This abstract reports on findings from ethnographic practice research on the relation between the practice of teaching and children’s participation in classroom practices. The empirical data was conducted over a period of two years in one school located in Copenhagen. The research focus is on differentiated teaching and the professional development of teaching in diverse Classrooms.

The aim is to explore and bring forth knowledge about children’s different ways of participating in class during teaching and to empower the teachers with this knowledge. Thus, we are preoccupied with how children are mastering classroom learning and how teachers respond to the differences among the children.

Research questions are:

• How do teachers understand differences among pupils and how do they respond to these differences?
• How do students participate in the classrooms?
• What is going on between the students and how do their relations influence the teaching?
• How do teachers develop the practice of teaching in close collaborations with researchers (and research findings from studying practice)?

To explore these questions we draw on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and his concepts of social reproduction and symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1990) and on Zygmunt Baumann and his concepts of social exclusion and homelessness (Baumann, 2004).  The analytical approach is directed toward the assumption that what is going on in schools is related to societal and cultural structures of power and implicit understandings of normality and deviation. The political and educational focus on diversity, inclusion and equality must in this analytical framework, be seen in the light of exclusion and marginalization of some children.  

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