Gerd E. Schäfer (educator)

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Gerd E. Schäfer (born September 26, 1942 in Regensburg ) is a professor emeritus of early childhood education at the University of Cologne and a professor in the field of education and upbringing in early childhood at the University of the Arts in Bremen. In his scientific work he deals with aesthetic education and play, early childhood educational research and children's natural knowledge.

education and profession

Schäfer did his Abitur at a natural science high school and began his professional career with a teacher and special education course. He also completed a degree in education, psychology and philosophy. After completing his studies, he did his doctorate and habilitation in the field of general educational science .

In 1985 he became professor for elementary and primary school education in Augsburg. Since 1997 Schäfer has been professor for general educational science and pedagogy of early childhood, family and youth in Cologne. There he was in charge of the diploma course in pedagogy for early childhood and family . In April 2009 he finished his work at the University of Cologne and went into retirement.

In the 2010 summer semester he was appointed professor at the University of the Arts in Bremen, and since the 2011/2012 winter semester he has also been a visiting professor at the University of Vienna .

Important projects over the past five years

  • Draft for an educational agreement in NRW. Expertise on the scientific basis of early childhood education for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
  • Model project “Reality and Fantasy” in Thuringia; Objective: Development and implementation of educational concepts in day-care centers;
  • Professionalization project for four model institutions .
  • Model project “Professionalization of Early Childhood Education” in NRW; Objective: Development of an observation model, implementation of educational concepts in day-care centers, development of didactic materials; Professionalization project for 10 model institutions.
  • Quality development for the Alternative Welfare Association, SOAL, Hamburg, ongoing since 2003.
  • Nature workshop Mülheim / Ruhr; Objective: children's natural knowledge - ethnographic observations; Development of didactic concepts for children from 2 to 7; Development of training material for elementary didactics of natural knowledge.

Work and theory

In 1995, Schäfer presented his theory of the child's educational process in his book Educational Processes in Childhood . His work is based on the assumption that a child's education begins at birth, that the educational processes in early childhood are holistic and that they take place in the child's immediate, natural environment. The central idea is that a child has a basic set of perceptual and communication skills right from the start and learns of its own accord as curiosity and interest develop. For a long time the opposite was assumed, namely that infants are passive and helpless beings, unable to understand the interrelationships of the world around them. Today's infant and brain research shows that newborns already have amazing receptive, cognitive and social skills. Schäfer speaks of competent infants and toddlers and demands that early childhood be taken into account in the education system, as it is the foundation of the educational biography. He states that education is an open, lifelong and active construction process of the individual. Parents should be aware that early childhood educational processes cannot be enforced. The educational process takes place through the processing of external information and impulses in the individual. However, they are dependent on the support of their parents or a reliable adult. Adults could provide this support through designing the child's learning environment and through designing interactions with others. This includes a close observation of the interests and activities of the child as well as engaging in questions and attempts at interpretation. Methods and forms of teaching such as instruction, instruction and the transfer of knowledge would not do justice to the needs of children. Children wanted to research for themselves and discover that learning things depends on inner motivation and happens through actions and experiences.

Theses on early childhood education

Schäfer put forward ten theses on early childhood education, which are intended to make it clear that the concept of education is viewed by him as a strategic concept, since it emphasizes specific early childhood tasks of understanding self and the world. His first four theses sum up and expand on thoughts that the educator has already discussed in his work on the educational process in childhood and on the sensory experience in children. In the other theses, leitmotifs of current studies are outlined. His ten theses are:

  • Early childhood education is self-education
  • Early childhood education looks for meanings
  • Early childhood education is aesthetic education
  • Early childhood education is complex
  • Early childhood education is based on relationships
  • Early childhood education creates inner images
  • Early childhood education is necessarily creative
  • Early childhood education has to do with internal processing
  • Early childhood education is a social process
  • Early childhood education needs adult support

Dimensions of the early childhood educational process

Schäfer distinguishes between two fundamentally different perspectives on educational processes. On the one hand, the process of self-education , which relates to the creation of a subject and is both individual and general. On the other hand, the process of educational learning . This relates to the learning process of a person in the course of his life, more precisely to the formation of the person and his reality relationships through the encounter with ever new realities.

