Rainer Kokemohr

Rainer Kokemohr (born April 24, 1940 in Rahden ; † March 21, 2020 ) was a German pedagogue and professor for general educational science at the University of Hamburg .

Life

Kokemohr began studying at the Bielefeld University of Education in 1960 , which he completed in 1963 with the first state examination . After the subsequent legal clerkship , he passed the second state examination in 1965 and worked as a teacher until 1966 . As early as 1965, Kokemohr had started studying educational science, philosophy and German at the Ruhr University in Bochum , which he later continued at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . There was carried out in 1970 and his doctorate Dr. phil. with the work “The future as a problem of historical education in the view of the young Nietzsche ” . He then worked as a research assistant in the educational science department at the Münster University of Education until 1973 . In 1973 he was appointed Scientific Councilor and Professor of General Education there. In 1974 Kokemohr switched to the University of Hamburg.

Since 1986, Kokemohr has been working regularly in Cameroon . After doing mainly field research there, in 1991 he became a scientific advisor for the construction of a model school in the rural area of ​​the Western Province . In 1999 he also helped set up a teacher training institute next to the school, which began teaching in 2005. Since 2001, Kokemohr has also worked several times at the College of Education at Chengchi National University in Taipei / Taiwan .

Research priorities

Kokemohr's main research areas were educational process research, interaction analysis with pedagogical intent, intercultural communication, educational biographical research and historical-systematic individual studies on educational philosophy.

Educational process research

Kokemohr understands education to mean the "processes of a fundamental transformation of world and self-relationships where new problem experiences in already acquired orientations can no longer be adequately answered [...]." In this theory, education is not seen as a goal to be achieved, but rather conceived as a mode of processing world and self-experience. In his text "Education as a world and self-design in the foreign", Kokemohr relates the concept of education to the experience of the foreign, in short: the foreign experience, as it was discussed by Bernhard Waldenfels following Edmund Husserl . According to Kokemohr, "the foreign" can be defined as an experience that opposes the "subsumption under figures of a given world and self-design." By emphasizing the foreign as experience, it becomes clear that with the "foreign" it is not the foreign person, z. B. from another culture is meant, but the foreign experiences a formal determination, which is then in various areas such. B. gender, age, social or cultural affiliation, income, educational level etc. can manifest. According to Kokemohr, the only decisive factor in determining what is foreign is the formal criterion, which says that something breaks into the familiar world and self-relationships that eludes an interpretation within the framework of these relationships and thus does not offer any appropriate alternative courses of action.

Historical-systematic individual studies on the philosophy of education

The historical-systematic individual studies relate to a. to Friedrich Nietzsche . The meaning of the reference to Nietzsche is that Nietzsche thinks education beyond a principle that transcends the historical process. Education must therefore get along without an ethical-political frame of reference.

“Nietzsche's Zarathustra, however, no longer thinks of education in terms of a whole, however formulated. Understood in this way, his educational criticism would be radical and still relevant. It articulates the necessary question of the ontology of world and self-relations, which are always assumed to be solved in ethically-politically committed educational theories. But the price of this radicalism is also clear: an ethical-political frame of reference no longer needs to be formulated, before and in which educational processes would have to prove themselves. Nietzsche puts his readers in a clear either / or: either in the violence of the lack of reference or in the violence of unquestionable references. "

This lack of a binding framework could prove to be productive, especially for transcultural or intercultural "experiences", since what is presupposed can always be questioned anew and differently.

Intercultural or transcultural education

Kokemohr has dealt intensively with the challenges when different cultures come together (see Vita). In this respect he could be seen as a representative of "intercultural pedagogy". However, Kokemohr evaluates this term with skepticism: "I cite the talk of intercultural communication cautiously. Because if we can only refer to the other culture from the ground of our own cultural order, there is no position between or above the cultures, which justified the predicate inter in the sense of an equal accessibility of different cultures. " Rather, one should speak of "attempts at transcultural reference", as this emphasizes the risk of this reference failing.

Influence on other educational theorists

Kokemohr's work on educational theory at the University of Hamburg has undergone a further development in the work of Hans-Christoph Koller and Winfried Marotzki .

Fonts (selection)

• The future as an educational problem. The educational reflection of the young Nietzsche , Ratingen, Kastellaun, Düsseldorf, 1973
• Edited with Winfried Marotzki : Biographies in Complex Institutions. Student biographies I , Frankfurt, Bern, New York, Paris, 1989
• Edited with Winfried Marotzki : Biographies in Complex Institutions. Student biographies II , Weinheim, 1990
• Edited with Hans-Christoph Koller : "Every German can understand that". Problems in intercultural work discussions , Weinheim, 1996

Web links

• Literature by and about Rainer Kokemohr in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the University of Hamburg
• Reform school and training center in Mbô (Cameroon)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary for Prof. Dr. Rainer Kokemohr. University of Hamburg, March 23, 2020, accessed on March 31, 2020 . 
2. ^ Rainer Kokemohr: Education in intercultural cooperation . In: Sönke Abeldt, Walter Bauer (ed.): "... what it means to be a vulnerable person" . Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 2000, pp. 421-436, therein: p. 421.
3. ↑ Tobias Klass, Rainer Kokemohr: "You have to have chaos in yourself to be able to give birth to a dancing star" . In: Sönke Abeldt, Walter Bauer (ed.): "... what it means to be a vulnerable person" . Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz 2000, p. 322.
4. ↑ Education as a world and self-design in the aspiration of the foreign. S. 23. In (Ed.) Koller, Marotzki, Sanders: Educational processes and experience of foreignness. Contributions to a theory of transformative educational processes. Bielefeld: transcript 2007