Theoretical pedagogy has been taken to refer to the reading of social reality as if it were a text, that is to say, it deals with social reality as if it were ruled by completeness, closeness, unambiguity and linearity (Wulf and Zirfas, 2007). In a further step important pedagogical concepts such as competences, efforts, learning processes etc., are treated as standardized and even metrified. Analogously, in school it is widely regarded that the main aim is to impart available knowledge and develop abilities oriented towards certain objectives. In both approaches pedagogical theory and practice are mostly reduced to certain norms and to definite interventions in well-defined pedagogical situations. This resembles the reduction of contemporary pedagogy to the perspective on caring and its normative framing on the one hand, and to a high esteem for the personality, responsibility and also the autonomy of the child on the other. Both approaches are deeply based in the tradition of the Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947). The implications of this is to reinforce functionalist ideas of gender and gendering. However, in 1979, Francois Lyotard proclaimed the “end of master narratives” such as “emancipation”, “autonomy”, and “societal progress” etc. and instead postmodernism, self-interpretation, contingency, discursivity and human reality as mise-en-scene is stressed. In theoretical and empirical research the concept of “objectivity” is problematized, and the principle of consensus is put at stake and is investigated. The postmodernist paradigm shift is initiated by referring to the materiality of the body, of experience and of history. By this means, also new fields of social research are opened up, positioning “gender” as an interpretative process and as social ascription. In pedagogy concepts such as implicit knowing, anthropological approaches that describe human existence by terms like performativity and mimesis, and phenomenological approaches that refer to corporeality and bodyliness can be regarded as a reference and as a response to this paradigm shift. In my contribution I will explore some main points of these latter approaches and compare them in terms of the “gender”-concepts that underpin them and the methodology for empirical research that is employed.

Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. W. (1947) Dialektik der Aufklärung. Amsterdam: Querido. Lyotard, J.F. (1979/1984) The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wulf, C. and Zirfas, J. (2007): Performative Pädagogik und performative Bildungstheorien. Ein neuer Fokus erziehungswissenschaftlicher Forschung. In: Wulf, Ch.; Zirfas, J. (Hg.): Pädagogik des Performativen. Theorien, Methoden, Perspektiven. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz, p.7-40.