-related situations are a part of studentsʼ everyday life. In order to test the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of (in)justice in school, valid measures of justice are needed. To our knowledge, this is the first study to develop an observer low inference rating instrument that can be applied to measure justice in the primary classroom. In two pre-studies, justice-relevant situations in the classroom were extracted and observable indicators for these situations were developed. In the main study, this instrument was used to observe 208 primary school students with regard to their experiences of justice or injustice. In addition to this, other measures of justice were developed to examine the convergence between observer low inference ratings of classroom justice and high inference rating instruments for teachers, students, and external observers.

Factor analyses and correlations between the different indices of the observer low inference rating and the high inference rating items suggested that incidents of justice and injustice in the classroom do not tend to co-occur frequently. Teachers do not appear to have a general tendency to treat a child more or less justly across a large number of situations.

The findings suggest that a comprehensive assessment of classroom justice requires a multi-method approach where the justice ratings of students, teachers and external observers are all taken into consideration.

Zusammenfassung

Gerechtigkeitsrelevante Situationen gehören zum Schulalltag. Um die Auswirkungen von (un)gerechter Behandlung auf Schüler/innen untersuchen zu können, sind valide Instrumente notwendig. In dieser Studie wurde ein Instrument zur systematischen Beobachtung der Unterrichtsgerechtigkeit in der Grundschule entwickelt. In zwei Vorstudien wurden gerechtigkeitsrelevante Situationen extrahiert und beobachtbare Indikatoren für diese Situationen entwickelt. In der Hauptstudie fand das niedrig inferente Ratinginstrument an 208 Grundschüler/inne/n Anwendung. Des Weiteren wurden hoch inferente Ratinginstrumente zur Unterrichtsgerechtigkeit aus Sicht der Lehrperson, der Schüler/innen und der externen Beobachter entwickelt und angewendet, um die Konvergenz dieser unterschiedlichen Instrumente der Unterrichtsgerechtigkeit zu untersuchen.

Faktoranalysen der niedrig und der hoch inferenten Ratingnstrumente deuten darauf hin, dass verschiedene gerechte oder ungerechte Ereignisse im Unterricht nicht häufig gleichzeitig auftreten. Lehrpersonen haben anscheinend nicht die Tendenz, ein Kind pauschal über verschiedene gerechtigkeitsrelevante Situationen hinweg mehr oder weniger gerecht zu behandeln.

Die Ergebnisse sprechen dafür, dass Schulgerechtigkeit am besten durch einen Multi-Trait-Multi-Method Ansatz gemessen werden kann, in welchem die Ratings von Lehrer/inne/n, Schüler/inne/n und externen Beobachtern Berücksichtigung finden.

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Ehrhardt, N., Pretsch, J., Herrmann, I. et al. Observing justice in the primary school classroom. Z Erziehungswiss 19, 157–190 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-015-0664-0

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