Reflections on the congress theme “disruptions”

Disruptions allow and provide opportunities for new beginnings, fundamental reconsiderations, and the conceptualization of alternative directional approaches to education and training. They form a constitutive part of growing up, socialization, and education. The basic dialectical tone and the colorful metaphors used in the context of disruptions, upheavals, breakthroughs, collapses, or new departures point, not least, to the fundamental anthropological issue of a fragile existence. Not only does the notion of the human fragment testify to this, but so does the phenomenon of the breakthrough as an elementary gain of knowledge along the fault lines of experience. Both in individual life courses and in the context of organizational or societal developmental processes, rifts mark disruptive changes. The dynamics of such social and cultural transformations, technological innovations, political upheavals, or increasing diversifications of educational and professional careers require pedagogical actors to deal with such breaks, discontinuities, and transitions.

In educational theory formation and historiography, methodological perspectives, and pedagogical fields of action, disruptions may take on diverse forms. The topic of the 30th Congress of the German Educational Research Association thus allows for different approaches from all sections of educational science: for example, performative or institutional disruptions could be examined, or social inequalities and risk factors could be emphasized.

The vastness of the research field surrounding this topic is apparent in the variability in interpretations and the implicit evaluations of the term in the context of developmental and educational processes: educational careers rarely take a linear course; rather, they are marked by crisis-like upheavals, disruptions, or the breaking-out of institutionally pre-structured life course patterns. From the perspective of learning theories, one has to expect motivational disruptions and crises caused, for example, by factors of stress and insecurity, which, at the same time, provide special opportunities for learning and individual development.

Thus, from an educational perspective, disruptions not only poise inherent challenges but also point to a decidedly positive and – for pedagogical thinking – indispensable dimension. The evaluation of disruptions in this context always remains bound to actor-related perspectives that change over time. Essential new approaches in educational and pedagogical thinking, as well as ideological and institutional processes of change, are also to be seen as responses to historical challenges or problems that ought to be overcome through reform or visionary alternative concepts aimed at a better future. Disruption, as the detachment from what has been achieved so far, is also always the driving force behind every development. Individual developments are questioned due to crises and thus allow for the formation of new and “updated” identities.

With the topic of this congress, we aim not only to identify problems but also focus on necessary moments of transition which hold potential for innovation and the positive shaping of the future.

Contribution formats

As part of the 30th GERA Congress, various formats for exchange, debate, and information are planned to present and address the conference theme as well as other currently relevant topics in educational research.

Further information