Prof.in Dr. Barbara Friebertshäuser
Language of the lecture: German
In times of polycrises and political-cultural ruptures, it is not only educational practice that is called upon to contribute to the successful management of these crises and ruptures. Numerous approaches in educational science are also orientated towards this problem-oriented question. This also applies in particular to German-language educational science contributions to the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) (cf. e.g. Holst et al. 2025; Pettig & Singer-Brodowski 2025). Such scientific contributions can be described as primarily problem-orientated and less theory-orientated (cf. Clark 2007).
The lecture breaks with this one-sided problem-orientation and instead focuses on the question of theory formation and the ‘progress of knowledge (in) educational science’ (Rucker, 2017) in the field of ESD.
At the centre are analyses of selected contributions from the field of ESD, which are intertwined with normative theoretical considerations. A broad understanding of ESD is used, which also takes up contributions that would probably not be subsumed under this term (e.g. Engel & Terstegen 2024; Quirl et al. 2025), but which work on the topics addressed by ESD, i.e. in particular on the question of globally just societies while preserving the so-called natural foundations of life.
Together, the analyses are intended to support the main thesis of the presentation. According to this, scientific research (cf. e.g. Hummrich, 2025) and thus the scientific ESD discourse requires both an expansion to include theory-led and theory-generating research and a supplement to include metatheoretical theory formation (cf. Kminek, 2025; Zima, 2027).
The lecture thus does not contribute to the programme of ‘theoretical research’ (Bellmann 2020), but works on ‘theory-building research’ (Ricken 2020).
Based on the analysis of selected contributions, the paper argues in favour of critically questioning the limits of their expressive possibilities and making a clear(er) analytical distinction between normative-prescriptive and empirical-descriptive questions and arguments.
Finally, the question is addressed as to how the educational ESD research outlined in the lecture can make a promising and fruitful contribution to the interweaving of theoretical work and the addressed problem processing without getting lost in scientific-theoretical questions and ending up in an ivory tower.
Prof. Dr. Barbara Friebertshäuser
Goethe University Frankfurt