Keywords

Introduction

The non-affirmative theory of education, which has been developed by the German education scholar Professor Dietrich Benner in Berlin, is an important theory allowing us to discuss the characteristics of modern education (Erziehung), Bildung and educational institutions. It suggests that the pedagogical demands in other areas of human practice (such as politics, ethics, work, religion, and art) should not be applied directly to pedagogical practice without being examined and transformed by the intrinsic logic (Eigenlogik) of education processes (Erziehung and Bildung). It suggests that human education practice exists in a non-hierarchical interrelationship with other human practices (cf. Benner, 2015). Although the idea of human practices as related in non-hierarchical fashion was born in German-speaking culture (cf. Benner, 1982), its use is clearly not limited to German-speaking countries. This is not only because Benner’s General Pedagogy (Allgemeine Pädagogik) has been translated into multiple languages and has become a work that educational researchers in many countries are keen to read, including China. More importantly, the basic principles of modern education, Bildung and educational institutions aroused the resonance of researchers from different cultural regions, and continues to form a richer understanding of the non-affirmative theory of education. It has also developed into a platform that enables researchers in educational leadership, didactics (Didaktik), and curriculum studies to engage in dialogue around common central questions in these fields (cf. Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017, p. 8).

The non-affirmative theory of education is not only a bridge to discuss education-related issues in a cross-cultural way, but also a bridge that we can use to connect the pedagogical and didactical problem history (Problemgeschichte). In the case of didactics, for example, the non-affirmative perspective can, on the one hand, lead us to reflect on the current teaching-learning relationship in the context of the worldwide prevalence of big data-based measurement and assessment. On the other hand, the approach can lead us back to important original ideas of modern pedagogy and didactics like Herbart’s “educative teaching” (erziehender Unterricht). This is helpful in reconsidering questions like what exactly do we want our students to achieve in the teaching-learning process, what kind of human beings we want them to become, and in order to achieve these purposes, what kind of relationship between teaching and learning should we assume?

A number of researchers have presented their views and critics on the issue of so-called culture of measurement in education and democratic education (e.g. Biesta, 2010; **, 2019; see contributions in part V of this volume). These arguments also inspire this chapter, but the starting point of my discussion is Herbart’s theory of educative teaching. This chapter contains three main sections. The first is to answer why Herbart’s theory of teaching and learning (Unterricht) from over 200 years ago is still important and necessary in current times. Second, what kind of non-affirmative character does educative teaching contain and how does it manifest its non-affirmative character? Third, what is the non-affirmative demand of educative teaching for the modern teaching-learning relationship? Finally, what does educative teaching tell us about teaching and learning that both are monitored by big data techniques?

Is Educative Teaching Outdated? The Alienation of the Teaching-Learning Relationship in Measurement Culture Makes It Necessary Again

Why is Herbart’s educative teaching theory important for the time being? A short answer is because the teaching-learning relationship in schooling is currently facing two difficulties. First, there is a double loss of subjectivity in the teaching-learning relationship as it occurs in big data-based assessment and measurement. Second, we have witnessed the loss of power of the general didactical discourse. To better confront these two difficulties, we need a theory that considers teaching-learning and pedagogical research from the standpoint of the intrinsic logic of education processes (Erziehung and Bildung). Herbart’s educative teaching is clearly in line with this.

