Critical race theory and subject orientation in Citizenship Education. Impulses for an inclusive and intersectional approach to university didactics

This presentation inquires to what extent intersectionality can contribute to subject-oriented research on racism, while providing insight into the findings of a recently completed PhD project. In two empirical studies, subjective conceptions of racism were analysed from the perspective of 110 student teachers at the University of Vienna. These conceptions are both the starting point and the outcome for learning processes (Autor_innengruppe Fachdidaktik, 2017, p. 65). The ideas analysed in the empirical studies were linked to form supra-individual basic thematic patterns. Empirically justified, theoretically reflected, and professionally theoretically connectable subject didactic impulses were elaborated in order to develop new spaces of possibility. Furthermore, target group-specific learning opportunities for a subject-oriented and citizenship education in context of critical race theory were developed as a contribution to the didactically motivated research on ideas in the field of teacher education. The examination of an understanding that is initially critical race theory can provide a (conceptual) set of tools for the analysis of political, social and cultural conditions (Linnemann/Mecheril/Nikolenko, 2013, p. 11). Finally, the subject-oriented perspective understands here research starting from the standpoint of the subject while simultaneously taking into account the social conditions as they manifest themselves mediated as meanings in the lifeworld of the subject (Scharathow, 2010, p. 100). Subjective conceptions are negotiated here as a form of representation of the learner's perspective in terms of their interweavings with the (hegemonic) structural contexts and norms in which they are embedded. Thus, it is also about the interactions between subjective experience, interpretation, action and objective relations (ebd., p. 103). In particular, inclusive and intersectional contexts are to be negotiated here.