Prof. Dr. Jan Christoph Störtländer

Education Is Resistance
学 ・ 問 ・ 抗
Learning · Questioning · Resisting
My professorship is concerned with a question that is simple to formulate, yet anything but simple to answer:
What happens when human beings undergo processes of Bildung?
I do not understand education primarily as the acquisition of knowledge or competencies. Bildung begins when what previously seemed self-evident becomes questionable; when people come to perceive something differently; and when, through this shift, their relation to themselves, to others, and to the world begins to change.
For me, this is where the resistant force of education lies.
Education is resistance.
Resistance, in this sense, does not mean being opposed to everything as a matter of principle. It begins much earlier: whenever we refuse to be defined too quickly; whenever we interrupt expectations, categories, and presumed certainties; whenever we remain willing to turn even our own convictions into questions once again.
I condense this movement into three characters:
学 ・ 問 ・ 抗
Learning · Questioning · Resisting
At the centre stands questioning (問). A genuine question interrupts the immediate movement from experience to response. Within this interruption, a space opens up — 間, ma: an interval in which it has not yet been decided what something means, who someone is, or how one ought to act.
I regard this interval as one of the essential sites of education.
Education in a Field of Relations
One central strand of my research therefore focuses on theories that do not conceive of the self as a self-contained and autonomous entity.
I am particularly interested in the Japanese Kyoto School, especially the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō, and in its possible relations to Western traditions of educational philosophy and pedagogy. Concepts such as pure experience (純粋経験, junsui keiken), place (場所, basho), and absolute nothingness (絶対無, zettai mu) offer a perspective in which experience does not originate in an already constituted subject. Rather, the self emerges within relations, situations, and concrete acts of experience.
I see considerable potential here for thinking about contemporary educational questions.
What changes when we do not begin by viewing students as carriers of particular attributes, deficits, or competencies? What does professionalism mean when educational situations remain fundamentally ambiguous? And how can teachers act responsibly without prematurely fixing people within categories?
In dialogue with Western approaches — particularly John Dewey’s theory of experience, educational theory, phenomenology, research on teacher professionalism, and general didactics — I therefore investigate the conditions under which experiences may become educationally significant.
Increasingly, my work also engages with embodiment, presence, and pausing. Educational perception does not begin only once a theoretical interpretation has been applied. At times, professionalism may consist precisely in sustaining a situation for a moment, looking more closely, and suspending the impulse to respond immediately.
Not-knowing, in this sense, is not necessarily a deficit of professionalism. It may be one of its conditions.
Teacher Education as Work on One’s Own Ways of Seeing
These questions also shape my teaching.
For me, teacher education does not mean providing students as quickly as possible with recipes for “good teaching”. Educational situations are too complex for that. Professional practice requires knowledge and practical competence, but it also requires the ability to perceive situations carefully, to justify judgements, to recognise the limits of one’s own knowledge, and to revise decisions when necessary.
What interests me, therefore, is the cultivation of a form of responsible openness: the capacity to make judgements informed by scholarship while remaining open to the possibility that a situation may also be understood differently.
This includes a professional engagement with heterogeneity, didactic models, competency-based education, the institutional conditions of schooling, the antinomies of professional practice, and questions of education and inequality.
At the same time, it always involves examining one’s own participation in processes of perception and judgement.
Who is observing?
Through which concepts?
Which distinctions become visible as a result — and which distinctions may be produced by the very act of observation?
And what happens to an educational situation when we change our own perspective on it?
Teaching Requires Dramaturgy
I therefore do not understand university teaching as a sequence of isolated sessions.
A seminar should tell a story.
Theories and concepts should not simply stand next to one another. They should enter into relationships. Questions should be opened, provisionally answered, taken up again, and reconsidered from perspectives that have changed over the course of the seminar.
For this reason, I prefer to organise teaching in larger thematic blocks. Such a block may begin with students’ own experience, unsettle that experience through theory, confront it with empirical or case-based material, and finally return to the initial question under altered conditions.
In teacher education, such a dramaturgy might move from one’s own biography as a student, through school as an institution, toward the contradictions and uncertainties of professional educational practice.
Theory and experience should not be played off against one another. Theory can create distance. Experience can unsettle theory. Cases can show where concepts prove productive — and where they reach their limits.
For the same reason, texts, literature, film, art, and other cultural forms can become material for educational reflection whenever they make something perceptible that cannot easily be grasped through conceptual language alone.
My aim is not for everyone to arrive at the same answers at the end of a course.
I would rather that students leave able to ask different and more precise questions than they could before.
Beginner’s Mind
One important figure for this understanding of education comes from Zen: 初心 — shoshin, beginner’s mind.
Beginner’s mind does not mean knowing nothing. Academic work demands substantial knowledge, careful reading, and well-founded argument.
Rather, shoshin names the capacity to remain open to being surprised by what one encounters despite everything one already knows.
I consider this disposition crucial for professional educational practice: to possess knowledge without allowing that knowledge to determine the concrete situation in advance; to take experience seriously without making it the sole criterion of judgement; to judge, while keeping open the possibility of revising one’s judgement.
Perhaps my understanding of university education and teacher education can therefore be condensed into a simple movement:
to learn,
to question,
to pause,
to see differently,
to judge —
and, where necessary, to resist.
My own theoretical positions are, of course, not exempt from this movement.
Students are not expected to adopt them. Reasoned disagreement is an explicit part of my understanding of university teaching.
For an education that no longer allows for disagreement would no longer deserve the name.