The first challenge is the double loss of subjectivity in the teaching-learning relationship. This loss occurs in the current measurement culture, where the interaction among the teacher, the student and the content (or world content in the context of Herbart’s “aesthetic representation”) predominantly is monitored by quantitative data. Evidence-based educational research has become a dominant force in the paradigm of pedagogical research in several countries (cf. a review in Biesta, 2010, pp. 29–31; 2017a, b), just like what has happened in China (cf. Yuan, 2017, 2019). The rise of a culture of measurement in education has led to the replacement of questions of value and democracy in education with questions of technology and management, and this replacement has led to a concern about efficiency and effectiveness of education process rather than the process itself (cf. Biesta, 2010, p. 28). This big data-based measurement and assessment in education has become a new power dominating and controlling school education and will result in a panoramic data-based surveillance over the educational process, quality and behaviour (cf. **, 2019). Although the affirmation and proclamation of student’s subjectivity has not diminished, it is in fact, due to such data power, completely unhelpful in the solving the crux of the matter, which is that the big data-based measurement and assessment of the teaching-learning activities and didactical research have both forgotten the intrinsic logic of education and teaching-learning processes. Herbart’s theory of educative teaching, as Benner clarifies, is not only one of the modern educational theories of the intrinsic logic of education processes (Erziehung and Bildung), but also the inspiration that led him to develop the non-affirmative theory of education (cf. Benner, 1982; or see the first part of this book).

The second difficulty is the loss of power of the general didactical discourse. This issue has different manifestations. For example, evidence-based pedagogical research began to influence the teaching-learning process, and psychological und sociological theories replaced general didactics as a guide to the teaching-learning process and didactical studies (cf. Rucker, 2019, p. 411). Such a situation may also be called “learnification” of education, which triggered efforts to the “rediscovery of teaching” (cf. Biesta, 2017a, b, pp. 27–29; Benner, 2020, pp. 319–320). The rediscovery of teaching among a broader group of educational researchers, “opens up new and different existential possibilities for students, particularly opportunities for encountering what it means to exist in and with the world in a grown-up way – opportunities that may be precluded if we tie teaching too closely to learning” (Biesta, 2017a, b, p. 22). Again, for example, the discourse of didactics is squeezed by the discourse of curriculum and the closely related discourse of learning, as in the case of mainland China: “Curriculum studies are currently predominant in the realm of theory, with many Chinese educational policymakers and curriculum theorists considering didactical theories to be outdated or even anachronistic” (Ding, 2021, p. 207). In this regard, educative teaching shows the relationship between education (Erziehung), Bildung and children’s development process. If the “formative experiences” (bildende Erfahrungen) of students, based on the teaching-learning process, is the key indicator by which we judge the value of this process, then we can then say that this teaching and learning process is really working. In this process, the teacher exerts his influence in such a way that engages students in “formative experiences,” or in Bildung processes, centred around the contents of instruction and teaching (Benner, 2015, p. 493). This is also the value requirements demanded by the non-affirmative theory of education and a foundation for curriculum studies and didactics (Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017). Given the above arguments, there is no doubt that Herbart’s educative teaching theory is worth revisiting in the present day.

Why is Herbart’s theory of educative teaching needed? The second reason is that I have often felt Herbart’s absence in some important pedagogical and didactical works (e.g. Biesta, 2006, 2017a, b). This is by no means to say that Herbart always must be present when people talk about a certain pedagogical or didactical issue. My question is rather that, why is it that such a theorist as Herbart, who tries to find “the determination of the inherent logic of modern pedagogical action” (cf. Benner et al., 2015, p. 115) and tries to construct “the first draft of a modern Bildung-theoretical (bildungstheoretisch) didactics” (cf. Kron, 2000, p. 74), is so often overlooked. Is it, as Jachmann criticized more than 200 years ago, because of the “pretentious obscuration” of his language (cf. Jachmann, 1964, p. 146)? Or, is it because of his poor reputation in the eyes of most pedagogues who are currently teaching at universities (cf. Hilbert, 2011, p. 165)? However, not all education researchers have forgotten Herbart (e.g. Schwenk, 1963; Benner, 1993, 1997, 2015; Prange, 1994, 2007, 2010; Hellekamps, 1991; Anhalt, 1999). Or, perhaps, in the debate between traditional and modern pedagogy, he has been completely defeated by Dewey? Obviously, we can find answers that can be used to disprove the third doubt in the works of Benner and English (cf. Benner et al., 2015, pp. 97, 148–156; English, 2013, 2022). At least in the community of educational researchers in mainland China, the prevailing interpretation is that Herbart’s theory calls for teacher-centred, textbook-centred, and classroom-centred processes, while Dewey’s calls for student-centred, experience-centred, and activity-centred processes (cf. Yang, 2010, pp. 98–123). Almost every university student who enters the door of pedagogy is firstly told, consciously or unconsciously, about the above so-called pedagogical common sense. If this happens in other countries and regions as well, then I think it is a major loss for modern pedagogy and didactics, that we all face.

