Project Details
Projekt
Studium Generale in the FRG after 1945
Subject Area
General Education and History of Education
Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
Educational Research on Socialization, Welfare and Professionalism
Term
from 2017 to 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 351258276
In recent years, the Studium Generale has experienced a renaissance in the academic landscape. The research project aims at an investigation in terms of knowledge- and educational history of the changes that the Studium Generale have undergone in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1945 in connection with the transforming idea and the societal function of universities. Analysing general and vocational tasks of universities within the frame of a perspective of continuing education research is a correlate to the education-historical examination and education-theoretical discussion on transforming the idea and shape of the university.The research project is based on four historical phases: Studium Generale after World War II (1945 to 1964), Studium Generale in the period of the extension and democratisation of universities (1964 to 1977), Studium Generale at mass universities (1977 to 1993), and Studium Generale after the Bologna-Reform (1993 to 2015). These caesuras will be examined in consideration of the tense relationship between three dimensions, or levels: the idea; positions in education policy; and the institutional, or curricular transformation of the Studium Generale.The methodological approach is defined by these three dimensions and correspondingly determines the choice of the respective historical sources. The material for the examination in terms of program-analysis on the institutional level consists of announcement-texts to a Studium Generale in course-and-event-calendars of universities. Articles from academic bodies and conferences provide the material for a concept-historical discussion on the level of justification and legitimacy. Expert reports, resolutions and recommendations on higher education reform and development in their function as methodological references to a political level of the research topic will be analysed on their content. An exemplary selection of universities that focuses on the federal states Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia will be subject of the study. Ideas, forms of legitimation, and institutional practices will be analysed in the corresponding knowledge-historical context. According to the underlying assumption, the relation between these three dimensions is neither causal nor hierarchically structured but rather implemented by a translational modality which leads to semantic shifts.The research project is likewise meant as a contribution to an outstanding education-historical research on the Studium Generale in recent university history, as well as an examination of the corresponding epistemological transformations and semantic shifts. Thereby, the research project makes a major contribution to a socio-political and scientific-political discourse on the duties and functions of universities in their classical modern as well as in their future form.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
