Reflection on the examination procedure

4.1 Reflection on the researcher’s understanding of her role

“The describers are involved with their own person in the processes they describe.

The vulnerability of children and young people also makes the adults who deal with them particularly vulnerable.”⁵⁶⁵

As a trained kindergarten teacher, it was a challenge for me at the beginning to not act like a kindergarten teacher but as a researcher. The separation between the requirements that the presence in the kindergarten usually requires and the tasks of the researcher had to be clearly explained to the teachers and repeatedly emphasised, because they were not familiar with the role of a researcher. Sometimes the role as a researcher made me uncomfortable, because I could not meet the expectations of the teachers and the children due to my role as researcher. In order to keep my distance as a researcher, I was not able to integrate myself, into the team as the teachers wanted me to. The kin-564 Only the characters that appear in the transcripts are listed. For the complete list, see ibid.

168f.

565 Bizer, Christoph (1993): Auf dem Weg zu einer praktischen Anthropologie des Kindes und des Jugendlichen. In: Riess, Richard/Fiedler, Kirsten (Ed.): Die verletzlichen Jahre.

Handbuch zur Beratung und Seelsorge an Kindern und Jugendlichen. Gütersloh: Güter-sloher Verlagshaus/Herder, 743-756, 747.

dergarten teachers and assistants employed in the kindergarten, who knew that I was a researcher in the kindergarten but also knew that I was a trained kindergarten teacher, often requested that I take on tasks in certain situations or help out in another group due to a lack of staff in the facilities. In the sense of the balance between distance of the researcher’s role and involvement in everyday life and empathic participation,⁵⁶⁶ I took on these tasks, provided they were compatible with my participating role of observation. If I could not comply with the request with reference to my research project, the teachers understood and accepted this. Also, I could not always meet the children’s wishes to play with them, in order to draw my attention to the situation that could bring an increase in knowledge with regard to my research question, whereby the children accepted the explanation that I would like to watch at the moment.

In several statements of the kindergarten teachers it became clear that despite the explanation of the project and the request of the research and the distribution of letters with the short description of the project, my role was still questioned by the teachers, and they partly ascribed to me the role of an intern, which was not corrected by me because I could preserve naivety and ask seemingly self-explanatory questions.⁵⁶⁷

4.2 Influencing the context by going into the field

Those involved in kindergarten activities knew that my research deals with religious diversity, since I thought it appropriate in the sense of research ethics to disclose this, but the exact research question was not explained. By going into the field and roughly naming the topic of my research project, without consciously initiating this, I created a discussion with the topic among the acting people in the kindergarten. In a conversa-tion with other directors, the director of the Catholic kindergarten told them about my project, and why she had to take a stand on dealing with religious diversity. The cele-bration of the Festival of Eid Al-Adha in the Catholic kindergarten was perhaps based on the effort to address religious diversity because of my presence in the kindergarten and to contribute to my research project. The children in the Islamic kindergarten were more interested in my religion and my religious expressions due to my presence at Koran lessons.

“As long as we deal only theoretically with religious education, we can avoid a diffi-culty that immediately causes us problems in the concrete educational everyday life. It consists in the fact that understanding a situation and intervening in a situation cannot be separated. In practice, we always have a connection of both: our observation is at the same time an intervention, as educators we understand implicitly or explicitly.

We never know whether what we see is an expression of the child or a reaction to an

566 Cf. Przyborski, Aglaja/Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika (2014): Qualitative Sozialforschung, 48.

567 Cf. Wolff, Stephan (2012): Wege ins Feld und ihre Varianten. In: Flick, Uwe/von Kar-dorff, Ernst/Steinke, Ines (Ed.): Qualitative Forschung. Ein Handbuch, 334–349, 349.

intervention on our part. The very fact of our presence is an intervention and provokes a formation of meaning in the child, and vice versa.”⁵⁶⁸

This influence can be seen as a strength of ethnographic work. By bringing about changes in one’s own presence or a certain behaviour, it is possible to observe how one’s own presence affects people in the field, which can provide further information about the research field.

4.3 Unintended expert role of the researcher

Despite several references to my role as a researcher and my task to assess the current state of kindergarten and not to achieve changes or interventions, I was often asked for advice in everyday life as a psychologist, theologian or educator. Both the heads of the kindergartens and the teachers partly perceived me as an authority by asking me ques-tions about the design of the practice or trying to justify their practice. This became clear, for example, when a kindergarten teacher, while writing texts for the children, pointed out her spelling mistakes to me or the kindergarten director apologised after a festival for the way in which it had been celebrated, because in her opinion it had not been successful.

4.4 Availability of time, space and personnel resources

I tried to influence the normal kindergarten life as little as possible through my pres-ence. The group discussions I initiated proved to be a challenge both in terms of time and space. Since the group discussions were to take place in rooms that were familiar to the children and where recording via audio equipment was possible, group dis-cussions were dependent on the availability of these rooms. Since many activities often took place at the same time and the Catholic kindergarten had few rooms, group discussions had to be held in the director’s room twice. Despite the assurance that the children were familiar with this room, it was unusual for them to be in this room. It was not my intention to hold discussions in rooms that the children were not familiar with. In the director’s room the conversations were interrupted several times because the telephone rang and the kindergarten director came into the room and conducted a telephone conversation. Despite these interruptions and the non-optimal framework conditions, the children were concentrated during the conversation. Apart from the two discussions on Saint Martin’s, which took place in this room, all discussions were held in rooms familiar to the children.

568 Schori, Kurt (1998): Religiöses Lernen und kindliches Erleben. Eine empirische Unter-suchung religiöser Lernprozesse bei Kindern im Alter von vier bis acht Jahren. Stuttgart/

Berlin/Cologne: Kohlhammer, 145.

Depending on the presence of the children, two to four children took part in each of the group discussions I initiated. Which children taken part the group discussions was agreed upon in advance with the teachers. Since the daily routine in the kindergarten was often characterised by many activities and the children had to take part in consec-utive appointments, I partly refrained from group discussions with the children, since they had to be concentrated long before and needed a different activity or movement.

Unfortunately, a discussion started by the children in the Islamic kindergarten had to be interrupted because the children were asked to tidy up.

Separate appointments were arranged for the group discussions with the teachers and the expert interview, during which the participants had one hour to attend.