Prof. em. Dr. Dietrich Benner
(Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Non-affirmative educational theory and its significance for operationally designated classroom research.
Lecture on the occasion of the presentation of Michael Uljens’s (Åbo Akademi University Vaasa) edited volume: „Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung“ (Springer 2023)
The volume to be presented today, initiated and edited by Michael Uljens, has the narrow-language title “Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung”. It understands non-affirmative theory as a pragmatic and theoretical positioning, which is interpreted fivefold in the volume itself: at the beginning problem-historically and systematically, then didactically and instruction-theoretically, then with a view to related theoretical offers, finally in its meaning for empirical research, further education and professionalization and in the outlook as an orientation for a worldwide understanding of pedagogical and educational science questions.
Michael Uljens and Malte Brinkmann have invited me to participate in the presentation of the volume at today’s conference with a paper that introduces my recent work and research on the topic of “Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung.” For the presentation, I have chosen a topic that relates the title of the volume to the question of the importance of non-affirmative conceptions of education and formation (Bildung) for the development of classroom research that sees itself as education and formation research (Bildungsforschung). The reflections on this topic are divided into three sections:
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PISA 2000 and the Consequences – Reflections on the Occasion of a Current Paper of the “Permanent Scientific Commission” of the German Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK)
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On the desideratum of an educational, formative (bildungstheoretisch) and competence- theoretical research and three causalities of interaction effective in instructional action
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On the connections between asking, showing and answering in teaching-learning processes and their significance for teaching instruction and competence research
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I PISA 2000 and the Consequences – Reflections on the Occasion of a Current Paper of the “Permanent Scientific Commission” of the German Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK)
Anyone asking today about the consequences of PISA 2000 should confront the hopes that were associated with PISA more than 20 years ago with current output measurements and their results as well as reform proposals that the “Standing Scientific Commission” (2022) of the Conference of Ministers of Culture has recently elaborated for the further development of the German elementary school and presented on the Internet.
PISA was envisaged as a success story in which teaching was to be freed from its paternalism by changing bildungs- theoretical programs, including ideological ones, and controlled by competence measurements. As a result of the switch from curricula that had until then been based on bildungs- theoretical to curricula based on competency theory, a significant reduction in social educational disadvantage in the German education system was prognosed. Twenty years later, none of the bodies involved in PISA can look back on a real success story. Most recently, the IQB, based at Humboldt University, has reported not decreasing but increasing learning deficits among elementary school students, which were exacerbated by class cancellations during the Covid 19 pandemic. They point not to a decline but to an increase in educational disadvantage German education system.
At a conference held at the Neue Schule Wolfsburg on December 11 and 12, 2022. December 2022, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Hamburg “KESS_Netzwerk”, educational psychologist and empirical educational and bildungs-researcher Stanislav Ivanov informed the representatives of the schools in this network that, as a result of the cancelled lessons during the pandemic, competence deficits had arisen among the students, which would have an impact on vocational training and studies and could not be reduced by the end of the school years. Together with Hamburg State Councilor Ulrich Vieluf and empirical education and bildungs- researcher Roumiana Nikolova, he warned school supervisors, education policy-makers and the public against the illusion that the deficits could be reduced. What is important is the establishment and further development of school networks into institutions where experiments are carried out with innovative forms of teaching that have been proven in didactics and bildungs- theory, where practical research is combined with basic research, and where the results of the learning status surveys are discussed and interpreted in a differentiated manner.
One month later, on December 12, 2022, the “Permanent Scientific Commission” of the KMK, in the presence of its president Karin Priem, presented its report on the further development of the German elementary school. It does not contain any statements or analyses on the increasing failure to meet the educational standards in reading, writing and mathematics, nor on the loss of teaching time during the pandemic, nor on the general and subject-specific didactic incompetence of large sections of the teaching staff, which became apparent in the distance learning program. Instead, the impression is given that science and education policy have a firm grip on developments.
