Wolfgang Klafki’s concept of ‘Didaktik’ and its reception in Russia

Abstract

We take the reception of Wolfgang Klafki’s didactics in Russia as our example for the difficult relations between knowledge transfer and knowledge transformation. We start with a description, analysis and evaluation of Klafki’s two didactical models, categorical didactics and critical-constructive didactics, and then describe and evaluate their reception in Russia. The paper demonstrates that while in Germany the concept of Bildung as transformation has pushed back interest in categorical and critical-constructive Bildung, interest in Klafki’s work is increasing in the Russian Federation and in other countries. Therefore we see an urgent need for didactical theory construction from an international and intercultural perspective.