General Educational Sciences and History of Education
General Educational Sciences and History of Education investigates fields of action in pedagogical practice and areas of theory building in Educational Sciences in their relation to the foundations of the discipline. It uses cultural studies and historical approaches to contextualise the defining social conditions and thus enters into a dialogue with the sub-disciplines.
This approach serves to clarify and further develop basic concepts (e.g. education, pedagogy, teaching-learning, socialisation), discusses the history of the ideas and theories of pedagogy and the history of its subjects, and investigates the scientific foundations and various orientations (e.g. Educational Sciences as part of the humanities, empirical, critical and reflective Educational Sciences). Through dialogue, pedagogical-anthropological theorems, methodological decisions and specific research methods (e.g. hermeneutic, ethnographic, discourse analysis and reconstructive processes) are furthermore critically reviewed and questions of successful pedagogical practice in various historical and current contexts are analysed.
With its questioning of empiricism, theory, idea, practice, poesis and contingency from a historical perspective, general Educational Sciences continues to have the function of structuring and criticising the fundamentals of pedagogy. In this context, it wishes to contribute to the development and definition of the field.
