Distinction in the German 'Gymnasium'? Processes of Creating Habitus in 'Exclusive' Secondary School

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Our research project focuses from a micro-sociological perspective on habitus on exclusive schools in relation to public discourses on elite, excellence, intellectual giftedness and top performance. In the first period of sponsorship the study investigated the institutional dimension of seven secondary schools. In doing so, we analysed five `exclusive and two non-exclusive secondary schools without any references to exclusiveness in two different higher education regions. Against the backdrop of the thesis of vertical differentiation processes and new established educational hierarchies in higher education, our study focuses on selection procedures concerning the choice of pupils, pedagogical concepts and programmes plus their references to semantics of distinction. By using the method of objective hermeneutics we have also reconstructed institutional concepts of the students habitus. In the submitted second period of sponsoring, we will combine the institutional analysis with a longitudinal perspective on the students habitus of the seven chosen schools in the 8th, the 10th and the 12th grade, as well as half a year after graduation. The studys main focus in the second period is the analysis by the documentary method and a further enquiry of the pupils longitudinal section.The studys objectives are the following three points: From the first point of view, educational processes of creating habitus in secondary schools are taking place in a tension of reproduction and transformation. We are interested in potential differences in this forms of creating habitus between pupils (in the course of adolescence) and in context with several forms of distinction in different schools. Secondly, one main focus is the relation of matching between institutional concepts of student-habitus and their individual student-habitus; as well as the development in the course at the center of youth. The project will give new insights about the formation of secondary school habitus on basis of qualitative longitudinal research. This will bring us to the development of a synchronic plus diachronic typology of habitual matching processes. In doing so, we will answer the question if processes of differentiation, and the hierarchy of different education regions in the German Gymnasium could be found in different distinctions between a schools pupil habitus and its development of habitus.