A large number of teachers and scientists took part in the discussion between science and politics, many of whom could only wonder at the confidence expressed by the commission and the chairwoman of the KMK. The spectators and listeners were allowed to raise their hands and speak up in order to introduce new topics or to formulate objections, but – as I could see from my own experience as well as from the experience of others – they did not reach the actors from science and politics. A moderator appointed by the KMK acted as an intermediary between them and the audience, alternately asking the scientists from the commission or the education politicians questions that she herself formulated from the anonymous requests to speak. The basic tenor of the questions and the answers given by both professional groups was always the same. The questions to the politicians were, Madam Minister, what have you prepared, what will you do? The questions to the scientific community were, mutatis mutandis, what do you propose? What are your latest findings? Among the answers were the following: One would only have to transfer the reforms successfully started in elementary school on the basis of empirical educational research to kindergarten as well, consistently pursue the concentration as core subjects started in elementary school everywhere, and convert the training of early education specialists and teachers to empirical educational research, pedagogical diagnostics, and competence measurement, then the goal would be achievable that soon all students would reach all educational standards in all core subjects. The head of the Mercator Institute, which is part of the permanent commission, repeatedly expressed his opinion that the promotion of competencies must take place in the core areas of reading and mathematics, and that peripheral areas such as sports could take a back seat. And as if to cap it all, in a situation in which in many places lesson cancellations due to influenza illnesses among students and teachers reached a maximum, he declared that there was not a lack of teachers and lessons, but of learning materials, which now needed to be developed increasingly on the basis of competence measurements and diagnostics.
With so much self-affirmation, elementary requirements of good scientific work and political responsibility, but also democratic opinion-forming and participation, fell by the wayside. The event, the course of which is to be made available on the Internet but has so far been kept under lock and key, addressed neither the connections between teaching and learning, teaching aids and learning materials, teaching quality and the promotion of Bildungs- processes (cf. Benner 2022), nor alternatives and open questions, nor failures, competence deficits and unresolved coordination problems between competence measurements and changes in teaching practice. In this way, it confronted the scientific community, politicians and the public, who had not had their say at the event, with the alarming question of how it could be prevented that empirical educational research, which does without educational theory and seeks its cooperation with teaching research primarily in its own paradigm, is entrusted with the new tasks claimed by the commission, after the commission and the KMK have not worked on the old ones in a goal-oriented way and all actors have been completely unaware of their own failures.
A “Keep up the good work!”, which would make the understanding of competencies developed by empirical educational research and educational policy the content of training for pedagogical professions and the further training and professionalization of educators, teachers and social pedagogues, can only lead astray. Instead of blaming PISA and empirical educational research for all undesirable developments, it would now be important to discuss the progress achieved in science and educational policy seriously and anew under non-affirmative questions. For some topics I would like to show this briefly.
The conversion of educational plans in Germany from bildungs- theoretical to competence-theoretical standardizations has not been successful. A comparison of older and newer curricula reveals a paradigm shift that cannot hide the fact that both old and new curricula consistently claim that their educational and competency goals can be conveyed through instruction and will be achieved by the students. The competency measurements, which are only meaningful to a limited extent, do not confirm this, but say the opposite. Fewer and fewer students achieve the minimum standards in the so-called core subjects. This is especially true for students with special needs. The development in the core subjects also damages the development in all other learning areas. In the meantime, their depravation has progressed to such an extent that statements on this are even largely lacking.
Nevertheless, the more recent educational plans show progress that should not be underestimated. This is due to the fact that the educational-theoretical goals were often formulated in such a way that their attainability could not be checked, whereas the curricula developed after 2000 formulate competence goals that, even if their educational-theoretical scope and quality must be doubted, at least open up possibilities for an empirical check of their teachability and attainability.
However, it remains largely unclear in both older and newer framework plans what the basis is for the communicability of the educational and competency goals that have been set. Since the structural plan of the German Education Council (1979), the teaching side of instruction has been neglected in reform plans and the learning side has been emphasized more strongly, without it being clear how it can be promoted. It has been largely overlooked that teaching-learning and educational processes must be supported by teaching, because their tasks and goals cannot be processed and achieved without teaching support. What is to be learned in school lessons, regardless of whether curricula pursue educational or competence goals, cannot be conveyed by learning from experience alone. Contents and skills such as writing and reading, the basics of mathematics and science, the history of one’s own country and that of other countries, but also physical education, art and music, and recently, increasingly due to interrupted traditions, also religious and ethical-moral education can neither be transmitted nor imparted nor acquired in the direct coexistence of generations. Because they cannot be transmitted in a unity of living and learning, but are necessary for the continuity of modern societies, they must be artificially taught and conveyed in schools (cf. the references in Baumert 2002 to approaches to the world that do not open up by themselves in life; see also Benner 2020, 48-54). Empirical educational research that does not investigate teaching-learning processes but concentrates on output measurements and interprets their results in a social-statistical way, thereby ignoring dependencies between learning and teaching, is just as out of place as educational policy that prefers to trust its own promises even in the face of dramatically declining levels of competence and avoids any accounting of failures.