Brief curriculum vitae
11/2022- : Professor of Educational Science specializing in General Didactics and Educational Theory.
03/2020-08/2021: Birth of my daughter Filis Hanna, parental leave and part-time parental leave.
07/2019-10/2022: Academic co-worker Educational Science/Educational Sciences in practical semester (SekI/II+integrated special education).
10/2018-03/2019: Substitute professor for Special Education and Inclusion with a focus on school development and classroom research at the University of Paderborn.
06/2016-06/2019: Process leader (PostDoc) of the working area critical-reflexive practice orientation in Bi^professional/Quality Offensive Teacher Education.
10/2010-03/2017: Doctorate in WG 4 (School Development and School Research) at the Faculty of Educational Science - Title: "Education and Empowerment: A Qualitative Study on Critical-Constructive Didactics and Capabilities Approach", supervised by Barbara Koch-Priewe and Holger Ziegler, overall grade outstanding/summa cum laude
10/2014-05/2016: academic co-worker Educational Science/Educational Sciences in the practical semester with preparatory training (SekI/II+integrated special education).
05/2011-09/2014: Academic co-worker in WG 4 (School Research and School Development) in various job shares (Secondary Education, Educational Science as a subject, academic co-worker in Oberstufenkolleg [High School College]).
2010: Degree in Educational Science, Philosophy and German Studies as Master of Education/State exam(ination) for Gymnasium and Gesamtschule.

Current projects
Workplace Teaching Subject Pedagogy

• Scientific coordinator
• Founding member
• since 02/2023
• Homepage follows
• arbeitsstelle.ufp@uni-bielefeld.de

SchuB - School choice and educational aspiration

• Initial research, preparation of third party funding application
• Transition communication of parents of children to be enrolled in primary school
• Segregation and composition in the case of free choice of elementary school
• (Qualitative) multi-level analyses
• sociological-statistical and qualitative mixed-methods approach
• Cooperation with the city of Bielefeld
• Project participants: Annette Textor & Johanna Gold

congo@schools (research team Zielkonflikte)

• Initial research, preparation of application for external funding
• (De-)professionalization through school-based practice phases
• Perception of and dealing with conflicting goals (and antinomies) of prospective teachers
• Cooperation between educational psychology and school pedagogy
• hypothesis-testing and qualitative method-integrative approach
• Project participants: Julia Gorges, Marburg

Publications'
See http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/person/22517456

