Cooperation as Dealing with Non-/Simultaneity

On the Temporal Constitution of Special Education Responsibility

Abstract

This paper explores the extent to which cooperation in classroom settings can be described in terms of temporal orders and how different modes of temporality (Chronos, Rhythmus) produce forms of special educational responsibility. Drawing on the timetable of a special education teacher as well as an ethnographic classroom observation in a primary school, cooperation is reconstructed as a shared orientation toward simultaneity. At the same time, by addressing individual responsibilities and attending to the specific temporalities of individual students, cooperation appears as the management of non-simultaneity. With regard to special educational responsibility, time emerges as a scarce resource to be allocated across different classes, constituted through temporal couplings with particular students, subjects, and classes. These couplings, as set out in the timetable, are not interpreted as fixed prescriptions but are continuously re-enacted and renegotiated in the course of classroom practice.