In my paper I want to discuss the necessity, some methodological problems and first results of pedagogical research of our study group at Goethe University (director: Andreas Gruschka). At least in the German tradition, as the discipline of the theory of teaching, didactics has actually been criticized: Its basic and influential terms of Bildung, Erziehung and Didaktik are seen as too normative for being used in empirical research on teaching. The latter is better done by researchers operating with psychological terms and methods – with the consequence, that didactics tries to implement more and more psychological questions, results and terms in their theoretical constructions of teaching practice. Thus, didactics loses sight of the specific pedagogical qualities of its object. Nevertheless, it is both necessary and possible doing pedagogical research. Necessary, because the discipline has never grounded its founding terms empirically. It is possible, because – in contrast to neutral terms like learning or competence – the normativity of pedagogical terms structures the classroom interaction itself – as implied guidelines for the teacher and the pupils they determine the adequateness of possible actions and reactions. The reconstruction of the implied pedago-logical normativity as rules of teaching should lead to a pedagogical theory of teaching. The projected theory will, as shown in Gruschka’s recent, pilot studies, help to understand teaching as a sort of conflicting unity of Bildung, Erziehung and Didaktik.

Corresponding with the lack of empirical pedagogical research, we use Objective Hermeneutics (or Structural Hermeneutics) as a method of sequential analysis developed by the sociologist Ulrich Oevermann for fundamental research in social fields. 56 transcripts of lessons corresponding to the classical canon are analysed. They were selected from about 150 lessons from four high contrastive public schools.

First results of the current project show  a fundamental lack on behalf of the teacher’s knowledge about the scientific object they teach, combined with  their alarming confidence in didactic materials so that they lose sight of problematic superficial treatments, and  a wide range of teaching methods structuring the process, but avoiding the pupils cognitive crisis’;  epistemic curiosity on behalf of the pupils concerning the subject matter, which is frequently cooled down by the teachers didactic treatment of the subject matter (normalization),  a high number of disciplinical forms of education, combined with the nearly absence of education in the sense of expanding autonomy and  unprovoked formal sanctions (overshooting education) in form of step-by-step procedures which rather disturb than open the cognitive examination of the subject matter. These and other findings reflect some aspects of the conflicting unity of Bildung, Erziehung and Didaktik in teaching. I would like to discuss some of these conflicts.