Presentations and workshops

• Method integration of psychometrics and qualitative assessment with regard to the relationship of antinomies and conflicting goals: Presentation and discussion in the Methods Colloquium by Oliver Böhm-Kasper & Christine Demmer, 10th at the Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University July 2023.
• Education, Empowerment and Pedagogical Professionalism Welcome Lecture (inaugural lecture) at the Faculty of Educational Science, Bielefeld University, May 3, 2023.
• Social segregation at the start date of elementary school -- Where do irregular educational trajectories begin? Presentation with Johanna Gold in the symposium ''Causes and effects of irregular educational trajectories: empirical findings from Germany and Luxembourg", with Paul Fabian, Alyssa Laureen Grecu, Susanne Backes & Steffen Schindler (discussant) at the GEBF conference, University of Duisburg-Essen, February 28, 2023.
• Practices of Qualitative Research presentation and workshop , Institute for Educational Research, Marburg, January 17, 2023.
• How Do Parents Address Central Human Capabilities when Choosing a Primary School for Their Children? Presentation with Annette Textor at the HDCA Conference, Antwerp, September 20, 2022.
• Entry into Primary Education as a Challenge for Family Decision-Making Processes and Urban Educational Planning. Working group with Annette Textor, Johanna Gold u at the DGfE Congress at the University of Bremen, March 16, 2022.
• "Not just a place to be kept well" - Parental motives for enrolling in an inclusive offer school. Presentation by Jan C. Störtländer, Annette Textor, and Kaya Reckmann at the DGfE Congress at the University of Bremen, March 16, 2022.
• Antinomies as conflicting goals experienced by teachers? Possibilities and limitations of a mixed-methods approach. Presentation with Julia Gorges in the symposium Too much wanted? Motivational conflicts of learners and teaching staff, instructors, lectures Julia Gorges, Robert Grassinger, and Carola Grunschel at the GEBF symposium, University of Bamberg, March 10, 2022.
• Service delivery, reflection and portfolio work - an ambivalent triangular relationship in university teacher* education. Presentation in the symposium The Portfolio as a "Reflection Instrument" in Schools and Universities, with Andrea Bossen, Georg Breidenstein, and Thomas Häcker at the Section Conference on School Education, University of Osnabrück, September 23, 2021.
• What motivates parents to register their child at an inclusive offer school? Presentation with Annette Textor and Kaya Reckmann at the AEPF/KBBB symposia Breaking Boundaries - Connecting Research. Interdisciplinary Empirical Research Beyond Classical Fields of Action at the University of Mainz, September 13, 2021.
• Practices of Qualitative Research. Presentation and workshop invited by the working area Empirical Educational Research. University of Marburg, December 15, 2020.
• School Choice and Educational Pathways. Presentation and workshop with Johanna Gold and Annette Textor. City of Bielefeld, May 12, 2020.
• More Goals Impossible? Investigating teachers' intraindividual goal conflict. Insights from a project proposal in progress. Presentation with Julia Gorges at the TSP (Teacher Selection Project) meeting. University of York. 5 March 2020.
• Goal conflicts in the school practicum. Presentation at the AEPF/KBBB symposia Societal developments as challenges for empirical educational research. University of Münster, September 17, 2019.
• Is "prompted" and graded reflection an obstacle in professionalization processes? Presentation at the 3rd International Congress of the International Society for School Practice Professionalization (IGSP). Graz, Austria, April 26, 2019.
• Critical-reflexive professionalization in school-based practice phases. Presentation with Catania Pieper at the 3rd International Congress of the International Society for School Practice Professionalization (IGSP). Graz, Austria, April 26, 2019.
• Critical-reflexive professionalization in school-based practice phases. Presentation with Catania Pieper at the symposia Reflexivity in all phases of teacher education - theoretical and empirical approvals. Justus Liebig University Giessen, April 8, 2019.
• Whose problem is actually the "own problem"? An educational-theoretical-pragmatistic perspective on research-based learning and its implications for higher education didactics. Presentation at the symposium ''On Researching Researched Learning - Implications for Teacher* Education, Scholarship and Practice. Bielefeld, February 14, 2019.
• Writing for Teacher (Further) Education? Workshop with Martin Heinrich in the context of the Summer School SchreibHerausforderungen. Bielefeld, September 28, 2018.
• How to write about teaching? - A practical workshop together with Swantje Lahm in the context of the Summer School SchreibHerausforderungen. Bielefeld, September 27, 2018.
• How do students assess the learning opportunities in the practical semester with preparatory training? Results of the VFL-Praxis Study together with Anne Köker and Gabriele Klewin at the symposium 'Taking a look at one's own and others' practice: Triggers for learning processes?' at the AEPF. Lüneburg, September 2018 [submitted].
• Special and curative education perspectives on the Capabilities Approach. Full-day workshop at the University of Applied Sciences of Diakonie Bethel, Bielefeld, December 1, 2017.
• Teacher education and teacher training. Same questions? Same answers? Presentation together with Martin Heinrich and Thomas Walden at the 25th EMSE symposia "Education in the digital world - What research do we have, what research do we need?". Berlin-Brandenburg State Institute for Schools and Media, December 8, 2017.