This chapter contributes to re-establish educative teaching as an object of study when reflecting on the teaching-learning relationship in the context of the development of the empirical instruction studies. To understand educative teaching, it is considered necessary to relate to the earlier concept of “aesthetic representation of the world,” based on which we can see how the educative teaching is characterized by non-affirmativity and then clarify what kind of education and Bildung requirements it lays down for the modern teaching-learning relationship.

The Non-affirmative Characters of Educative Teaching: An Understanding Based on Herbart’s Concept of “Aesthetic Representation of the World”

Faced with the “criticism” of general pedagogy and “the rediscovery of teaching,” Thomas Rucker from Bern University tries to construct non-affirmative general didactics. In his article, Rucker attempts to construct non-affirmative general didactics by proposing five aspects of a non-affirmative process of teaching and learning: artificiality (artifizieller Charakter), knowledge and values, multifacetedness (Vielseitigkeit), dialogue guidance, and its present-future meaning and paradigmatic meaning (cf. Rucker, 2019). Among these five aspects, the multifaceted nature, dialogue guidance and present-future meaning, Rucker establishes and clarifies their meaning in connection with Herbart’s pedagogy.

However, Rucker does not relate to Herbart’s concept of “aesthetical representation of the world” (ästhetische Darstellung der Welt) in 1804 to explain the educative teaching theory and its non-affirmativity. This is a concept that Herbart used to refer to the “the main work of education” (Hauptsache der Erziehung) prior to the publication of his General Pedagogy, and it encompasses Herbart’s pedagogical reflections on the “whole” (Ganz) in his early pedagogical notes. According to Herbart, the common task of the experience (Erfahrung), the communication or sympathy (Teilnehmen) and the instruction (Unterricht), is to represent the world as a “whole” (cf. Herbart, 1851, p. 451). In this way, Herbart demonstrates his educational path of attempting to perfect the spiritual force of young children through their aesthetical perception (die ästhetische Wahrnehmung) (cf. Herbart, 1887b, p. 139). Such a kind of aesthetic perception includes both spiritual and sensory perceptions. It is like the aesthetic property conveyed by Schiller in his On the Aesthetic Education of Man, through the term “sinnlichvernünftig” (cf. Schiller, 2000, p. 42). The German word “ästhetisch” here returns to its original connotation in ancient Greek. Through this notion, Herbart tries to show that the world should be as a whole and that the nature of human being should also be developed with his complete nature and personality in mind. It is in this sense that the interaction between the subject and the world, between the student and the contents of instruction and teaching (cf. Herbart, 1887f, p. 165), can suffice and reach what Humboldt describes as “the most universal, active and free interaction” (cf. Humboldt, 1968a, p. 283). In Herbart’s context, aesthetic always implies children’s “opportunity for self-active interaction with the world” (cf. Wißmann, 1997, p. 245).

