From “Ausländerklasse” (foreigner class) to Ethics Instruction – the Development of Diversity Management in Berlins Secondary Schools

In Western democratic societies Muslims are thought to be anti-liberal forces threatening peace and safety. Often these negative attitudes are projected onto youth, stigmatizing them as “disruptive agents prone to radicalism and deviance” (Bayat & Herrera, 2010, p. 3). Thus schools and education are seen as “crucial key” in the process of integration (Bundesregierung, 2007, p. 3) leading to a variety of new policies, changes in curriculum, and organizational restructuring. So far, scholarly discussions of how organizations are shaped by immigration and increasing diversity have focused primarily on migrant organizations (e.g. Yurdakul 2009), government (e.g. Laurence 2012) and law (e.g. Joppke & Torpey 2013). Looking specifically at change in schools in response to increased diversity fills an important gap in the literature.

Drawing on neo-institutional organization theory, this paper examines how these new policies fit into the overall historical reaction of German schools to increased heterogeneity by examining the case of Berlin’s secondary schools from the beginning of the 1960s (the advent of the guest worker migrations to Germany) through today by analyzing archival material and original qualitative interviews and observations.

This paper argues that Berlin’s approach approach to heterogeneity in schools followed two main lines. Berlin on the one hand kept the concept of Ausländerklassen (foreigner classes) established in the early 1970s in their welcome classes – for those newly arrived. Secondly, it started to test out ethics instruction to facilitate moral education and implemented it after an honor murder as mandatory subject in the 2006/2007 school year.