Kritik der evidenzbasierten Pädagogik

Evidence-based education aims at improving the effectiveness of educational interventions and programs through knowledge on the basis of rigorous scientific research. However, evidence-based education should not be equated with empirical educational research; nor should it be understood as an independent paradigm of educational science, because of its focus on educational practice. The specific notion of how science and practice relate to each other, which is fundamental to evidence-based education, is exposed to a threefold critique, namely concerning the technological conception of educational practice, the supposed abstinence from theory as frame for educational research, and the disregard of communication as medium of educational effectiveness. The last paragraph of the paper presents a reminiscent sketch of an alternative conception of the relation between science and practice as it can be found with some representatives of educational psychology.     

Theorie und Praxis in der Pädagogik

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Theory and practice in education

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Théorie et pratique en pédagogie

     

Die Verteufelung des Bildes in der Geschichte der Pädagogik

Children and youth consume pictures in a very loose, often in a sophistic way, nowadays. On the other hand educators and pedagogies faced pictures sceptically and refused iconic representations to be a means of acquiring knowledge.

Only when didactically and methodologically used, they claimed as a professionalized option, pictures could be suitful with regard to learning processes.

Pedagogues suspicially feared to loose control rejecting the irritating totality of pictures. Pointing consequently to the didactic use of pictures and images they better should have abandonned the moralistic point of view. They did not–as the history of the “Bewahrpädagogik” shows ‐, and therefore they presented a stereotype, although professional reaction to the problem of images and pictures “intruding”, “penetrating” children's life.

The article shows examples of the pedagogue's rejecting position towards children, consuming images and pictures, stating that their reaction has been a common reflex and a widespread attitude among eudcators.     

The discourse of German Geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik – A contextual reconstruction

The framework of German educational discourse of the twentieth century is so‐called geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, or education as one of the humanities or arts rather than as a science. It triumphed around 1925 in the second half of the Weimar Republic. This article outlines in three steps the core elements of this educational discourse. First, it shows that the mode of thinking of the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik was dualistic in a traditional Protestant manner. They juxtaposed empiry and Geist, plurality and unity, and outward and inward, and they favoured the inward unity and coherency of Geist. The contextual analysis shows, however, that the dualistic thought schema was virulent not only among German educationalists and philosophers, but also found strong expression in novelists and essayists like Thomas Mann, or the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Rudolf Eucken. Mainstream thinkers criticised the plural systems of Western democracy and capitalism – first and foremost, however, American democracy and capitalism – which were seen to epitomise both of these “un‐German” movements. The true German nature was thought to be an inner spiritual life, which was originally religious and through the course of history came to characterise the whole of German life and thought. It was believed that this spiritual inner life was revealed best by German art, particularly German music. This resistance to empiricism led, and this is the second step, to two analogous notions of the totality or wholeness of the individual and the nation. Man is not understood to be merely an individual, but more importantly a “personhood” (Persönlichkeit), which was described as an inward spiritual life that arose through effort and self‐cultivation, or Bildung. In addition to this inward personhood, however, the conception of “nationhood,” a national spiritual life as Volksstaat, or the ethnocultural nation as detached and distinguished from the political sphere, is seen as important. The individual person can perfect himself only in the framework of the typical characteristics of his Volk – the German Volk. Western democracy and plurality are seen as an atomistic “aggregate of individuals” and juxtaposed against the German concept of the ethnocultural Nation, the Volk community composing an organic unity that transcends the individual. Bildung is the spiritual formation of integrated, cultivated personalities who would orient themselves to the Volk community. In the curriculum of true education, along with the German language the study of Heimat becomes the fundamental element. In contrast to specialised subjects, the contents of Heimat would reflect the organic in the world, the totality of life: in the Volk and in the spiritual‐mental unity within the Persönlichkeit. The two constructions – deepest roots in the tradition of the Volk on one side, and highest inner spirituality in the personality on the other – resulted in education that had to oscillate between lowest and highest and, through this, had to lose sight of empirical, that is, social and political, dimensions. This is the third step that the present article wants to address. The true understanding of education, according to the exponents of geisteswissenschaftliche Pädagogik, puts social and political issues in their only proper place: inside the inner 760 Daniel Tröhler personality. Politicisation of the German person had to take place in the context of Volksstaat, not in democracy. To be free meant the embedding of the individual into the harmonious beauty of the whole. This notion created a social and political vacuum between the lowest denominator or totality of the Germanic people and the highest whole or totality of the Germanic personality, so that education had to be given the attribution – one that continues to be variously described and affirmed in education research in the German‐language realm up to the present day – that education is autonomous, independent of social or political context. This was based on the term Bildung – the inner ideology set against a pluralistic world. Autonomy means insisting on the inner freedom of man, on his inner coherency, and his will. In the midst of the confusing simultaneous demands of society on youth, educational autonomy is believed to be a means of assuring human unity and wholeness; it serves a protective dam to contain the danger of persons being ripped apart or pulled hither and yon. With its goal of awakening a unified spiritual life against the modern plural democratic world, the true educational community becomes crucial.     

