Ideas of Family and Concepts of Responsibility at All-Day Schools

Abstract

The all-day school is currently being discussed as an opportune and appropriate response to changing societal needs. Both politicians and scientists see its expansion as a means to address the need to not only increase female employment rates but also counter social inequality in the education system. German policymakers view the all-day school as a major way to support a reconciliation of family life and labor market participation, to respond to changing gender roles and the growth of different family lifestyles, and simultaneously to try and counter the impoverishment and marginalization of many families in the country. Against the background of these processes of societal transformation, there are signs of changes in traditional familial responsibilities and institutional orders. Currently, these are being discussed as a “shift in the borders” (Kolbe et al. 2009, p. 151, translated) or as a “breaking down of the borders” delineating responsibilities on the level of education, care, and child-rearing institutions (Fegter and Andresen 2008, p. 832) marking the functional relation or the societal division of labor between the family and the school (Schlemmer 2004, p. 26). Our qualitative research project asked about the potentially new relation between family and institution in the all-day school. This chapter presents its theoretical framework and selected findings. It focuses particularly on elementary school, because elementary school children are still particularly dependent on parental support. The question we are asking here on the basis of our longitudinal findings on all-day schooling in Germany is whether and how new controversies are emerging over the responsibilities of the school and the responsibilities of the family (Holtappels et al. 2007; Züchner 2007, p. 314). Our empirical findings deliver knowledge on how far it is necessary to assume a reorganization or a new mixing of the public and the private in Germany and a shift in responsibilities within the context of the current economic crises and ongoing welfare state transformation processes (Richter et al. 2009). This is then accompanied by the question regarding how the actors involved (i.e., the parents and the professionals in all-day schools) themselves consider where differences may be found, particularly in the concepts of responsibility and the ideas of family, and how they are negotiating them.