If one wants to differentiate in terms of socio-scientific reseach between educational and learning processes as clearly as it has been done since the empirical turn in German pedagogy for teaching and learning on the one hand and learning and socialisation on the other hand, one has to examine on the part of the recipient the difference between taking over meaning passively and constructing meaning actively. Thus, the question on the difference between necessary and sufficient prerequisites for the understanding of utterances in the communication process becomes a conceptual guideline for empirical-pedagogical research which not only tries to reconstruct the meaning of social interaction based on the exact differentiation of the respective topical and social dimension in time, but also examines systematically the non-identity of surface and deep structure in utterances - with regard to Chomsky's differentiation of competence and performance as well as the fact that deep structures are perceived intuitively. When reconstructing the meaning of speech interaction in teaching-learning situations exactly, it becomes apparent that the realisation of a complex meaning is not sufficient for understanding. This fact points at the social dimension of understanding within the boundaries of empirical research. The theoretical foundation and method are represented and explained on the basis of a single case study.

Corresponding with the lack of specific empirical pedagogical research, in our research group at J.W.Goethe-University we use the method of Objective Hermeneutics. This method is based on the scientific paradigm of structuralism and was developed by the Frankfurt sociologist Ulrich Oevermann at the end of the 1970ies. The method has been realised in various fields of fundamental social research, incl. clinical and pedagogical fields. It is characterized by a strict sequential and variant-negating procedure. As results are to be expected case-structures and case-typologies.

The case-structure of a complex teaching-learning-arrangement consists of the didactic task-analysis incl. its speech-form as a semantic kernel and of the specific case-structure grounded on the reality of interaction under the terms of pragmatic understanding. Due to the method of research it is possible to comprehend both the topical and the social problems of (not)understanding.