Teaching and didacticism were neglected even before PISA. Since then, their importance has been further damaged by parts of educational science, supposed corrections in teacher training, and aberrations in educational policy. The concentration of educational plans on learning and learning levels has even further increased the neglect of didactics and teaching through the conversion of education to educational standards and competence measurements. This misguided development must be corrected at all levels.
This cannot be done by now giving teaching and instruction priority over being taught and learning, but only by recognizing again the importance of the teaching side of instruction for learning and educational processes, which depend on teaching support and cannot even come about without it (cf. Gruschka 2014; Biesta 2008; 2017; Uljens 2022).
- On the desideratum of an educational, formative (bildungstheoretisch) and competence- theoretical research and three causalities of interaction effective in instructional action
Above the problems mentioned in the first section, however, it must not be forgotten that empirical educational research has introduced significant steps in the determination of domain-specific requirement levels through the use of the methodical procedure of rapid scaling (cf. Benner 2020, 272-276), even if this has so far contributed little to the improvement of the competence levels achieved by learners. Therefore, there should be no return to a didactics and school pedagogy that argues purely in terms of educational theory, but also no future in which educational theory and didactics are faded out and requirements of an educational research that is proven in pedagogy and educational science are primarily defined psychometrically. The alternative “either bildung or competence”, which is sometimes used in current discourses, is misleading and wrong. Bildung and bildungs- theoretical orientations of teaching cannot be dispensed with, because the knowledge to be imparted and competencies to be promoted in schools depend on teaching-learning processes and are thus not a direct result of learning. And competence orientation and measurement are indispensable because the success of education and teaching cannot be left to chance and educational programs and reforms must be evaluated.
The alternative Bildung or competence is also erroneous because competences must be defined not only in terms of developmental psychology, but above all in terms of educational theory, namely as the results of certain turns of gaze, including those from the self to the foreign and from there to something overarching or common. In projects on ethical-moral basic education and competence outside the so-called core subjects, a team led by Roumiana Nikolova and myself was able to prove that teaching-learning processes taking place in ethics classes promote competences to develop a common public morality in the face of conflicting morals, from a capacity to judge one’s own morality of origin to a capacity to judge in confrontation with foreign morals (see Benner & Nikolova 2016). The model we developed could be validated not only in Europe but also in China and allows to combine Bildungs-research with competence research and both with classroom research that describes ethical-moral educational processes as teaching-learning processes that promote competencies from confrontations with one’s own morals to those with foreign morals, enabling students to work on a common public morality in the face of conflicting morals. Thus, for the first time, a model with an associated test instrument is available for the domain of one of the neglected educational areas that goes beyond Kohlberg’s pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional stage sequence of moral judgment development because it allows conventional differences in conflicting morals to be addressed that cannot be reconciled on a principled level. Students who achieved higher levels of sophistication on our rapidly scaled measures of competence also achieve them on tests using the test instruments developed by Kohlberg. However, added to this affinity between educationally designated and psychometric scales in our model and instrument is the advantage of avoiding Kohlberg’s parapedagogical notion that children judge at the preconventional moral level because of anxious dependence on caregivers or heteronomous instances, as well as the nowhere verified assumption that there is a highest form of moral judgment that operates outside conventional orientations at a principled level (see Benner et al. 2015; Ivanov 2016; see also Nunner-Winkler 1998; 2007; 2009).
Compared to developmental-psychometric competency modeling, competency modeling based on Bildungs- theory has the advantage that it can be connected to teaching-learning processes and is helpful for the planning, execution and evaluation of teaching. Educational processes never take place only in one’s own, but always also in confrontation with others, and public competencies do not have to be defined postconventionally, but can be defined with regard to problems of understanding and comprehension, which are not to be worked on beyond, but on this side of conventional differences.
The opposition Bildung or competence can be overcome. It is misleading, because competence development processes do not emerge from learning processes, but run through the triad of education, formation (Bildung) and competence development, which only comes into view when one overcomes the currently widespread fading out of pedagogical causalities and distinguishes these from those conditional fields with which empirical educational research correlates its competence measurements. Conditional fields are determinants of educational, Bildungs- and competence development processes that can only be changed to a very limited extent through pedagogical action. Pedagogical causalities are causalities of action on which teachers have great influence, because they are causalities that emanate from their actions.