Three dimensions can be represented on both levels . The first three dimensions deal with the self-education of the child subject , the other three with the educational learning process :

  1. The emotional dimension of a developing self;
  2. The dimension of independence within a dialogue between child (ren) and carer (s);
  3. The dimension of expectations through the fantasies of adults and society that structure the space of the child's reality.
  4. The dimension of early cognitive skills;
  5. The dimension of an intermediate area;
  6. The emotional dimension of borderline experiences, of partial failure at or crossing borders.

Schäfer's theory of the early childhood educational process must encompass all of these perspectives equally, and the way in which different dimensions are integrated must also be considered.

Language development as a child's educational process

Language development in relation to the child's educational process focuses on how speaking changes the child's thinking and the way in which the child experiences the world. Schäfer is of the opinion that in order for the child to enter the language, the child must have a store of contexts of experience. At the level of action, these experience connections must then be sensibly arranged so that speaking can also capture a meaningful connection. Schäfer sums up the fundamental aspect of language education with a central thesis: "Language education can only succeed in a culture of learning" . This culture of learning must be offered to the child from birth, because entry into the language begins with perception. It enables the learning of linguistic structures. First the child perceives sounds, then words and finally entire sentences of the mother tongue and categorizes them. By recognizing sentence melodies and sounds, the child adjusts to their mother tongue. Schäfer emphasizes above all the social interaction in the environment of a child, because the meanings (of the words) are recorded through feelings, as they perceive them through relationships with other people. Another condition is the satisfaction of basic needs, which increases attention and receptivity. From Schäfer's linguistic theory it follows for the upbringing of a child that parents must understand the individual messages of the child and must accompany the child's actions linguistically.

Game development as a child's educational process

Schäfer attaches great importance to the game for the children's educational process, because the game is something in which the individual succeeds in approximating their own wishes and needs to the necessity of actual reality. The game fulfills three functions that are essential for the educational process :

  1. The game is intended to promote cognitive skills. Fields open up playfully in which curiosity, experimentation and invention romp about. The tension in the game must neither be too high nor too low, otherwise the game will become action with a goal;
  2. By so doing as if games feelings are expressed in the emotional sphere. These can be feelings that you feel or have already felt and that are brought to mind through the game. The focus is on the emotional relationship with other people and the processing of feelings, whereby the game has a self-healing function for the child;
  3. The game promotes the social and moral development of the child through rules. It learns behavior that conforms to the rules by setting up simple rules in kindergarten or for a specially designed game, but abstract rules as well as rules and conventions in the social area are tested and played out during adolescence.

According to Schäfer, the game must also have important properties such as that it is free of external purposes and does not strive for specific goals and that there is a psychological space in which the game is located, which corresponds to a temporal space. This means that the game has to have a beginning and an end. Furthermore, the player's rhythm must not be disturbed and the game must take place in an informal environment. In summary, the focus of play is coping with reality as well as the own development and life area, in which the child exercises his freedom in dealing with himself and others.

Based on Piaget

Jean Piaget’s research is of great importance with regard to today's image of the child. The Swiss biologist and pioneer of cognitive developmental psychology has worked out three basic figures for children's thinking with the help of observations and surveys of children :

  1. They only learn what children can do with their own means and tools. So there is no point in filling knowledge into children;
  2. The appropriation of realities requires, on the one hand, the adaptation of reality to the patterns of subjective thinking, which is known as assimilation. On the other hand, an adaptation of the subjective patterns of knowledge to the patterns of reality, the so-called accommodation.
  3. With the first (sensorimotor) actions of the infant, childlike thinking begins, which for the most part consists of these internalized actions.

Although Piaget's image of children's thinking is shaped by cognitive abilities and the emotional and sensual experiences are not in his area of ​​knowledge, his view forms a basis for Schäfer's understanding of the children's educational process. In this way, his model of cognitive schemas can be expanded to include the emotional and aesthetic aspects in addition to the cognitive thought components. In addition, Piaget's assimilation and accommodation model is an important prerequisite for understanding the interaction of complex patterns. The developmental psychologist has created a third important basis by researching children's experience formation down to the bottom of sensorimotor comprehension . In this way he has worked out an essential, sensory component in the child's educational process.

