Johannes Bellmann/Florian Waldow
Standards in Historical Perspective – On the forgotten history of output-oriented control in the educational system.
An introduction
Johannes Bellmann
“The very speedy solution” – New education and control under the sign of social efficiency
At the beginning of the twentieth century, under the banner of “social efficiency”, agendas of a new education were linked with instruments of a new control system, thus resulting in a reform movement with far-reaching promises regarding greater efficiency and equal opportunities. The author examines fundamental characteristics of this reform movement in the pedagogical field and points out similarities to aims, instruments, and patterns of reasoning of output-oriented educational reforms of the present. Among these are a functional-pragmatic concept of learning, the project of the scientification of pedagogics on the basis of standards and comparative performance measurement, as well as the orientation by efficiency as a moral maxim.
Florian Waldow
Taylorism in the Classroom: John Franklin Bobbitt’s suggestions for a standards-based reform
At the beginning of the twentieth century, John Franklin Bobbitt, one of the most prominent representatives of the US-American Social Efficiency Movement, submitted a concept of educational standards which was closely modeled on Frederick Taylor’s ideas of scientific management. The author presents Bobbitt’s concept and discusses similarities and differences between this conception and the present-day wave of standards-based reforms in Germany. Furthermore, he inquires into the question of in how far elements of the Social Efficiency Movement have been incorporated in the present wave of reforms.
Walter Herzog
The Ideology of Feasibility. How psychology lends plausibility to an efficiency-oriented educational policy
Based on the example of the US-American educational system, the author shows how some parts of the academic psychology give ideological support to a reform policy oriented by economic objectives and concepts. In both behaviorism and cognitivism, a scientific self-awareness is to be discerned which commits the discipline to criteria of the technological shaping and reshaping of behavior. Psychological knowledge is considered control- and production knowledge, which, in turn, holds the promise of plausibility and feasibility for an educational reform seeking an increase in productivity and efficiency. This thesis is substantiated by select examples from the history of American psychology.
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Carolin Rotter
Teachers From a Migrant Background: Individual approaches to educational-political expectations
Teachers from a migrant background are at present strongly wooed by the (educational)-political side. This is due to the hope that these teachers might serve as cultural mediators and role models and would thus contribute to an improved integration of students from a migrant background. So far, however, no empirical findings are available on how teachers with migration background do themselves deal with the expectations they are confronted with and whether different patterns of coping can be identified. First empirical results on this issue are provided by the present explorative study within the framework of which 14 teachers from a migrant background were asked about their professional self-concept by means of qualitative interviews. It is revealed that the majority of the teachers interviewed have internalized the expectations that have been raised and have integrated them into their self-concept. However, in the case of a small number of teachers a discrepancy with the political objectives can be discerned.
Wolfgang Meseth/Matthias Proske/Frank-Olaf Radtke
Controlled Laissez-Faire: On the path towards a theory of instruction aware of contingency
By now it is certainly undisputed in research on education and instruction that teaching constitutes a complex event characterized by a double contingency the effect of which cannot be determined causally. It remains disputable, however, what this insight implies for both empirical research and for a theory of instruction. Subsequent to recent developments in the social sciences, the authors suggest that “emergence constellations“ of teaching be made the focus of empirical research. In the light of results provided by a research project sponsored by the German Research Association, considerations regarding an empirically substantial theory of instruction are outlined. This theory claims to grasp the operative happening in the classroom while being aware of both the contingency and the pedagogical nature of instruction-related communication.
Dagmar Hänsel
Sources regarding the Era of National Socialism in the History of Special Needs Education
The contribution critically analyzes the work with sources and documentary material in the historiography of special needs education. The focus is on sources regarding the period of National Socialism in the history of special needs education. On the basis of these sources, the author reveals emphases and gaps in the depiction of the Nazi era and gives examples of how sources are ignored or distorted. On the whole, the claim of the historiography of special needs education that its depiction of the Nazi era is empirically substantiated by source-related research is refuted.
Vera Moser
Myths Surrounding the Foundation of Therapeutic Pedagogy
Within the historiography of special education, the establishment of the first professorship for therapeutic pedagogy at the University of Zurich in 1931 is often described as the “birth of curative education”. From a system-theoretical perspective, the author explains the relevance of determining the point of inception in the formation of a system and uses this as the basis for reconstructing the inception of therapeutic pedagogy as a science. This reconstruction takes place on both the level of disciplinary semantics and the level of the socio-historical analysis of the institutionalization of Heinrich Hanselmann’s professorship within the context of welfare education and special education. In a highly competitive pedagogical field, therapeutic pedagogy appears to be a compromise in which the construction of the clientele is moved to the center of its own selfconception for purposes of distinction. The perspective chosen by the author consciously positions itself vis-à-vis ‘copious tales’ still common in the historiography of special pedagogy in which the discipline’s history is recounted either as a story of decline or as a story of success (e.g. Hänsel vs. Ellger-Rüttgardt, Möckel).
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