The Operative Basis Of Transitions In Education

Author(s):

Volker Kraft(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

13. Philosophy of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

13 SES 05 B, Education and Transition

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

11:00-12:30

Room:

330. [Main]

Chair:

Gonzalo Jover

Contribution

There is no transition without education (I use the term in the German sense of “Erziehung”) as education is everywhere: before and during as well as after transitions. From this point of view education – invented by evolution in form of an institutionalized ‘flexible response” in regard of developmental tasks in different dimensions – can be understood in serving as one main component of something one might call “transition-management”.

In the broadest sense transition means the movement or change from one state, condition, form, style or place to another. In this respect education as a human communicative practice functions as a kind of interface or mediation because it finds itself always ‘in between’: between parents and children, between teachers and pupils, between society and individuals, between collective memory and subjective consciousness, between being-able-to and not-being-able-to, between knowing and not-knowing or – to put it educationally and in a general way – between learning tasks and learning abilities.

This place of “in between” is often no comfortable situation neither in the daily pedagogical practice nor in the field of educational theorizing and research. The main reason for this difficulty derives from the fact that intentions have to be transformed into (more or less) effective pedagogical operations. And the pedagogical relation is far away from being a linear one. Therefore the pedagogical challenge consists in the ability to communicate effectively in a non-linear relationship.

It is precisely this point of view which Kant probably had in mind when in 1803 (in: Über Pädagogik) he had formulated the basic challenge of all pedagogical efforts in the clearest way possible pointing to the 'mechanisms in the art of education which have to be transformed into the language of science'. In terms of modern theory Kant’s dictum suggests to construct educational theory from a bottom-up-perspective, so to say from what can be realized by means of and throughout pedagogical communication.

This Kantian Problem is in the centre of my paper which consists of two parts:

In the first part I will shortly outline a perspective which is based on evolution-theory and modern culturally related developmental psychology. In resent years a lot of empirical research had been done in order to better understand the evolutionary shift from apes to babies concerning their cognitive abilities. In this context the Hungarian researcher Gergely had developed his concept of “natural pedagogy”. By his empirical findings he succeeds to demonstrate clearly that there is a “natural” form of pedagogy which can be regarded as the blueprint for any (artificial) educational effort. “Natural Pedagogy” provides education with a specific cognitive operating system, delivering human beings with a special form of communication which is the basis for any “non-natural-pedagogy” which will follow later in the life-circle.

In the second part of the paper I will profit from a new development in German “Allgemeine Pädagogik” which is called “Operative Pedagogy” putting the “pointing structure of education” in the middle of theoretical interests. This wing of theory is mainly based on Herbartian concepts and tries to clarify the relation between the varieties of pointing efforts and individual learning interconnected by forms of articulation. This is – at least in my view – the fundamental educational transition and one way to answer to the Kantian question concerning the “mechanisms” in education as a kind of soft technology to bring together collective memory and individual mind in order to make future possible.

As different as all concepts of education across Europe might be all educational theory has a common “cross-national” phenomenological basis. To bring back this point of view into our reflexive memory is one of the intentions of this paper.

Method

The methodological framework of this paper derives from different disciplinary approaches. Nevertheless it is in a narrow sense strictly orientated to education as an anthropological phenomenon of its own. The main methodological pathway therefore can be described as phenomenological using empirical findings (mainly from modern developmental psychology and infant research) as well as philosophical theories (Kant, Herbart), concepts of deixis (think of the ‘iconic’ or ‘visual turn’) and theories of general education (e.g. Prange). It has an explicit historical foundation starting with Comenius and his “orbis sensualium pictus” (1658) and its leading embedded principle “ostendam tibi omnia”. Comenius however can also be regarded as one of the founding fathers of educational theory clearly to be seen in his ten years before published “ars didactica” (1648). The leading methodological principle of this paper is based on the assumption that it is in education itself the ways it can be treated theoretically are to be found.

Expected Outcomes

The paper is a small part of a broader attempt to develop a concept of modern “Allgemeine Pädagogik” which is called “operative pedagogy”. This theory is constructed in a systematic bottom-up perspective taking the forms of educational communication both as a starting point and as the leading principle of pedagogical variations and modifications in the different fields of education. As a discipline (at least in present day Germany) education normally tends to be perceived as a “soft science” with rather weak borders and limitations. For this reason it often is not the first address neither for the needs of pedagogical practitioners nor for educational policy or other disciplines in the social sciences (mainly psychology, sociology). And not at least on a European level we have to accept that the discipline of education is far away from being visible from the first row. The OECD “Centre for Educational Research and Innovation” is dominated by the Neurosciences under the cover of what is there called “learning sciences”. There certainly will be different reasons for those tendencies but it might be the case that at least one of these reasons could be found in educational theory itself because it often tends to strengthen the contexts of education even more than its “texts” or “constants”. Operative Pedagogy in contrast is one possible way to think merely educationally.

References

Berdelmann, K. & Fuhr, Th. (Hrsg.) (2009). Operative Pädagogik. Grundlegung, Anschlüsse, Diskussion. Paderborn: Schöningh. Berg, K. van den & Gumbrecht, H.U. (Hrsg.). (2010). Politik des Zeigens. München: Fink. Boehm, G., Egenhofer, S. & Spies, Chr. (Hrsg.). (2010). Zeigen. Die Rhetorik des Sichtbaren. München: Fink. Gergely, G. (2007), Learning ‚About’ Versus Learning ‚From’ Other Minds. Natural Pedagogy and Its Implications, in: P. Carruthers, St. Laurence, St. Stich (eds.), The Innate Mind. Vol. 3: Foundations and the Future, Oxford (University Press) Gfrereis, H. & Lepper, M. (2007). Deixis – Vom Denken mit dem Zeigefinger. Göttingen: Wallstein. Herbart, J. F.: Allgemeine Pädagogik aus dem Zweck der Erziehung abgeleitet (1806), in: Sämtliche Werke, Bd. II, zuerst 1887, Neudruck Aalen 1989. Illeris, K. (2008). How We learn. Learning and non-learning in school and beyond. London, New York: Routledge. Kant, Immanuel: Über Pädagogik, in: Ders.: Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik 2. Herausgegeben von Wilhelm Weischedel. Werkausgabe Band XII. Frankfurt/Main (Suhrkamp) 1978, S.691-761. Kraft, V. (2014), Constants of Education, in: M. Papastephanou (Ed.): Philosophical Perspectives on Compulsory Education. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York (Springer), S.11-21. Kraft, V. (2009a), Pädagogisches Selbstbewusstsein. Studien zum Konzept des Pädagogischen Selbst, Paderborn, Schöningh. Luhmann N. (1991), Das Kind als Medium der Erziehung, “Z.f.Päd.” vol. 37, pp. 19-40. Prange K. (2005), Die Zeigestruktur der Erziehung. Grundriss der Operativen Pädagogik, Paderborn, Schöningh. Prange K. e Strobel-Eisele G. (2006), Die Formen des pädagogischen Handelns. Eine Einführung, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer. Sünkel W. (1996), Phänomenologie des Unterrichts: Grundriss der theoretischen Didaktik, Weinheim-München, Juventa. Tomasello M. (2002), Die kulturelle Entwicklung des menschlichen Denkens: Zur Evolution der Kognition, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp. Tomasello, M. (2008), Why donʼt apes point? In R. Eckardt, G. Jäger & T. Veenstra (a cura di) (2008), Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 375-394. Tomasello M. (2009), Die Ursprünge der menschlichen Kommunikation, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp.

Author Information

Volker Kraft (presenting / submitting)

UAP Neubrandenburg / CAU Kiel

Education

Kiel

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