Literature, publications

  • Educational processes in early childhood . Weinheim 1995, 2nd edition 2002, Juventa
  • Ders .: Sensual experience in children. In: Lepenies, A., Nunner-Winkler, G., Schäfer, GE, Walper, S .: Child development potentials. Volume 1 materials for the 10th report on children and young people. Munich 1999, DJI Verlag
  • That. (Ed.): Education begins with birth. Weinheim, Basel 2005, 2nd edition Beltz
  • Working group “Professionalization of Early Childhood Education”, scientific management, Prof. Dr. GE Schäfer, Dr. Rainer Strätz: Observation and documentation in practice. Kronach 2005, Carl Link Verlag
  • A. von der Beek, Gerd E. Schäfer, A. Steudel: Education in the elementary area - reality and fantasy . Verlag das netz, Weimar, Berlin 2006.
  • Schäfer, M. Alemzadeh, H. Eden, D. Rosenfelder: Nature as a workshop. Weimar, Berlin 2009.
  • Schäfer, R. Staege (Ed.): Understanding early childhood learning processes. Weinheim, Munich 2010, Juventa
  • Schäfer, R. Staege, K. Meiners (eds.): Children's worlds - educational worlds. Berlin 2010
  • What is Early Childhood Education? Weinheim, Munich 2011
  • Generating knowledge - cognitive science foundations of a culture of learning in early childhood from an educational science perspective . In: Ksüschke, D .: Didactics in pedagogy in early childhood. Cologne, Kronach
  • Notes on some epistemological problems and their implications for ethnographic educational research in early childhood . In: S. Viernickel, D. Edelmann, H. Hoffmann, A. König (Eds.). 2011. Research on the education, upbringing and care of children under three years of age. Ernst Reinhardt Publishing House.
  • About relationship and education from the start . In: Kuhl, J, Müller-Using, S. Solzbacher, C., Warnecke, W. (Ed.): Education needs relationship. Freiburg 2011.
  • Abitur 2014, examination questions with solutions: Educational Science LK . Stark Verlagsgesellschaft, Freising 2013, ISBN 978-3-8490-0518-4 .
  • Educational processes in childhood. Juventa Verlag, Weinheim 1995, ISBN 3-7799-0352-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Early education and early learning processes ( Memento of the original from August 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in: Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth , accessed on July 28, 2016  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / sprach-kitas.fruehe-chancen.de
  2. ↑ a b Prof. Dr. Gerd Schäfer, website of the Hochschule für Künste Bremen ( Memento of the original from August 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed July 28, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hfk-bremen.de
  3. ^ “Orientation framework for early childhood education, care and upbringing in Switzerland” , Wustmann Seiler, Corina, Simoni, Heidi, 2012, accessed on June 26, 2016.
  4. ^ Processes of early childhood education, Gerd E. Schäfer, December 2001 (PDF file), accessed on June 26, 2016.
  5. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational Processes in Early Childhood, Weinheim 1995, p. 20
  6. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational Processes in Early Childhood, Weinheim 1995, p. 29
  7. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Sensuality and Language . 2012, ISBN 978-3-86379-015-8 , Conclusion - culture of learning, p. 37 (38 pp., Online [PDF; 334 kB ; accessed on February 7, 2019]): Language education can only succeed in a culture of learning
  8. ↑ Abitur 2014, examination questions with solutions: Erziehungswissenschaft LK, Freising 2013, pp. 10–12
  9. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational Processes in Early Childhood, Weinheim 1995, pp. 162–163
  10. ↑ Gerd E. Schäfer: Educational Processes in Early Childhood, Weinheim 1995, p. 175
  11. ^ Processes of early childhood education, Gerd E. Schäfer, December 2001 (PDF file), accessed on June 26, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Schäfer, Gerd E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German educationalist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH September 26, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH regensburg