It has been a long time since the didactics of the Berlin and Hamburg schools of Paul Heimann, Gunther Otto and Wolfgang Schulz (1965, 23) and the teaching research that followed them distinguished between anthropogenic and social-cultural preconditions and decision-making fields of teaching and identified the latter as central areas of didactic action. Empirical educational monitoring, on the other hand, correlates age, gender, parents’ school-leaving qualifications, social status and milieu, as well as the number of books at home and many other factors, with the competence levels achieved by students and ignores the actual lessons and the number of lessons that have or have not taken place. And, worse, it neglects the basic action causalities and operations through which teaching and learning are connected in the classroom. The interpretation of results from competence measurements proceeds correlation-statistically and hopes to be able to give reliable information about the quality of teaching-learning processes. However, this is not possible at all without recording the action causalities in teaching-learning processes (cf. critically Baumert 2016; Benner 2018; Tenorth 2021).
Imagine that medicine did not ask about the medical causes of certain diseases and courses of disease, but conducted correlation-statistical accompanying research that forgot to investigate the medical causes of the data it collected in anthropogenic and social fields of conditions. The comparison is by no means absurd, because the neglect of action causalities has a long tradition in pedagogy and educational science, and the references to evidence-based medicine are not really helpful in legitimizing this tradition, because medicine does not ignore the action causalities neglected in educational science in the evaluation of its operations and therapies, but takes them into account.
I recall only the Dahrendorf girl from the countryside in a Catholic working-class family with several children, who in the late 1950s and early 1960s had all the social statistical characteristics significant for educational disadvantage (Dahrendorf 1955). If this girl had not been a rare student at universities, but had frequently died of certain diseases, medicine would have done everything possible to find the medical causes, which could not be defined by gender, region, religion, etc., and to develop suitable treatment concepts. This was not the case with parts of educational science and socialization research, which argued in a correlation-statistical and evidence-based way. They pointed to important correlations in socialization theory, but ignored the causalities and practices of educational action, which were at best touched upon by educational style research. At the end of the 1970s, Hermann Lübbe, a philosopher teaching in Zurich, developed a biting critique of certain directions of pedagogy that had elevated the non-application of variant laws in the field of conditional fields to their program. Lübbe explicated this Dahrndorf girl, whose educational disadvantage would disappear if only she were alienated from her religion, her parents, her home and her siblings and given an emancipatory education in the city.
As far as training for pedagogical professions is concerned, the distinction between fields of condition and fields of action is no better today than it was in the days of the Catholic girl from the countryside, as can be seen from a comparison between training courses for prospective midwives and social pedagogues. While prospective midwives are introduced to the techniques of midwifery, prospective social pedagogues learn in some places to distinguish between the types of capital distinguished by Bourdieu, but not through which pedagogical practices and on the basis of which pedagogical causalities social disadvantage can be reduced or corrected.
Every pedagogical interaction is constituted by three pedagogical causalities of action, which are not identical with correlations within the conditional fields and between these and educational and competence development processes.
Of the three causalities of action, the first emanates from pedagogical actors, while the second springs from formative interactions between adolescents and world content, and the third is revealed when education reaches its end. The first can be more precisely defined as educational causality. Through it, pedagogically active persons support children, pupils and adolescents in entering into concrete learning and educational processes which – such as learning writing, a foreign language or the beginnings of geometry – would not be possible at all without instructional support.
The second causality does not come from educators and social workers, but is based on formative interactions (bildende Wechselwirkungen) between learners and the world in which both change. Thus, in school, writing and mathematics, foreign language and science are never learned from teachers, but with their support in writing, mathematical and linguistic tasks and articulations. Educational foreign challenges merge into educational appropriation processes of world contents and become superfluous where these are successful.
Where adolescents learn without having to be supported by pedagogical actors, a third causality comes into play, which releases further learning or re-learning beyond education, and is therefore rightly defined by the term competence (cf. Benner 2015; 2018; 2020, 65-75).
If one is dissatisfied with the results of educational, formative (Bildungs-), and competence development processes and wants to find out what should be improved in a given pedagogical practice, one must start with these causalities and ask what can be optimized about the educational, formative (bildende), and latter causalities that make them independent of the former.
III On the connections between asking, showing and answering in teaching-learning processes and their significance for teaching instruction and competence research
The triad of education, formation (Bildung) and competence is an indispensable triad that applies to all pedagogical action, but especially to the three classical forms of counteracting, protecting and disciplining education, of educating and forming instruction and of counseling education. In the first form, competencies become evident when adolescents have learned to govern and discipline themselves so that they no longer need to be protected by others from acting unreasonably. In the second form, competencies promoted by teaching are shown by the fact that adolescents have learned to learn new things without further support from teachers and to communicate with others beyond education about what they have learned and what they have to learn. In the third form, it is a matter of transitions from external to self-counseling, in which the competence to be able to consult with oneself and with others beyond education becomes apparent.
Now it is also possible to name the educational, bildungs- and competence-theoretical conclusion of the previous considerations. The three competencies cannot be assigned to different subjects, but are significant for successful educational and instructional processes in every subject and also outside the classroom. Teaching is there for artificial processes in which what cannot be directly learned and passed on in life is conveyed and acquired. It must therefore strengthen three subject-related sub-competencies everywhere: first, the sub-competency of knowledge that cannot be learned through experience alone; second, the sub-competency of using this knowledge in a judgmental manner; and third, the sub-competency of working on tasks and problems in a reflective manner – but not necessarily solving them. Applied to the area of reading, writing, and free speech, this means that reading and writing instruction must first teach basic orthographic skills, according to which spoken language is transformed into written language; second, it must introduce students to the linguistically correct, i.e., grammatically and rhetorically judgmental, use of written language; and third, it must strengthen the professional and civic competence to be able to communicate in written language in a descriptive, judgmental, understanding, and participatory manner. Such transitions must not begin only when the child reaches the age of majority, but must accompany the entire education. Education is only necessary and allowed where educational counter-effects and supports are necessary to support Bildungs-l processes and to strengthen mediated competencies.
As far as teaching and learning processes are concerned, however, it is important to impart basic knowledge in all areas, from mathematics and science to history, society, and ethics, morality, and civil society, in such a way that competencies in judgment and participation can develop. In order to recognize how this happens, output measurements are not sufficient, but the relevant connections between didactic competences of teachers and competence developments of students have to be researched. Optimization of output competencies is only possible in the course of educational processes. Educational research that does not address the fundamental connections between teaching and learning is not educational research, but can be further developed into such research. But the reverse is also true: a further development of educational science and didactic research cannot succeed without empirical educational research and an examination of educational processes on the basis of the competence development of the students.
In the following, didactic operations and instructional interactions are discussed. It is asked and shown by which operations teaching and learning processes are interconnected in the classroom and how basic subject knowledge can be taught and acquired in such a way that a reflective judgment and participation competence develops in the learners, which qualifies them professionally and enables them to participate in domain-specific and civic discourses.
In his studies on an operative pedagogy, Klaus Prange repeatedly emphasized the didactic importance of showing and identified showing as the central operation of teaching (cf. Prange 2005; see also Prange/Strobel-Eisele 2006). He said of showing in teaching that it has a factual, a social, and a temporal side. The art of showing teaching is based on someone knowing how to show someone something at a time when the showing gesture is prepared, necessary, and helpful. This connection described by Prange inspired me to complement showing with teaching-questioning and answering traced back to Socrates and Plato’s dialogues, with which learners respond not exclusively to something shown but to teaching-questioning and showing (cf. Benner 2020, 17-21; 222-228).
The triad of questioning, showing, and responding opposes a classroom in which teachers ask questions, then retrieve answers from students, disregard the incorrect ones, and continue their teaching with the (often few) correct ones. Corresponding lesson progressions or summaries of lessons get along without didactic showing. Such a lesson can be organized by anyone who knows the answers and has an audience willing to participate in the guessing game. This is especially the case when the questions are predetermined, as is common in quiz shows, and there is nothing to be taught or learned, and only a winner is to be determined. In a lesson that does without showing, there are only winners and losers, but in educational and formative lessons, competencies are not simply recalled, but promoted, developed, and tested.
