Thinking about variations of uncertainty has always played a significant role in philosophical reflections on education. A popular example for this, albeit by a sociologist, is the ‘technological deficit’ of education as described by Niklas Luhmann and Karl-Eberhard Schorr (1979). They declared contingency (and even double contingency) as the central feature of every educational communication and practice. Surely it is possible for educational processes to succeed, but success is not necessarily guaranteed. In recent years, Gert Biesta prominently placed the concept of risk within philosophical considerations concerning education. Biesta fundamentally stresses that “education always involves a risk” (Biesta 2016: 1) and goes on to develop ethical perspectives on educational practice from this constitutive condition.

Risk and failure seem to be – as unpleasant as it may be – essential aspects of pedagogy. Yet, at the same time, the phenomenon of failure has posed problems both for theory and practice of education. Recently, in the course of post-PISA events and with the emergence of a new rationale of data-driven science of education, the European landscape of education has undergone a major transformation. The new scientific paradigm of ‘evidence-based research’ has attempted to address the problem of failure as described in the introduction by the use of technologies and by attempting to develop empirical technological knowledge of ‘what works’ (Bellmann/Müller 2011). Evidence-based research suggests transforming and finally replacing professional pedagogical practice with techno-scientific approaches with clearly defined parameters, directives and outcomes. Such a shift promises to lift the uncertain, insecure and risky practice of education to a certain level of controllability and to transfer the precarious concept of pedagogical responsibility into seemingly objective and technological accountability.

This paper aims at examining the concept of risk – as opposed to a binary concept of failure or success – as constitutional for educational practice and reflection and some of the assumptions behind this shift in perspective by tackling the following questions: Why is the risk of failure inherent in educational practices? Which technological attempts are implemented to compensate this perceived ‘deficit’? How does failure relate to intentions and purposes? What ethical questions arise when pedagogical practice is translated into technology – and what changes does thinking about failure undergo by picking up these questions and re-focusing on risk?

In this paper, we will refer to existing lines of thought, confront them with critical questions and try to present new ways of relating the concepts of failure and technology in education, which critically converge in the concept of risk. We would like to place the concept of risk at the center of our attention and will propose to frame risk as relational. To strengthen this argument, the proposed paper is composed by two parts. In the first part, we present systematic-theoretical reflections on the concept of ‘failure’ in education and questions and problems that arise from it. In the second section, we examine the role of technology as a promise to compensate failure and eliminating risk in education in more detail. We will close by suggesting two alternative lines of thought, rendering the concept of intentions and the concept of technology anew and thus relating failure, technology and risk in education in a different way.

Systematic philosophical analysis and discourse analysis

With this paper, we hope to have succeeded in locating pedagogical practice between imminent failure and technological success. We tried to show, that in order to do so we a) need a complex understanding of failure and the underlying intentions in education and b) need to be skeptical towards technological promises of success. These two aspects provide the necessary theoretical tools to think about education as a risky practice – without neglecting risk as a constitutive dimension. We attempted to point out, that this ‘in-between’ space is a possibility for reflection, which is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but constitutive.

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