One may like to criticise the tendency to economic argumentation in the field of pedagogy on its merits; it cannot be dismissed just like that. Intensifying the economical analysis and so uncovering its own inadequacies seems the better prospect: In this contribution, elementary questions of principle and relational patterns in the economy together with their application to problem fields in education and training are first demonstrated. As the economic analysis in the content field of education shows systematic-conditioned inadequacies, the investigational approach will be reversed: Instead of attempting an empirical description of economic relationships and applying the normative force of the factual to the formative field of the education, as has been usual up to now, the question is posed as to which basic economic configurations appear to be normatively desirable from the point of view of education. For this, regularly recurring economic impact relationships are assumed and the question is asked on which didactic and pedagogic interpretative options do exist in each case. For this, some examples of associated didactic configuration possibilities shall be illustrated.

The economic impact relationships can turn out very differently, especially in the question of efficiency. A later section explains how such very different efficiency curves can occur in the context of teaching and learning processes. An investigation of the effects of teaching targets such different as ‘qualification’ or ‘bildung’ especially can help to work out the exaggerations with which lie in economic approaches when applied to questions on learning and instruction.

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