It is between the world as a whole and the individual as a whole (or the perfection of the individual) that Herbart first identifies the common Bildung-oriented purpose of educative teaching and Zucht, which he calls a spiritual formation process (Geistesbildung) of children. The former develops children’s aesthetic and moral judgment, by expanding their daily cognitive experience and communication experience into scientific, aesthetic, sympathetic, social-public, and religious interests (cf. Herbart, 1904, p. 85). Aesthetic judgment does not refer only to children’s ability to appreciate natural or artistic beauty, but also to their way of judgment and abilities in general, that is, to “attach the predicate of excellence or reprehensibility directly and involuntarily, that is, without proof and without preference or aversion, to the objects” (cf. Herbart, 1897, p. 80). Aesthetic judgments are formed in “perfect idea” (vollendetes Vorstellen), and thus there are as many different objects as the aesthetic judgments; at the same time, however, aesthetic judgments do not require the actuality (Wirklichkeit) of their objects, as long as the object has existed (cf. Herbart, 1887d, p. 264; 1897, p. 65). As Arendt says, “only what touches, affects, one in representation, when one can no longer be affected by immediate presence ... can be judged to be right or wrong, important or irrelevant, beautiful or ugly, or something in between.” (cf. Arendt, 1992, p. 67). When students develop their one-sided interest or multifaceted but unstructured interest – a demand of facetiousness brings students only the constrain of erudite – to a structured and systematic versatility, their tests or judgment then manifest an aesthetic character, that is, the ability to make unbiased judgments. Moral judgments, on the other hand, are only aesthetic judgments made in relation to the various kinds of willpower (cf. Benner et al., 2015, pp. 106–108; Benner, 1993, pp. 146–165). The ability developed by educative teaching, which Herbart calls “insight” (Einsicht), is an ability that integrates cognition, perception and action. And Zucht, whose basic task is to provide students with “sympathy and support” (cf. Herbart, 1902, p. 173; 1904, p. 140), is to develop a will that corresponds to insight, so that they can act in a way that follows their own insight in term of teachers’ supports.

It is also by the help of the tension between the world as a whole and the individual as a whole (or the perfection of the individual) that Herbart responds to John Locke’s and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s dilemma whether to cultivate children as the natural man or the modern citizen. Herbart argues that Rousseau’s educational program is “too expensive,” while Locke’s program relies too much on “social vulgarity.” The keywords of Rousseau’s education are “nature” and “life,” and the main task is to produce “nature-humans” (Naturmenschen) (cf. Herbart, 1897b, p. 81), who can break away from the degenerate world. However, Émile’s education is a non-institutionalized or one-to-one education, in which the educator had to accompany the child from his birth to adulthood. However, the teacher’s companion is valuable considering the high mortality rate of children at that time. On the other hand, according to Rousseau’s approach, the “natural man” had, first of all, to be cultivated among the people who were deeply imbued with the society and culture of that time, after which he had to be able to return to a “society so heterogeneous,” to continue his life. This whole process undoubtedly requires too much effort of the educator. The key term of Locke’s educational thought is “the conventions of the society,” that is, “the rales of courtesy and good society with all the varieties arising from difference of persons, times, and places, and who will then assiduously direct his pupil as suits his age to the observation of these things.” (cf. Herbart, 1897b, p. 81). Education is a kind of “worldly education” (Welt-Erziehung), which produces “real men of the world” who will repeat the mission of the previous generation and live in the same way as the previous generation. For Herbart, Rousseau’s vision of a “natural man” implies that mankind will repeat, as far as possible from the beginning, a series of evils that have already been overcome, while Locke’s scheme of a “real man of the world” implies the continuation of the evils of the present society (cf. Herbart, 1887e, pp. 5–6; 1897b, pp. 78–81).

What Herbart considers is how to prevent the growing generation from being divorced from the reality of society, but also to prevent them from getting too deep in it. In other words, how can the children be led to “a better existence” (ein besseres Daseyn)? In answering this question, Herbart does not seek help from other educational thinkers, but tries to find the answer to this question in the overall process of human spiritual and intellectual development history. He observes and describes the “reality of the child as a fragment of a vast whole” in which the child is “in the full force of what one has felt, found and thought” (cf. Herbart, 1964c, p. 7), to describe and present in an aesthetic way the “picture” (Bild) of “what the nature man fundamentally could and should be” (cf. Herbart, 1887a, p. 12). In order to represent the world aesthetically, it is necessary for the educator to reflect on his own times, and to turn children’s attention to the beginning of the historical sequence and human culture. The aim was to return to the “pure origin of the light of history,” that is, to those times that were written by masters, and whose spirit was constantly drawn upon by poets. The idea was to rethink the nature and the image of the human being, to rethink the value and the inner logic of education (Erziehung and Bildung) (Herbart, 1887d, p. 265). Based on the above ideas, the management of children and educative teaching both are the preparatory activities, while Zucht is the supporting force that ultimately enables the growing generation to move into the public sphere.

