One of the essential tasks for philosophers of education is to (permanently re-) define the concept of education and to examine its various instantiations. To mark something out as “educational” or “pedagogical” requires an adequate theory of contextualisation. In this regard, educational theorists often speak of “pedagogical situations”. A recurrent theme in defining the concept of “pedagogical situation” is the notion of a “demand character”. Its origins are twofold, leading back to both existentialist traditions in philosophy of education (e.g. Guardini, Bollnow) and to the work of certain Gestalt and Perceptual Psychologists (e.g. Lewin, Koffka, Gibson). Common to both is the idea that within educational settings described as pedagogical situations, educators and their addressees are in some way called upon by circumstance to respond educationally to their immediate experiences. Adopting Paul Kirschner’s term “educational affordance” (cp. J. Gibson’s Theory of Affordance) to describe the pedagogical demand character of situations, we want to examine how changes in the concept of “pedagogical situation” affect our understanding of educational affordance. Moreover, we want to examine the possibility of defining what is pedagogical about a given situation specifically in terms of its affordance character. As a general framework of reference, we will propose that the concept of “pedagogical situation” is not only open to a theoretical but also to an epistemo-ethical (erkenntnisethisch) form of interpretation. In its theoretical sense, the concept essentially describes a particular instance of education (e.g. a specific learning situation). However, we can transcend the theoretical specificity of this concept by considering the ethical dimension of personal involvement (e.g. a real life situation). The immediacy of a situation’s actual occurrence demands of us as its participants some form of response that cannot be elicited – or rather educed (cp. education!) – by theoretical reflection alone. We are called to take up a situation’s challenge to us by doing it ‘justice’. This interpretation is epistemo-ethical (erkenntnisethisch), insofar as it follows the ethical principle of granting primacy to the reality of existential responsibility over its theoretical consideration (Lévinas, Franz Fischer). We argue that the epistemo-ethical approach opens up an altogether different perspective on ascertaining the educational qualities of pedagogical situations. A theoretical interpretation will seek to define the pedagogical qualities of situations by translating educational affordance into a set of intentions, purposes, and functions. Instead, we propose to turn to the nature and origins of the demand character of educational affordance itself.

This paper employs an epistemo-ethical (erkenntnisethisch) approach – a method of philosophical analysis of meaning based on the principles of Emmanuel Lévinas’ Theory of Exteriority and Franz Fischer’s Theory of Sense (Sinntheorie). It involves a systematic procedure of concept formation (Begriffssystematik) that operates with the methodological prerequisite that knowledge-acquisition must limit itself to the immediacy of situational experience.

An adequate understanding of educational affordance depends on a closer analysis of the dialectic between the transcendence (exteriority) of circumstance (the Other as our addressee) and the immanence of our consciousness’ grasp of it. This dialectic is best described as a state of sense.