Wolfgang Nieke

Wolfgang Nieke (born February 27, 1948 in Paderborn ) is a German educational scientist and was a professor of general education at the University of Rostock .

life and work

Nieke studied education, philosophy, psychology, sociology and German studies in Münster. The doctorate in 1976 and the habilitation in 1991 took place at the University of Essen . After working at the Universities of Münster, Bielefeld and Essen, where he was the managing director of the Institute for Migration Research , Foreigner Education, Second Language Didactics, he held the founding professorship for general education at the University of Rostock from 1993 to 2013 and was Vice-Rector for Studies and Teaching there from 1994 to 1996 . From 2006 to 2010 he was President of the Educational Science Faculty Conference (EWFT).

Main focus of work:

• Education, competence and profession
• Intercultural upbringing and education

Long before the current use of a psychological term of competence instead of educational goals and learning goals to describe lessons, studies and vocational training, Nieke shaped the discourse and the framework for the training of qualified pedagogues with his suggestions for pedagogical professional competence and was based on the concept of competence Heinrich Roth . This systematically establishes exactly three and only three dimensions of competence - professional competence, social competence, personal competence - and avoids the current complete arbitrariness of every competence determination.

Intercultural upbringing and education as preparation for life in a permanently multicultural society.

The work Intercultural Education and Training - Value Conflicts in Everyday Life , published in 1995 and updated and expanded in 2008, shows the value-related conflicts in a society that is becoming multicultural as a result of immigration, whose previous strategies of dealing with ideological and cultural plurality are no longer sufficient, so that new forms of dealing must be sought and found with value-related conflicts. On the one hand, this is discussed theoretically and philosophically and shows the current situation in the tension between an agnostic cultural relativism and a universalism of human rights . In value-related conflict situations it turns out that an inevitable ethnocentrism or culture centrism of every acting person must be taken into account in every attempt to resolve a conflict. The approaches to intercultural upbringing and education are systematized and presented in relation to this basic question.

Ten goals of intercultural upbringing and education

To this end, ten goals of intercultural upbringing and education are worked out, about which broad consensus can be achieved: These goals are not only important for the interaction of locals with migrants and vice versa, but fundamentally for any interaction between members of different living environments. There is a close connection between these lifeworlds ( Alfred Schütz ) and the concept of culture used as the “orientation pattern of a society”.

The order is based on increasing requirements, not on the principle of going from simple to complex.

(1) Recognizing one's own, inevitable ethnocentrism

One should recognize that one's own thinking is always integrated into one's own ethnicity and living environment. This own ethnocentrism can only be recognized when confronting other ethnic groups. Mainly because "problems of understanding arise when someone from one culture assumes their interpretations are known to everyone". Mere information about other cultures is not sufficient, since “distrust and fear of members of cultural minorities arise through unfamiliarity and cannot be reduced through contact and information”. In the case of contacts without the correct classification in the respective cultural context, there is a risk that existing prejudices can be further reinforced.

(2) Dealing with the alienation

The foreign should be consciously perceived and thought through, then it has to be dealt with. The foreign, which appears exotic in playful interaction and can therefore be interesting for this reason, can unsettle you in everyday life and create irritation and resistance. It is aimed at the same “everyday areas as your own interpretations and orientations”. This irritation / alienation can lead to phenomena such as xenophobia or racism .

(3) Basics of tolerance

Tolerance is more than just ignoring and indifferently accepting the diversity of life forms. Tolerance only begins where evasion is not possible and where world orientations that contradict one's own have to be endured. The limit of tolerance can also become visible.

(4) Accepting ethnicity, taking the language of the minorities into consideration

The ethnic and cultural peculiarities should be accepted and the different languages ​​should not be suppressed.

(5) Addressing racism

The task of intercultural education is to address the discomfort that children and adolescents often have towards members of the minorities and to make the cultural background clear. In this way, the "unconscious devaluation tendencies" can be made aware, work can be done to block them and ultimately disappear completely.

(6) Emphasize what is common, against the danger of ethnicism

In the “attempt to take into account the peculiarities of a culture in the sense of the lifeworld and to give them their own validity, there is inevitably the danger” that culture that is no longer lived can be artificially maintained. Culture could thus be devalued as 'folklore', but that is not the meaning of 'intercultural education'.

(7) encouraging solidarity; Consideration of the asymmetrical situation between majority and minority

Solidarity among minorities should be promoted. For this, there must be the willingness of the majorities to give space to minorities. The members of the minorities are to be encouraged to show solidarity with one another in order to strengthen their political power.

(8) Practicing forms of sensible conflict management - dealing with cultural conflict and cultural relativism

In everyday situations there can be no inaction. The decisions in value-related conflicts can be processed in virtual discourses, which also include the conditions of validity of the arguments in the reflection.

(9) Pay attention to the possibility of mutual cultural enrichment

Mutual cultural enrichment should be seen as positive. In intercultural education, the mutual enrichment through "taking over elements from other cultures into your own" is crucial.

(10) Addressing the we-identity: lifting the we-boundary in global responsibility or affirmation of universal humanity?

Belonging to living environments (ethnic groups, cultures) inevitably defines the boundary between us and them. But it is possible to expand these boundaries if larger units of the we are thought of: citizens, world citizens up to a non-anthropocentric expansion to animals and the entire cosmos.

For the practical realization of the proposed model of virtual discourse for the solution of value conflicts in (pedagogical) everyday life, in which there can be no inaction, basic examples of such conflicts and possible solutions are presented. The work is an important reference in teacher training and also in pedagogy lessons at high schools in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Fonts

• Intercultural upbringing and education. Value orientations in everyday life. (School and Society, Vol. 4). 3. update and exp. Edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15566-1 .
• Competence and culture. Contributions to orientation in the modern age. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-15884-6 .

• About his work: Constanze Berndt, Maik Walm (Ed.): In Orientation. Interdisciplinary perspectives on education, culture and competence. Springer, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-658-01825-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Nieke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature about Wolfgang Nieke in the state bibliography MV
• Entry on Wolfgang Nieke in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karin Bock, Franziska Schäfer, Kathrin Schramm: Philosophizing with Wolfgang Nieke. In: Constanze Berndt, Maik Walm (Ed.): In Orientation. Interdisciplinary perspectives on education, culture and competence. Springer, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-658-01825-2 , pp. 9-22.
2. ^ Educational anthropology. Volume II: Development and Education. Schroedel, Hanover 1971, third part, chap. III: The decisive stages of progress in human agency, pp. 446–588.
3. ↑ Intercultural upbringing and education. Value orientations in everyday life. (School and Society, Vol. 4). 3. update and exp. Edition. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15566-1 , p. 75 ff.