Thus, when we engage in rethinking, in the sense of Herbart’s concept of the “aesthetic representation of the world,” we come to understand the non-affirmative character of his didactics: the task of teaching is to allow the children to obtain Bildung during the process of the many-sided, active and free interaction with the world as a whole. On the one hand, politics, art, ethics and religion are reflected in the contents of teaching and learning in a pedagogically meaningful way, that is, in a way that is appropriate for children’s plasticity and his learning ability. On the other hand, the children always are involved in their “formative experiences” in the dialectical interaction between “plasticity” (Bildsamkeit) (cf. Herbart, 1902, p. 70) and “self-activity” (Selbstthätigkeit) (cf. Herbart, 1902, pp. 145–146). As they grow into adolescents and then enter society, they will then use their formative experiences to improve the conditions in the public sphere (cf. Herbart, 1887e, pp. 118–126).

The Non-affirmative Requirements for Modern Teaching-Learning Relationship in Consideration of Educative Teaching

Based on the concept of the “aesthetic representation of the world,” we can see the non-affirmative requirements that Herbart establishes for the modern teaching-learning relationship. The process of teaching-learning consists of the teacher, the student and “the third thing,” that is, the contents of teaching and learning. In the process of educative teaching, the teacher is the demonstrator and the supporter, who opens the process of Bildung and the acting process of the students with “pedagogical tact” (cf. Herbart, 1887c, p. 286). The contents of teaching and learning reflect a world that consists of history and the present, the near actuality and the remote, the great whole and the fragment, the ideal and the reality (cf. Herbart, 1897b, p. 87).

For the teacher, educative teaching is the science of imparting the knowledge (cf. Herbart 1887e, p. 10; 1897b, p. 84). The imparting of multiple aspects of knowledge is only his basic task. The more central task is to develop children’s living sympathy, refined taste, true penetration and spirit of observation (cf. Herbart, 1897b, p. 104), to develop their ability of thinking, judgment and action, and enable them to acquire the foundation for ethical action (Tugend), that is, the insight. This spiritual formation process is fundamentally the result of the student’s own interaction with the world as a whole. However, this process could not be initiated without the teacher’s support as the children’s pre-existing knowledge is based only on daily experience, and their communication experience is based only on interaction with their family, peers and neighbours. In other words, they are all based on children’s surroundings, on the near actuality and the fragment. The teaching process is thus charged with the responsibility of expanding the children’s experience and communication or sympathy. The basic structure of this art of expansion is the “aesthetic representation” in terms of poets and historians, through growing knowledge of men (i.e., anthropology), through moral and religious discourses (cf. Herbart, 1887d, pp. 268–269; 1897a, p. 75), and to show children what does not exist in front of their eyes. The successful initiation of this process of expansion is dependent on the teacher’s pedagogical tact, that is, the teacher’s ability to make sharp judgments and decisions in an actual situation (cf. Herbart, 1887c, p. 286). Fundamentally, this is the process of expanding “Bildung horizons of modern man” (cf. Benner et al., 2015, p. 117).