Pädagogik und Eugenik im “rassenhygienischen” Diskurs vor 1933

Eugenic dreams of re‐making people have taken on a new reality against the background of scientific and technological developments in modern genetics. Thus, it seems all the more important to recall the historical experience with the concept of “Rassenhygiene” in the early 20th century and during the Nazi period in Germany. The central ideas that the Nazis tried to implement, had already been formulated by the German eugenic movement before 1933: eugenic perfection combined with “völkisch” and racial purity. This movement and these ideas spread to the educational discourse. Eugenic or “rassenhygienisch” concepts of education were intended to spread eugenic knowledge, to foster a new eugenic ethic, and to instil a new selective attitude in sexual choice. In addition, structural reforms of educational systems were sought in the direction of intensified selectivity, especially of groups and individuals supposed to be not worth living.     

Friedrich Schweitzer: Pädagogik und Religion. Eine Einführung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Der romantische Kindheitsmythos und seine Kontinuitäten in der Pädagogik und in der Kindheitsforschung

Der Beitrag diskutiert aus der Perspektive historischer Sozialisationsforschung gegenw?rtige Bilder vom Kind. Er skizziert die Grundzüge des romantischen Kindheitsmythos um 1800 und analysiert seine Kontinuit?ten in der P?dagogik um 1900 und an der Wende zum 21. Jahrhundert. Er zeigt, dass sowohl dem aktuellen Bestseller von Elschenbroich „Das Weltwissen der Siebenj?hrigen“ (2001), als auch Positionen der zeitgen?ssischen Kindheitsforschung durchaus romantische Elemente zugrunde liegen. Kritisch befragt werden in diesem Zusammenhang sowohl das Konzept der „Selbstsozialisation“, als auch die Annahme vom Verschwinden der Differenz zwischen Kindern und Erwachsenen. Der Beitrag endet mit einem Fazit, in dem Gründe für die Attraktivit?t des Kindheitsmythos aufgeführt sowie Forschungsfragen und -probleme er?rtert werden.     

“Wege” und “Ziele”: Starke Metaphern der Pädagogik

In 1960 Israel Scheffler analyzed “The Language of Education”. Since then not very much is written concerning this subject, especially not in the field of history of education. But first of all “education” is a historical language that is used in popular and scientific contexts. The article tries to analyze some basic terms of this historical language of education. The notion “education”–educare–itself is a sort of frozen metaphor that is all too often supposed to be a “real” or “immediate” field of experience But experience in education can only be communicated by use of the language of education.

     

Schulreform,Pädagogik und Psychologie: Zur Geschichte des Wiener Psychologischen Instituts

The founding of the Vienna Psychological Institute in 1922 seemed to offer great opportunities for developing a disciplinary field in empirical pedagogy. Organizationally, the new institute was closely related to the Vienna Pedagogical Institute, which was the central teachers’ training college in Red Vienna and therefore the institutional centre of the socialdemocratic educational reforms. Besides their lectures at the university, Karl and Charlotte Bühler were lecturing psychology for teachers at the Pedagogical Institute. Despite their initial programmatic promise to build up an international centre of pedagogical psychology in Vienna, they and their co‐workers largely refrained from applied research in pedagogical fields during the following years. In view of the good occasions for cooperation it is surprising that contact between the research interests of the Bühler‐School and the work of the educational reformers was rare. The most important person in this context was Karl Reininger who dedicated his own social‐psychological research to the problems of group‐forming in school classes. Shortly after her arrival in Vienna, Charlotte Bühler conducted research on the reading preferences of Viennese school pupils. Getting money from the Rockefeller Foundation, she turned away from applied research and contributed substantially to elaborating a biological theory of mental development.     

