'The Scientific-Technical Revolution' and the Educational Film of the GDR

Following the analysis of educational films from the subjects of physics, chemistry and biology as well as the evaluation of pedagogical research literature from the GDR, the project 'The Scientific-Technical Revolution' and the Educational Film of the GDR' addresses the question of how scientific and pedagogical actors dealt with the effect of the films on pupils. Contemporary handouts and studies particularly emphasised the motivational power of these audiovisual media; however, we will now ask more specifically how pupils were constructed and studied as recipients of technical teaching aids in the GDR's pedagogical and psychological research.
The rationalisation of teaching and the mechanisation of the classroom (subject classrooms from 1976) were declared to be the logical consequence of the 'scientific-technical revolution'. This 'technification', accompanied by scientific research on the use of technology in teaching, was continued in the 1980s into an emphasis on the 'creative'. The project examines the disputes surrounding the myth of 'progress through science'. This is done by reconstructing tensions, ambivalences and resistances in the narratives of the pedagogical field with the help of heuristically used oppositional paradigms, such as technification versus professional practice, systematic scientificity versus life practice, cognitivisation versus emotionalisation and aestheticisation.