The peculiarites of research contexts and concepts often become visible when they are discussed in an international frame. Find out what that means for my PhD topic…
About this post
My presentation at the eucen University Lifelong Learning (ULLL) Open Fora 2021 and the discussion paper that followed were great learning incentives – I gained a new perspective on my topic. A central one was that a mere translation of words isn’t really working when you describe your research.
Despite the advancements of translation programmes using Artificial Intelligence, there is so much more that these programmes can’t know. Above all, these are: framing contexts and underlying concepts as well as the unique character of languages. I may translate my PhD-topic word by word but it merely sounds awkward or it doesn’t hit the point. So, I decided to rather dedicate some time to the traslation of contexts and concepts here instead of playing with words 🙂
Context…
Overall, the context of my PhD-project is Germany, and, to be more concrete, the German educational system and job market. This context shapens to some extent my research project as you will see.
In Germany, bachelor and master study programmes at state universities qualifiying to enter the job market are free of charge. Study programmes at universities are thematically more general whereas those at universities of applied sciences rather prepare for certain job positions or occoupational fields.
In contrast to the degree programmes that are free of charge, there are also fee-based postgraduate study programs that are more tailored to the needs of professionally experienced people seeking for further academic training. However, they may be unaffordable for people with little income. In occupational fields with a comparably low average income, people rather chose a classic degree programme for free than a postgraduate one, even if the latter would better meet their needs. So especially in the wide field of pedagogical occupations beyond classical teaching at schools, there are quite a number of professionally experienced people who chose classic pedagogical study programmes as a (further) qualification.
The wide field of pedagogical occupations – what’s that again? When I wrote my discussion paper, it came to me that I should also consider the term “educational” instead of “pedagogical” and to talk about educators. To be honest: even in German, there are no clear terms, but when speaking about “pedagogical tasks or jobs”, they are about teaching, planning education and counselling in various contexts, within or outside of the educational system.
… and concepts
What makes classic degree programmes in Germany rather is special is their neo-humanist stance that goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldts concept of Bildung. At least on a discoursive level, degree programmes at university are still characterised by a rather big distance to vocational and pracital needs. This has undergone some changes due to the Bologna reform and the diversification of Higher Education in general – but if you ask students, most of them will assure you that studying here is rather academic and not job-related in any way.
On the other hand, universities have for long played an important role as institutional gate-kepers in the professionalisation of privileged job positions, a sociologist Rudolph Stichweh points out. This is clearly to be seen in the field of so-called classic professions (i. E. lawyers and physicians). Grasping up this thought, the academisation of certain fields of the job market by the introduction of degree programmes can be unterstood as way of an institutional professionalisation.
In wide field of pedagogical (or educational) occupations beyond teaching at school, a certain institutional professionalisation was gained by the implementation of university degree programmes in the field of pedagogy. This happened in the late 1960ies in West-Germany with the introduction of the “Diplomstudiengang Pädagogik” which was complementary to the hitherto existing teaching degree courses. Graduates earned the degree “Diplom-Pädagoge”, short Dipl. -Päd., which qualified them as academically trained practitioners for various pedagogical tasks in the field of youth education, adult an continuing education, political and cultural education.
The implementation of degree programmes also triggered off various inner-disciplinary discourses. A central one was: What is gained in the course of academisation? In the following, concepts of pedagogical professionalism were developed that focus on the special role of academically founded knowledge in the course of professionalisation. In a nutshell: true pedagogical professionalism is characterised by the interaction of both academically founded knowledge and practical experience. This is often seen as a major difference to classical concepts of professional knowlede that strongly focus on (more or less unconscious) experiential knowledge.
Beyond translation
Funny enough, the term “pedagogy” can be translated from ancient greek as the “art of leading or educating children”. However, the degree programmes of “pedagogy” have focussed on adults and organisational contexts from their first semester on, too. This can be seen in the “core curriculum” for these programmes issued by the newly founded professional society “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft” in 1968. And here you see (if you haven’t done so before): we do even have more terms for pedagogy: “Erziehungswissenschaft(en)” = educational science(s) and “Bildungswissenschaft(en)” = the same, setting an accent on “Bildung” instead of “Erziehung” (=raising children) which is the most recent term and also the most approppriate one, I would suggest. Confused? We are, too. The discussion about terms and names is a whole on its own in Germany….
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