Relativity, Normativity and Orientation

Problem statement/objective of the Special Interest Group (SIG)

In a plural and democratic society, relativity seems equally natural and conflictual. It can be seen as a danger, but can also describe an educational aim that emerges from necessary insight into the conditionality and perspectivity of insights, convictions, and value systems. This explains why relativity, on the one hand, often seems to get dangerously close to arbitrariness and disorientation in the sense of relativism, or on the other hand to massive attempts at clarification, for example in the form of political or religious fundamentalism. Without a suitable approach to relativity, peaceful coexistence in plural societies, which are increasingly to be seen in a global horizon, is not possible. This situation is both the starting point and the background for the balancing of norms and standards, which do not avoid the challenge of the relative.

In view of this, orientation and certainty can only be gained by consciously taking in and reflecting on the problem of relativity. For such a perspective to become socially effective, it must also be translated into professional education processes; that is, an understanding of education must be developed that is attuned to the specific professional requirements of relativity. Against this background, the subject didactics working group, with the participation of educational science, offers the rare opportunity to develop relativity as an interface problem of different disciplines, and with a view to education, to demonstrate the potential of a multi-perspective approach to questions of relativity.

Speaker

Prof. Dr. Carolin Führer, German Philology/Didactics of German Literature

Participants

Britta Eiben-Zach (German Philology/Didactics of German Literature), Prof. Dr. Bernd Grewe (History Didactics and Public History), PD Dr. Jessica Heesen (Media Ethics and Information Technology), Prof. Dr. Bernd Tesch (Didactics of Romance Studies), Prof. Dr. Uwe Küchler (Didactics of English), Dr. Uta Müller (IZEW), Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Friedrich Schweitzer (Protestant Religious Pedagogy), Dr. Wolfgang Polleichtner (Latin Didactics), Prof. Dr. Philipp Thomas (PH Weingarten, Philosophy/Ethics), Prof. Fahimah Ulfat (Islamic Religious Pedagogy), Prof. Dr. Marcus Emmerich (Educational Science with the focus Inclusion, Heterogeneity and Diversity), Dr. Marco Magirius (German Philology/Didactics of German Literature).