Vanishing points of social pedagogical theories - A Re- and Deconstruction from a discourse-analytical perspective.

• Applicant: Dr. Mark Humme
• Subject Area: General Education and History of Education
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 524342699

In the project "Social Pedagogical Vanishing Lines" the contextual conditions are deciphered as articulation conditions of social pedagogical theories. This explicitly does not deal with what social pedagogical theory should contain and what others might have meant. Rather, a discourse analytic perspective is used to focus on the formal structures of social pedagogical theories. Social pedagogical theories are numerous and differentiatedly formulated. In addition to the naming of different scientific criteria for theories of social pedagogy, various orders and systematizations of theories are available. Thereby, social pedagogical theories do not only differ in terms of the results they reach, but also in terms of the object, the form of analysis as well as in the premises that make them recognizable as theories. In social pedagogical theories, fundamental disagreements are to be assumed, which can be of constitutive relevance for a social pedagogical theory, such as the understanding of the subject or of society. Social pedagogical theories are not only theories of distinct, purely academic forms of knowledge, but they are constitutively characterized by an embedding in particular, among others, cultural and symbolic contexts; without the consideration of relevant (symbolic, social, institutional) contextual conditions, social pedagogical theories can only be understood inadequately. Social pedagogical theories operate with a grammar that allows for various connections and with concepts that are semantically flexible. They use symbolic correspondences of reality in which a plethora of premises and assumptions of general and special conditions are bundled and put into a concept. The possibility to articulate social pedagogical theory positions is subject to (contingent) contextual conditions as well as a heterogeneous and unstable constitution of meaning. These contextual conditions and constitutions of meaning will be empirically analyzed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants