Item

Abstract

In this previously unpublished text, Wolfgang Edelstein has presented systematic “Preliminary Considerations for a Structural Curriculum Theory,” guided by three concepts that organize the factual and temporal-social references as well as the mode of justification of the school as a place of subject-bound instruction. In 1973, when he presented these considerations, the great dream of a comprehensive educational reform based on the comprehensive school had been shattered, which had been nurtured by the German Education Council and also pushed by the MPI for Human Development, as Edelstein soberly and critically balances at the beginning. In addition, the great promises of the various curriculum theories had come to an end, including the theory of the MPI director Saul B. Robinsohn, which was oriented toward the analysis of social need. Edelstein’s new approach was oriented toward the goal of enabling every learner to achieve self-determination in a civilization determined by the sciences, and perceived the educational system primarily as a world of learning that shapes school learning processes in their factual-temporal logic in a subject-centered way. It is thus a decidedly content- and process-oriented rather than an outcome-oriented view of schooling that he makes the central reference for theoretical work and the criterion for the design of learning processes. Learning and social psychological theories are therefore particularly intensively received, above all Jean Piaget and considerations concerning the “structure of discipline,” with which Jerome Bruner had newly inspired the teaching-related debate.