• PortaBLe, Portal zur Bielefelder Lehrer_innenbildung - Konzeption und Evaluationsperspektiven. Presentation and Lightning Talk together with Thomas Walden at the OER-Fachforum. Berlin, November 29, 2017.
• PortaBLe and HLZ. Developments and current status of digitization projects in teacher education in Bielefeld. Presentation and discussion together with Mealnie Basten, Claudia Mertens, Thomas Walden and the scientific advisory board of Bi^professional. Bielefeld, November 11, 2017.
• Inclusion at the Gymnasium. Tasks and student activities accessible workshop with Jochen Sauer and Kirsten Schmitt at the 1st Bielefeld Symposium on Inclusion-Sensitive Teacher Education, Bielefeld, July 14, 2017.
• The development of the importance of research-based learning in the practical semester with preparatory training from the perspective of (prospective) teachers. Results of an interview study. Symposium paper with Anne Köker and Gabriele Klewin (also participating Angelika Paseka, Jan-Hendrik Hinzke, Birgit Holler-Nowitzki, Barbara Koch, Ralf Schneider) at the 2nd International Congress of the International Society for Practical School Professionalization (IGSP): Learning in Practice - Professionalization Processes in the Context of Work Placement for Teacher Training, Bochum, March 6, 2017.
• The Cluster I Advisory Center Critical Reflective Practice Orientation Introduces Itself. Presentation with Stefan Hahn and Martin Heirnich at the 1st Bi^Professional Conference. Bielefeld, October 28, 2016.
• VfL Praxis: reconstructing the meaning of the practical semester with preparatory training for (prospective) teachers. Presentation and workshop with Anne Köker as part of the VfL Praxis project presentation (also involved: Gabriele Klewin, Birgit Holler-Nowitzki, Barbara Koch) at the Nordverbund conference, Flensburg, September 22, 2016.
• Contributions and Products for an Online Portal on Teacher Education from the Perspective of Cluster I. Presentation at Bi:Professional colloquium. Bielefeld, June 2, 2016.
• We are now waiting for T to go out so we can continue in peace. Understandings of academic achievements reconstructed from reports of students in the practical semester with preparatory training in integrative special education for lower secondary school. Presentation with Barbara Koch at the 30th Annual International Conference of Inclusion Researchers, February 18, 2016, Bielefeld University.
• Employability and/or Bourgeois Phantasy? Concepts of Education and the Capabilities Approach and a Case Study on Some Limitations to Social Mobility. Presentation with Mai-Anh Boger at the Human Development and Capability Conference. Washington D.C., USA, September 11, 2015.
• Qualitative Methods for Reconstructing the Instructional Planning Heuristics of Prospective and Novice Teachers. Presentation and workshop at the Sport Didactics Colloquium at the University of Paderborn, Germany, June 10, 2015.
• Equity or the good life?! Introduction to the Capabilities Approach. Workshop with college students of the Oberstufenkolleg [High School College] Bielefeld on June 8, 2015.
• The educational sciences preparatory seminar with preparatory training. Presentation and workshop with Anne Köker at the state-wide kick-off conference Forschendes Lernen im Praxissemester - Umsetzung und Begleitung in Schule, ZfsL und Universität on February 06, 2015 in Bielefeld.
• The Educational System in Germany and Questions of Diversity. Keynote lecture with Barbara Koch-Priewe at the conference: Diversity in Teacher Education. Antalya, Turkey, December 8, 2014.
• Pedagogical Anthropology in (Inclusive) Teacher Education - Experiences from University Teaching. Workshop with Mai-Anh Boger at the symposium Menschenbilder in Schule und Unterricht, Trier, Germany, October 7, 2014.
• Affiliation without Filia? Combining Capabilities Approach and Psychoanalysis. Presentation with Mai-Anh Boger at the Human Development and Capability Conference. Athens, Greece, September 2, 2014.
• School Students Concepts of a Flourishing Life and General Education. Presentation at the Human Development and Capability Conference. Athens, Greece, September 3, 2014.
• Exploration of a Student's Beliefs on What It Means to Be a Teacher. Presentation at the Portfolio in Teacher Training Conference. Cesme, Turkey, June 11, 2014.
• What discourse functions do students use when reflecting on their first school practicum? Potentials and limitations of a content analytic approach. Presentation with Anna Pineker and Stefanie Langhorst at the workshop Portfolio in Teacher Education. Kassel, October 11, 2013.
• "When I Feel Bad I Can Stay Away From School for a Couple of Days. A Capabilities Approach Based Case Study of a Possible Borderline Student. Presentation with Mai-Anh Boger at the Third International Conference of Community Life at School. Almeria, Spain, May 10, 2013.
• Student Activities in Teachers' Planning Considerations. An Empirical Study to Advance the Perspective Schema of Critical-Constructive Didactics. Presentation with Barbara Koch-Priewe at the theory conference Comparative Didactics and Curriculum Research: National and International Perspectives of the DGfE, Commission on School Research/Didactics. Leipzig, March 21, 2013.
• Klafkis nøgleproblemer empirisk evalueret [ Klafki's key problem approach empirically considered ]. Presentation at the LUPF Conference, Odense, Denmark, November 23, 2012.
• Introduction to the Bielefeld Portfolio for Practical Studies. Presentation with Anna Pineker at the International Portfolio Symposium. Kayseri, Turkey, April 2-4, 2012.
• Didactical Analysis from a Capabilities Approach Perspective. Presentation at the 7th International Conference on Education. Samos, Greece, July 7-9, 2011.
• Key Problems as Capabilities Deprivation: New Approvals to the Question of Norms in General Didactics? Presentation at the workshop Status and Perspectives of General Didactics Research. Hildesheim, May 2, 2011.

