Tradition oder Zukunft? 50 Jahre Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft aus bildungshistorischer Sicht

The author interprets the most recent secessionist movements within the GERA as the manifestation of a fundamental problem that had already been virulent at the time of the associationʼs foundation (1964) and that had not been utterly new, even then. The primary thesis states that the guiding ideology of the GERA at that time was bound to a concept of future primarily nourished by the idealist tradition. Thus, the association ostracized mainly extramural actors of educational reform who were committed to an expertocratic concept of the future, developed mainly in the United States, and who, in this, relied on specific psychology models. When, after the end of the Cold War, the OECD was able to enforce its vision of school policy and educational reform, this ideology
of pedagogical planning, supposedly unimpeded by any traditions, managed to establish itself within the GERA, too. This, however, created a blatant polarity with the traditional concept of education – a field of tension that can only be dissolved constructively through historical-comparative analyses.