Theoretical Foundations of the Educational Sciences

Contributions to the Development of Educational Theory

The question of what can be understood as upbringing and education raises a variety of questions related to the fact that neither upbringing and education nor pedagogical action denote anything objective at all; rather, they are always also moments in very different social practices and can only be made visible with the help of conceptually adjusted observation perspectives. What is understood by education (etc.) in each case therefore also depends on how education (etc.) is pre-understood and practiced in historical and social terms and how it is theoretically conceived.

The elaboration of the theoretical foundations of education and educational science is therefore of particular importance and, in addition to reflecting on the basic concepts of educational science (such as upbringing and education on the one hand and learning, development and socialization on the other) and the reception of social and human science theoretical discourses, also includes the reflection of suitable categorical perspectives (such as subjectivity and intersubjectivity, identity and recognition, etc.) and, finally, the elaboration of a - subjective and intersubjective - conceptual framework. Finally, the development of an - explicitly historically and systematically adjusted - basic pedagogical train of thought, makes it possible to introduce pedagogical perception and thinking through the explication of the 'pedagogical problem' (Dilthey) and is indispensable to enable pedagogically justified judgment formation. Against this background, it is therefore not only useful but indispensable, to learn to pose the question of education as a question about what the problem is to which education seeks to respond.