Wiebke Maria Wachmann | Ganze Tage dazwischen (Whole Days in Between) | Installation (Detail) | 1999
Relevant aspects of the knowledge that is decisive for our acting, for our intuitions, preferences and our decisions defy from articulation. This knowledge influences the questions we put, our successful or failing learning processes, our precarious or promising personality-development. In order to grasp this kind of interrelations, research within the Humanities increasingly turns to imaginaries, materiality, corporeality, visuality etc. The scientific network seeks to integrate the variety of such “turns” in terms of profiling their impacts on pedagogy. This perspective is coined by Pedagogical Anthropology studying human beings in a cultural context to understand how people themselves experience and deal with given factors. Such given factors are knowledge areas, social difference (age, gender etc.), political agendas and policies, cultural features, etc.
Manual on Tacit Knowledge. Education, Bildung, Socialisation and Learning
Handbuch Schweigendes Wissen. Erziehung, Bildung, Sozialisation und Lernen, edited by Anja Kraus, Jürgen Budde, Maud Hietzge & Christoph Wulf. Weinheim Basel Beltz/Juventa: 2017. See: https://www.beltz.de/produkt_produktdetails/30739-handbuch_schweigendes_wissen.html
Learning Scenarios for Social and Cultural Knowledge, edited by Lara Rodriguez Sieweke. In the book series: Erziehungskonzeptionen und Praxis (ed. by Bodo von Carlsburg). London, New York: Peter Lang 2017.
Scenarios of Knowledge at Universities in Change. Perspectives of the Humanities, the Educational and the Cultural Sciences, edited by Anja Kraus. In the book series “European Studies in Education” (ed. by Christoph Wulf). Münster, New York, München, Berlin: Waxmann 2017.
Most of the conferences of the network are published at WAXMANN in the book series of the network on “European Research on Educational Practices”.
The approach of Pedagogical Anthropology (PA) aims at identifying how people understand and organize their life conditions and situations within their very cultural context. Upbringing, culture, Bildung, education, learning, teaching etc. are seen as aspects of relationships and interactions of individuals and groups with each other under specific material, pictorial and performative conditions, and with a certain image of being human. In practice, such images are foremost practical projections.
In empirical regards, PA does not strictly disagree with any scientific approach and methodology. However, it subjects all approaches to a critical analysis of their respective images of being a human. This also includes the own presuppositions. An approach can be blamed for applying an image of being a human that is unsuitable for its set objectives (such as performance evaluation, inclusion, etc.). The approach of PA is spread over the whole globe: Its collective expertise covers individual and collective knowledge in their relation to cultural features, diverse forms of knowledge and knowledge creation (such as e.g. esthetical knowledge and/or multimodal signification), environmental and development issues, ideas of politics and leadership, the relation of formal and informal learning, specifics of age, generation and family, among others.
Accordingly, PA has a strong international profile. I cooperate with colleagues in Scandinavia, Europe, Asia and North and South America, as well as with colleagues at Swedish higher education institutions. The focus lies on higher education and professionalization on the one hand, and on esthetic knowledge and multimodal learning on the other hand. Besides that, also socially divisive areas (in particular on the basis of ethnicity, gender, cultural background and social class) and educational technologies are investigated.
The special contribution of this network to this research field is the systematics of tacit knowing and knowledge, with this creating a backdrop for empirical investigation of human practices and understandings, impacts of materiality, performativity, imaginaries etc. Tacit knowledge is an umbrella concept e.g. for corporeality, aesthetic learning and inclusivity in schools. The systematic work on tacit knowledge counts thus as allowing for modelling supportive learning environments and learning scenarios, also including digital methods, and participants’ perspectives in and on a world of diversity and constant change.
For further information please contact Anja Kraus: anja.kraus at lnu.se