The teacher is the presenter of the world as a whole, and the student is the active viewer of the contents presented by the teacher. Under the teacher’s “aesthetical representation” and “show” operation (zeigen), the students’ attention is awakened and the process of “concentration” (Vertiefung) and “reflection” (Besinnung) is thus initiated. According to the German scholar Klaus Prange, the action of showing, pointing or guiding contains a double layer of meaning. First, there is the movement that guides the subject towards the “fact” (Sachverhalt) and thus forms a link from the subject to the object. Second, there is simultaneously a movement from the “fact” to guidance of the subject, which forms a link from the object to the subject (cf. Prange, 2012, p. 68). This two-way relationship is similarly encompassed in the processes by which students engage in aesthetic perception or aesthetic judgment (cf. Prange, 2010, p. 20). As soon as the student begins to see the world, presented to him by the teacher, with his own eyes and perspective, he begins the process of constructing a relationship with the others, with the outside world. He is therefore a thinker, a perceiver and an appreciator as well as a viewer. As this process begins, the students will gradually become a person in action. The insight that Herbart wants his students to acquire is precisely the “the reflection of the power of judgment” (cf. Kant, 2000), which is demonstrated when the student’s horizons of Bildung is expanded.

The contents of the world (Weltinhalte), that is, what the teacher represents, and what the students see, think and judge, connect the teacher’s and the student’s interaction in the teaching-learning process. In this, there is a connection between the reality of the world and the ideal state of the society, the present situation of the human spirit (i.e., the present state of the student) and the ideal (the re-presentation of the ideal spirit picture of modern humanity, as it had been in the ancient Greeks). This process should have aesthetic property. It encompasses all the technical and methodological aspects of teaching, and learning should always be open to the students and allow them to enter and be able to bring themselves to the interaction process with the world. This interaction should also have a formative force (bildende Kraft) and contain the direction and the goal of students’ formation process of their spiritual and intellect. Once the student has begun to interact with the contents of the world, he or she may set himself or herself on a process of moving ever closer to the perfection (Vollkommenheit).

In educative teaching, as Klaus Prange has pointed out, the teacher, through certain “operations,” shifts the students’ attention to the contents that they have not yet mastered and that they cannot master only by themselves. These operations are the connecting bridges between the “known” and the “unknown.” In this process, the children learn and act under the guide of the teacher’s “operations” and gradually move towards that “middle ground,” updating their previous experiences and acquiring new ones. In Herbart’s context, this “operation” is, in general, what he calls an “aesthetic representation,” and accordingly, children’s learning is a constructive process based on their aesthetic perception and judgment. This aesthetic ability of students is neither a purely receptivity nor a purely spontaneity or self-activity, but a “creative (produktiv) receptivity” (cf. Prange, 2012, p. 95).

Conclusion

Now we come to the final question: What role could educative teaching play when we talk about the alienation of the teaching-learning relationship in prevailing big data-based measurement and assessment? The theory of educative teaching understands the teaching-learning relationship based on the interaction between three causalities – educative causality, formative causality (bildende Kausalität) and methodical causality (cf. Benner, 2020, p. 31). Such way of understanding the teaching-learning relationship can remind us how to grasp the nature and the essentiality of the teaching-learning activities and the teaching-learning relationship in the context of big data-based measurement and assessment. An important reminder of educative teaching is that the meaning of teaching occurs at the very moment when the teacher, in interaction with the students, opens up the interaction process between the students themselves and the contents of the world, that is, occurs in the spiritual formation process, through the processing of the contents of the world. The initiation and advancement of this relationship always presupposes the active participation and action of the student in the teaching process. In their interaction with the contents of the world and with the others, the students not only acquire basic knowledge, but also, and more importantly, develop their own “very mobile and active mind” (vielgewandter und vielgeweckter Geist) (cf. Herbart, 1887d, p. 266; 1897a, p. 67). They expand their own horizon of Bildung, construct their “formative experience” and virtuous experience, and develop their reflective judgement and morality. In this sense, the aim and value of the teaching-learning process in the perspective of educative teaching is not only to advance the educational aim or purpose as a whole, which all forms of educational action (i.e., children management, educative teaching and Zucht) need to share, but also to open up and advance the spirit formation process of the students. Such a theory of teaching and learning, based on the non-hierarchical or intrinsic logic of education process (Erziehung and Bildung), provides us an important and necessary way of understanding the nature of teaching-learning activities and their relationships in the era of big data-based educational measure and assessment.