Poster

• More Goals Possible? Investigating Teachers' Goal Conflicts. With Sinje Brinkmann and Julia Gorges. PaePsy symposia of the DGP. Leipzig, September 10, 2019.
• Bi^professional presentation of the overall project. With Daniel Goldmann, Julia Gorges, Martin Heinrich, Lilian Streblow, Odette Selders, and Thomas Walden. First program congress of the Quality Offensive Teacher Education. Berlin, October 20, 2016.
• Comparing the Concepts of Bildung of Students and Their Parents. With Frank Lücker and Mai-Anh Boger. Human Development and Capability Conference. Athens, Greece, September 3, 2014.
• Key Problems and the Good Life. Preliminary Results of a Qualitative Study on Critical Constructive Didactics and the Capabilities Approach. DGfE symposia Comparative Didactics and Curriculum Research: national and international perspectives. Leipzig, March 2013.

'''Completed Projects.
HLZ | Herausforderung Lehrer_innenbildung - Zeitschrift zu Konzeption, Gestaltung und Diskussion

• Cross-disciplinary and cross-professional peer-reviewed online journal.
• focus on teaching concepts, teaching modules, working materials (besides classical empirical and theoretical contributions)
• open licensing through CC-BY-SA 4.0
• founding co-editor (founding 2017).
• (2017-2023) managing editor
• info-flyer

VfL Praxis

• Professionalization through research-based learning and reflection in practical semester with preparatory training.
• Qualitative longitunal study with students of the practical semester with preparatory training
• Project participants: Barbara Koch, Anne Köker, Gabriele Klewin, Birgit Holler-Nowitzky

'Education and Empowerment: A Qualitative Study on Critical-Constructive Didactics and Capabilities Approach

• (doctoral) thesis
• Supervised by Barbara Koch-Priewe and Holger Ziegler
• Duration: 10/2010-03/2017 (Overall grade: Summa Cum Laude).

minor and dormant projects

• Vor-Bild - Bielefelder Studie zu Vorstellungen von Bildung, With Mai-Anh Boger, Vildan Aytekin, Annette Textor. Currently dormant.
• Bielefeld research team, research unit, research group General Didactics. Further development of general didactic concepts. Empirical study on lesson planning heuristics of teachers. Barbara Koch-Priewe, Barbara Koch, Anne Köker and Harry Kullmann. 01/2011 - 12/2015
• Analysis of reflective competence in (Bielefeld) portfolio work. With Barbara Koch-Priewe and Anna Pineker. 04/2013 - 09/2014

Conference Organization

• SchreibHerausforderungen, Summer School, Bielefeld, April 27-28, 2018. With Julia Gorges.
• How much digitalization does teacher*education need and tolerate Symposium and panel discussion. Bielefeld University, October 19, 2017. With Nicole Valdorf and Thomas Walden.
• ''Digitization of Bielefeld Teacher's Education. Barcamp with practicum students: Organization and implementation. Stolander Bielefeld, June 8, 2017. with Björn Stövesand and Thomas Walden.
• Present and future significance of educational theory and critical-constructive didactics. On the Work of Wolfgang Klafki, January 30, 2015, ZiF Bielefeld. With Barbara Koch-Priewe and Anne Köker. 05/2014 - 01/2015
• Support in the organization of the.
  • "International Portfolio Symposium". Erciyes Üniversitesi Kayseri, April 1-4, 2012;
  • "PiTT - Portfolio in Teacher Training I", Bielefeld University, February 4-7, 2014;
  • "PiTT - Portfolio in Teacher Training II", Izmir University, June 10-14, 2014,
  • jointly with Barbara Koch-Priewe and Fisun Akşit (now Bozkurt).
  • Sponsored by DFG, BMBF, TÜBITAK and Erciyes University.
  • Activities: Collaboration in the application process, content conception, translation of technical texts, organizational matters. 07/2011 - 06/2014.
• Member of the organizing committee of the theory conference "Comparative Didactics and Curriculum Research: National and International Perspectives" of DGfE, Commission School Research/Didactics, Leipzig, 2013. 06/2012 - 03/2013.