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This article focuses on preschool children in Kyrgyzstan, a poor country of the former Soviet union. What are children's views on the relational order in this transition society, and what is their contribution to the reproduction or challenging of this order? The authors use and elaborate the theoretical concepts of 'agency' and 'collectivism-individualism' to develop ageappropriate research instruments and to interpret children's views. Data were collected in a mixed-method field study. The presented results show children's agency in a tight hierarchical structure, revealing both complicity and self-assertion, occasionally resulting in opposition.

In Germany about half of the adult learners who start second chance education drop out before graduation. In this paper we aim to contribute to an explanation for this low success rate. We focus on the normative expectations of learners: What are their expectations concerning teachers' attention to their personal abilities, teacher support and the recognition of their needs, and to what extent are these expectations met by teachers? Our main assumption is that the greater the difference between learner's expectations and teacher practice, the more likely learners are to become disengaged and be absent from school, and this may lead to school dropout in the future. We use a database of N = 420 learners in 7 randomly selected institutions of second chance education in Germany. Results show, that (1) on average, adult learners tend to expect teachers to take an interest in their personal problems and to take responsibility for their learning process. However (2), 30% of learners experience teachers who are a) more or b) less learner-oriented than they expected them to be, and (3) students in group (b) show considerably lower school engagement and higher absences than students in group (a). Results are discussed with regard to practical implications for second chance education.

ZusammenfassungQualitativ gewonnene Aussagen leiden an einem Mangel an Nachvollziehbarkeit. Glaubwürdigkeit soll durch das Zitieren einzelner, besonders eindrücklicher oder typischer Interviewpassagen und Beobachtungen geschaffen werden, über eine anekdotische Dokumentation also. Anleitungen zu systematischer Datensammlung und -auswertung, die hier Abhilfe schaffen könnten, sind spärlich vorhanden oder kaum bekannt. Ein geeignetes Verfahren ist die analytische Induktion, die Znaniecki für die Sozialwissenschaften vorgeschlagen hat. Sie wurde in einigen Studien eingesetzt und ausgearbeitet, um dann fast völlig in Vergessenheit zu geraten. Arbeitsinstrument der analytischen Induktion ist die Analyse der Ausnahme, über die sie qualitative Projekte systematischer steuern kann, als es das besser rezipierte Vorgehen von Glaser und Strauß tut.

This article gives an overview of the preceding set of reports on the global state of the art of the sociology of childhood in Australia,