Exploring educative teaching for Bildung - A non-affirmative approach to Didaktik for schools

Abstract As a response to the pedagogical paradoxes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, this article proposes non-affirmative school didactic theory as a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding educative teaching for Bildung in the context of comprehensive education. This approach conceptualizes curriculum work, teaching, leadership, and assessment as distributed, relational, and multi-level phenomena. The argument put forth is that education in political democracies requires both policies and practices that align with the principles of non-affirmative emancipation—principles that go beyond mere transmission of knowledge or socialization into predefined norms. Non-affirmative school didactics builds upon classical educational concepts developed within European modern educational thought, such as Bildsamkeit (the capacity for self-formation), the summons to self-activity, and recognition, as formulated by scholars like Dietrich Benner. It also draws on Herbart's notion of educative teaching, which sees teaching as more than instruction—it is a moral and reflective practice that fosters autonomous and responsible individuals. While these concepts originally contributed to pedagogy as an independent science offering concepts for understanding class-room teaching, the article argues that they may be extended to support a relational and pedagogically grounded understanding of educational leadership and curriculum governance across all levels of the school system. In doing so, non-affirmative school didactics provides a coherent theoretical foundation for analyzing and developing educational practices that are reflective, emancipatory, and responsive to the complexities of pluralistic, democratic societies.