The function of questioning is not to determine a winner, but to make something questionable and to generate irritations that make it possible to experience that the prior understanding of a thing is not already what is being sought. Such questioning does not leave those to whom the question is addressed to themselves, but prepares turns of the gaze in which it becomes clear that in addition to what appears to be clear, there is also the unexplained, the not-understood, the to-be-searched-for, and the to-be-recognized. As soon as this is achieved, the didactic questioning turns into a didactic pointing. This does not point to the right thing and does not give an answer in which the teacher tells the learner what to say, but points to something that is not yet in the view of the learner, but is helpful for answering the question. The process of clarifying the question that has become questionable must be initiated by the teaching questioning and pointing, but must not be completed by it. Predicting is forbidden here for teacher and students alike. The answers must come from the learners and be answers to the irritation that was previously created by questioning and showing. And only then are they at the same time answers through which learners can communicate with others. The mutual questioning, showing to each other and searching is then no longer such in a teacher-led classroom, but in a civic practice and problem-related interaction, in which problems are not solved as in PISA test tasks, but are worked on. Therefore, competency test tasks that have been identified in educational theory should not be problem-solving tasks, but rather problem-processing tasks and should be related to didactic tasks, which in literature, history, and art classes, but also in ethics and religion classes, usually do without final solutions.
Instructional research that records lessons structured in this way and analyzes and researches them with teachers will seek to find out when intra-pedagogical causalities of asking, showing and answering support educational processes and when they come to nothing. Whether asking, showing, and answering work together in a purposeful way depends on many things, not only on the sequence of tasks, but also on whether only something is pointed at or also on the form of knowledge in which something is to be acquired. The quality of teaching depends methodically on the fact that in questioning, showing and answering, the view is directed to the experience and handling of expanding mathematical, interpretive, historicizing and problematizing forms of knowledge that constitute not only the subject matter, but also the teaching and learning processes related to it. The learners’ view must therefore always be redirected to the method that constitutes the subject matter. Here it is important to note that the turning of the gaze does not follow from the subject-constituting method, but must be developed as a didactic turning of the gaze from the method and subject not yet known to the student to this method and subject.
Now, the triad of asking, showing, and responding and the interplay of the three causalities of action can also be described in more detail. Asking prepares new interactions between learners and world content, showing directs the learners’ gaze to something whose experience-expanding perception will change the self and the world, answering provides information about whether asking together with showing has had a problem-transforming effect in the learner’s educational process. In such contexts, the third causality brought to the concept of competence then consists in the fact that learners can independently interpret changes in the respective field of perception and action without the need for renewed educative-questioning and forming (bildend)-wiewing (zeigend) operations.
Without references to questioning and showing operations, Klaus Prange’s pointing and Norbert Ricken’s addressing analyses (cf. Ricken 2009) are pointing research. They make necessary contributions to a pedagogical interaction research when they put aside the shyness towards questioning and pointing invitations to self-activity and the related pedagogical transformations and address the interactions between pedagogical causalities and operations that are indispensable for the development of competencies. Among them are those practicing learning forms and operations that Malte Brinkmann (2021) has been studying for years. In the field of teaching, they ensure that didactic questioning and pointing can turn into self-questioning and self-pointing and become independent of a teacher’s questioning and pointing operations.
These indications only hint at what a didactic research of questioning, pointing, and answering would consist of, which would lead beyond the existing research of addressing, pointing, and output, by operationally clarifying the successful or also unsuccessful interplay of the three causalities of action in educational and training as well as teaching and learning processes. I have been advocating such research since I served on the PISA Scientific Advisory Board. It took 17 years for my suggestions to be noticed for the first time in empirical educational research (cf. Benner 2000/2002; Tillmann 2017), and it is to be hoped that the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between the research directions brought together in the article presented here will not take as long again and that the composition of the Standing Scientific Commission of the KMK will change already in the foreseeable future.
Already today, there are complaints that students answer PISA tasks and other output tests with the help of solution programs that work with algorithms of an artificial intelligence. If this development continues, many test items will only be usable under shielded conditions. But there is another way than converting test rooms into data technology high-security zones. Instead of continuing to align test items with Weinert’s concept of competence and defining them as problem-solving tasks, it would be important to align them with demanding tasks based on educational theory and to develop them into interpretive tasks in which different forms of knowledge are related to one another. Then, competence measurements could be correlated with instructional concepts and both with pedagogical causalities as well as operations underlying them, and critical insights could be gained through theory, empiricism, and practice about how to improve learning-learning processes, construct challenging didactic tasks and test items, and develop teaching-learning tools that serve teachers as instructional and learners as learning and educational tools (cf. Ramseger 2022).
Those seeking suggestions for further work in this direction will find them in the volume “Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung” initiated and edited by Michael Uljens.
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