Scientific Observation, Technological Knowledge and Education Policy – 75 Years of DIPF

Project Description

The eventful history of the DIPF, founded in 1951 as the “HIPF Hochschule für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung” (HIPF), renamed the “Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung” (DIPF) in 1964 and operating under the name “DIPF | Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education” since 2018, is linked in many ways to the socio-political and cultural history of the Federal Republic of Germany and reunified Germany. From the very beginning, the Institute has been subject to significant political, educational policy, and scientific expectations, necessitating its repeated efforts to address these demands and the controversies surrounding it. Additionally the institute had to constantly redefine the relationship between educational research and educational policy in its practice.

The aim of the publication project is not to reconstruct the institutional development of the Institute and the history of its main actors in the traditional sense. Rather, it will be in the sense of a “prehistory of contemporary problem constellations” (Hockerts, Hans Günther (1993): Zeitgeschichte in Deutschland - Begriff, Methoden, Themenfelder. In: Historisches Jahrbuch 113, 98-127, p. 124) or a “problem history of the present” (Doering-Manteuffel, Anselm & Raphael, Lutz (2012): Nach dem Boom. Perspectives on contemporary history since 1970. 3rd, supplemented edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 25-26). It will be examining the relationship between scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge, which has become problematic once again in the knowledge-based society, with regard to political utilization and legitimization of political decisions, and reconstructing the transformations of these relationships.

This project will analyse the history of the institute from various perspectives, with a focus on the development of educational science and social science-oriented educational research. These two areas will be examined from the perspectives of social history and the history of ideas. However, the primary focus will be on practice, including the organization of the institute, its staff, the organization of science within the institute, and the methods of conducting practical research. The history of the Institute will be used to trace the stages and different periods of German educational history since 1945. Furthermore, it will correct the usual narrative that empirical educational research in Germany emerged only with the founding of the Institute for Educational Research in the Max Planck Society (1963).

Project Management

• Prof. Dr. Sabine Reh

Project Team

• Dr. Tilman Drope

Project Details