Romstöck, Jan Erik
Dissertation topic:
"The School in Crisis - the Crisis in the School."
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Professorship of Grammar School Education
at the Chair of School Pedagogy
Campus Hubland Nord
Oswald-Külpe-Weg 82
97074 Würzburg
E-mail to Mr. Romstöck
First supervisor:Prof. Dr. Jens Dreßler
Second supervisor:
Class in the Graduate School: "Education and Culture"
Doctorate in the Graduate School from WS 2025/26.
Abstract:
My dissertation project examines pedagogical crisis discourses in the 1980s. This decade is of particular interest because, then as now, the pedagogical crisis discourse took place both against the background of major general social crisis discourses and during a phase in which the discipline was critically reviewing a major educational reform. While there was surprising agreement in the educational discourse of the 1980s regarding the diagnosis of a crisis in schools or even in education in general, there were extremely differing views on what exactly constituted this crisis and how to respond to it.
The aim of the dissertation is to trace and analyse this crisis discourse in pedagogy in the 1980s using the tools of intellectual history and discourse analysis, drawing on prominent users of the concept of crisis as a basis. To this end, the different understandings of crisis that appear in it will be systematised and examined in terms of their interaction. The aim is to investigate how exactly the crisis was portrayed, what causes were attributed to it and what solutions were proposed for it. Where are the commonalities, where are the demarcations, where are the references? The traditions and contexts from which these understandings of crisis originate will also be explored.
