Paper short abstract:

The shaping of space in a school is closely intertwined with the idiosyncratic culture prevalent at the given school. The paper examines this intertwining drawing on empirical research at a German Gymnasium. Everyday social, spatial and material experiential phenomena will serve as backdrop to the specific case of negotiating the building of a new cafeteria.

Paper long abstract:

Educational practice in Germany increasingly focuses on school not simply as a space of learning but also as a living space. This ideological shift contains various conceptions and aspirations about the material contours of a "good school." The paper draws from an ethnographic study of a German Gymnasium. It focuses on the shaping of school space from a series of perspectives. The everyday practice of moving, working and living within school space can be captured in both official and inofficial scenarios: graffiti scribbled on a bathroom door is as much part of it as the arrangement of chairs in the teachers lounge or the presentation of school rooms during the "open door day" for prospective students and their parents. On the backdrop of such everday spatial agency, the paper will seek to establish this school cultural self-conception with the example of the school's planning for a new cafeteria. Actors involved in planning for this new space divulge their spatial ideals and visions in the process of negotiation. This allows the ethnographer to render graspable the material and social-spatial characteristics typical of the specific organizational culture of this particular school.