Reconnecting Education : Grasping Continental Impulses

• Globally-dominant Anglo-American educational research approaches, with their reductive and instrumentalizing view of educational research and study, often only bolster attempts to administer and rationalize teaching and other educational processes. (e.g. Shapira & Priestley 2018). There is another way of approaching educational research and study, however. It is provided by the tradition in Continental European pedagogy. Here, the question is not how to make teaching and learning more efficient, but  how scientific, theoretical concepts affect practitioners in the classroom. Here, education is regarded primarily as part of culture and of processes of social reproduction (and change). The raison d'être of education concerns a specific relationship—often between educator and child–in a particular, context that can be understood as pedagogical. Theory, in this conjunction, presents the possibility of understanding such concrete contexts. The function of pedagogical theory is seen not in the prediction of results, but in making specific cultural and pedagogical phenomena visible and in clarifying them (cp. Lilliedahl et al. 2016, 14). The best way to improve educational practice is then to reflect on both theory and practice and their tacit dimensions (Wulf 2013; Kraus et al. 2017). MethodologyHermeneutics and history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte). Expected resultsActive thought and reflection in situations of pedagogical engagement has been described under the rubric of pedagogical tact and tactfulness (Schleiermacher [1826] 2000; Herbart [1888] 1989, Muth 1962 Rather than being a question of strategy and control tact is an aspect, for example, of a teacher's body language (van Manen 2015, Burghardt & Zirfas 2018) and spoken tone—implicit matters that are not subject to overt manipulation. Tact as embodied knowledge forms a central part of the teacher's professionalism. Living with children means responding to them in a tactful, emotional, sensitive and reflective way. In common with the children, the educator seeks for the right things to do, the right words to say, and this is done in auditory, linguistic, spatial and visual ways.In this presentation, I will discuss the European Continental tradition and the way it is able to develop theory, in both its tacit and explicit dimensions, to inform these same two dimensions in practice.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

European Continental tradition

history of education

Anglophone tradition

utbildningsvetenskap med inriktning mot praktiska kunskapstraditioner

Educational Sciences in Arts and Professions

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)