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Adobe Stock
The project
EmParti examines the educational paths of women in teacher training in Lower Saxony: teaching students, trainee teachers and teachers. The focus is on women who have had particular experiences of exclusion and disadvantage due to their family or personal migration background and their gender. Particular emphasis is placed on how these inequalities within teacher training mean that some people feel a sense of belonging while others are excluded.
The project links research with active participant involvement in order to make the participants鈥� perspectives visible and, simultaneously, support their career development through workshops and mentoring. Biographical work 鈥� that is, work with life stories 鈥� plays a central role here. It creates spaces where experiences of discrimination can be addressed, as well as strategies for dealing with discrimination and forms of resistance to it.
EmParti does not conduct research on or about people, but rather with them. The participants capture their perspectives in photos, discussing them and validating one another鈥檚 experiences.
The exhibit
In these pictures you can see scenes depicting typical situations in the lives of teachers and aspiring teachers. The women have a so-called 鈥渕igration background鈥� and are participants in the EmParti project.
The images are based on photos taken by these individuals as part of their involvement in the project 鈥� photos of situations and places that represent significant moments in their (educational) biographies during teacher training. The quotes are the participants鈥� thoughts and reflections on their respective images, and on the lived events, stories and experiences behind them. In their photos and texts, the women portray experiences of exclusion, but they also show moments of pause and reflection, self-empowerment and the shifting of power structures 鈥� not least with respect to gender roles and the expectations and hierarchies they shape.
The quotes on the back of the images give an impression of these reflections.
The images and texts have been published with the kind permission of the participants.
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S枚ren Pinsdorf / 糖心原创
The team
The project EmParti: Shaped by Migration, Female and Strong 鈥� Empowerment and Participation through Mentoring for Teaching Students and Teachers with a Migration Background has been underway at the Institute of Special Education since 2024. It is headed by Prof. Dr. Bettina Lindmeier. Yasmin Sassi and Ines Potthast are employed as research staff in the project.
EmParti has received more than 550,000 euros in funding from the Integration through Education programme at the Federal Ministry for Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and the European Union鈥檚 European Social Fund Plus. The training, mentoring and networking programme will initially run until mid-2027.