Die Geschichte des Faches Pädagogik an den österreichischen Universitäten von 1805 bis 1970

The study offers an overview of the history of pedagogics at the Austrian universities between 1895 and 1970. From its beginnings in Vienna, where the first Austrian chair for pedagogics was established in 1805, the author describes the varied development of the discipline at the universities of Vienna, Pra‐gue, Graz, Innsbruck, and Salzburg. A detailed presentation of the biographies of professors teaching at these universities is combi‐ned with a critical history of the respective educational theories they advocated. The analysis of dissertations, Habilitationsschriften (postdoctoral dissertations), and further publications shows that up until the last third of our Century pedagogics as a “science” has led a shadowy existence. An essential cause for the regrettable lack of independent educational‐science theory con‐struction was the understanding of pedagogics as a practical “teaching of the art” ("Kunstlehre") of education. This was also one of the reasons why pedagogics, or respectively, educational science, has for some time been rejected by the social sciences in general as an independent science in its own right.

     

Die Schweiz im Abseits? Bestimmende Themen der Pädagogik zwischen 1945 und 1954

This article deals with the educational Situation in post‐war Switzerland between 1945 and 1954. The author describes three processes which took place during this period. On the basis of an analysis of two educational journals, the “Schweizerische Lehrerzeitung” and the “Schweizer Schule”, the author distin‐guishes a phase of irritation, followed by a time of isolation. The third phase (around 1954) was characterized by integrating forces which manoeuvred the educational development in Switzerland into a position between collaboration with processes from abroad and position taking. ^{1 1}Überarbeitetes Referat, gehalten anlässlich der Jahrestagung 1993 der Historischen Kommission der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Erziehung in Thumau bei Bayreuth, 21. September 1993.

     

Between ‘pedagogy’ and ‘Pädagogik’: a critique of lived pedagogy

The present paper is an analysis of the recently formulated concept of Lived Pedagogy. With roots in phenomenology and narrative research and research on ‘student voice’, the concept is coined as a way to research participants’ experience of practical pedagogy in school. The main theoretical and methodological challenges in Lived Pedagogy stem from the use of relational theory (i.e. phenomenology and narrative theory) while a priori maintaining a number of divisions that challenge this relational logic. Having outlined these problems, a suggestion is made to inform Lived Pedagogy by way of the German Pädagogik with its central focus on purpose(s) of education. Specifically, I employ Løvlie’s educational transformation of Habermas’s discourse ethics as a framework for structuring the deliberation of what is educationally desirable.     

Emigranten und Remigranten in Bildungspolitik und Pädagogik ‐ die Erfahrung Sowjetunion in der ostdeutschen Nachkriegsentwicklung

The article looks into the pedagogical aspects of the Soviet zones and the early G.D.R.’s dependence on the U.S.S.R.. The analysis is primarily aimed at the personal, individual dimensions of this relation. Teachers and educationalists, having returned to the Soviet zone or G.D.R. after a long period of emigration in the U.S.S.R., are given particular attention. The article focuses on their situation of emigration and re‐emigration, and on their opportunities of participation, influence and action in educational policy and pedagogy. This eventually permits a more precise definition of the function and part those people had in the establishment of the Soviet influence and in the constitution of the educational system of the G.D.R..     

Zur P?dagogik der Gl��cksgef��hle

Against the background of a poorly discussed pedagogy of happiness the article aims at three objectives: First, some important aspects of the philosophical and pedagogical discourse of happiness are reconstructed and discussed in a systematic view. In doing so two different feelings of happiness will be distinguished ideally, the happiness of contemplative thought and the drive or lust-related feeling of desire. Second, a typology is designed to classify various forms of emotional hedonistic happiness in education: fun and joy, flow, satisfaction, harmony and well-being. Within these dimensions a further distinction is implicitly drawn between a present emotion, as in fun and flow, and a prevailing mood of happiness (in daily life), as in joy or well-being. In addition it will be distinguished between current feelings and emotional dispositions; emotional dispositions??such as well-being or the attitude of happiness??will be seen as the essential anthropological background for active feelings. Thirdly, the article shows how feelings of happiness can be pedagogically connected to the educational promise of happiness in modern times. Feelings of Happiness can be regarded as indicators of what is important to people in their lives, because they provide perspectives and values of a fulfilled life. In a pedagogical perspective it is important to consider emotions of happiness as resources and to make use of them without being able to ultimately dispose of them. Following the pursuit of happiness, pedagogy as a science of biography pursues an holistic claim. Insofar pedagogy gains a never-ending task.