5 
 

Diana Csorba  
University of Bucharest 

diana.csorba@fpse.unibuc.ro 
 

Argument for a Pedagogical 
Hermeneutics 

 
 

Keywords 
Hermeneutics, history of pedagogy, pedagogical reflexivity, 

historical hypothesis, interpretation 
 
 

Abstract 
 

This study aims to epistemologically analyze a series of 
arguments for which pedagogy must consistently harness 
hermeneutic strategies of interpretation and meditative 
reflection on the meaning and significance of the paradigms of 
education and their evolution over time. Current practice 
demonstrates that there are many difficulties in establishing the 
authentic meaning of a text about education. The meaning 
conferred by the author of the interpretation may not coincide 
with the proper meaning of the work analysed, even if it goes 
without saying that the meaning of a pedagogical conception 
must flow directly from the work itself, determined 
epistemological and axiological. The history of pedagogy, as an 
academic discipline, provides the favorable context for the 
practice of reflexive hermeneutic skills.   We believe that 
between archaeology and teleology proposed by any 



6 
 

pedagogical theory, the hermeneutics of the text necessarily 
interposes. 

 
1. Introductive Hypothetic-Reflexive Context: History  
     of Hermeneutics 

 
Teacher training programs offer sporadic, random 

opportunities for the cultivation of reflexive – interpretative 
skills of the hermeneutic type. The study of pedagogy courses 
capitalizes on pedagogical reflection methods in the formula of 
epistemological models at the level of theory, or example of 
good practice that are analyzed by reference to the internship 
achieved by reference to the positivist model. 

Identifying ways to practice and form the reflexive skills 
of future teachers has brought us to explore, analyze and check 
possibilities to capitalize on the History of Pedagogy course, in 
order to cultivate the reflexivity of future teachers by 
internalizing a specific algorithm of historical research of 
education and in particular hermeneutics as a method of 
interpreting texts. 

We have become increasingly convinced that actively, 
perseveringly and carefully consider each faith or supposed 
form of knowledge in the light of the foundations on which it is 
based and the conclusions to which they refer is not only a 
challenge but a pressing necessity of academic learning 
exercises in the contemporary university space. 

In this study we reflect from an epistemological 
perspective on some of the conclusions of the case studies that 
we have carried out in the course and seminar activities at the 
Department of Teacher Training, Faculty of Psychology and 
Education Sciences, Bucharest. 

Accompanied by the question: "Does the hermeneutics of 
the pedagogical text succeed in being applied to pedagogy for 



7 
 

the cultivation of reflexive professional competences?" we 
analyze the interpretation albeit that the history of pedagogy 
gives the teacher concerned with his own pedagogical 
reflexivity.  

Etymologically, hermeneutics originates in the Greek 
"hermeneutics" which signifies – interpretation. Dilthey's 
distinction between the two types of sciences: those "of 
nature" and "of spirit", between "explaining" and 
"understanding", will establish the concern to clarify 
substantially what hermeneutics mean in its essence. The 20th 
century will develop consistent theories about hermeneutics 
through the contributions of H.G. Gadamer (Heidegger's 
follower) to Germany and P. Ricoeur in France. 

Hermeneutics appears as a way to interpret the meaning 
of human intentions and actions, relativizing the approach of 
truth conceived according to the model of positive sciences. 

The specialized dictionaries insist on clarifying the 
meaning of the act of interpretation as a form of "explanation", 
of "translation" of the attribution of meanings, in one direction 
or another in order to clarify, find a hidden meaning, but also 
to judge a work in search of specific ways of expressing its true 
meaning. 

The old Aristotelian method, consisting of the grouping of 
phenomena into classes and genres and the use of syllogistic 
reasoning which established that everything that is valid for a 
genre is valid for all classes subordinated to it, was a viable time 
and brought added clarity to the explored universe. 

With the advent of Descartes' works, the universe no 
longer seems so simple to explore! He showed the ways and 
directions to go, achieving the junction of mathematics with 
physics, by the way that mathematics became not only an 
instrument but a model for physics, in which sentences would 
depend on principles considered obvious. "The spontaneity of 



8 
 

the spirit" and the "priority of psychic life over the physical 
world" – so clearly expressed in the established formula – 
cogito ergo sum! – gradually led to a revolution of concepts in 
science, to a new way of discovering through thought and 
experiment, the laws of nature. Later in history, Kant will affirm 
that it is our spirit that prescribes the laws of nature. 

Neutral, in Romanian philosophy, Mircea Florian (2002) 
told us that Descartes' lesson deserves all our attention by 
referring to the two fundamental principles "superior certainty 
of consciousness" and the idea of "ontological value of 
thought". 

Gaston Bachelard. In "La formation de l'esprit 
scientifique" (Paris, 1972), he carried out, much later, an 
analysis of scientific thinking and the progress of knowledge by 
overcoming obstacles. Bachelard groups under the name of 
"epistemological obstacles" the limits under which the previous 
knowledge stands and which must be overcome and replaced 
by another form of knowledge.  Any truly new knowledge is 
preceded by an "epistemological rupture", a rupture that 
separates the natural experience, unique to each of us, from 
the scientific one, inaccessible to all. All "pre-knowledge" must 
be denied in order to reach a new knowledge. The perspective 
reappears as renewed in the contemporary space when the 
relationship between the epistemology of education sciences 
and the methodology of research in education asserts itself as 
priority and necessity. 

But without continuing the historical trip, we appreciate 
that even today, any speech about the method is not redundant 
and numerous discourses are proposed, in different areas of 
human knowledge. Pedagogy could not and must not remain 
far from these debates. Any speech about the method will 
always be accompanied by a set of interpretations in an 
epistemological laboratory of hermeneutic consistency. 



9 
 

2. Pedagogical Reflection: About Hermeneutic Strategies 
 

Appreciated as historical messages, pedagogical texts 
reflect, globally, the image of a determined "pedagogical time". 
We wonder, in the hermeneutic process how can we connect 
to the authentic rhythm and vibration of that time, when, 
historically, we are part of another pedagogical time and 
beyond? 

Education is inseparable from historical, social, legal, 
political, psychological, etc. We identify in a positivist manner 
numerous causation that require explanatory, nuanced and 
fine interpretations to clearly delineate the lesson that history 
can portray. 

"Pedagogical work as a way of existence is a subjective 
act, consubstantial with the human, reflecting by distancing 
itself from less important, random aspects, the essence of one's 
own vision of the world, life and specifically of education. This 
does not mean breaking history, but just revealing its merits. 
Distance and proximity to pedagogical work allow the historian 
to learn the deep meaning of reflection, its place in the 
explanation of the universe of education." (Csorba, D., 2015, p. 
498), we appreciated, in an article focused on discovering 
whether historical experience can represent that normative 
court capable of supporting pedagogical reflexivity. 

Current practice demonstrates that there are many 
difficulties in establishing the authentic meaning of a text about 
education. „The meaning conferred by the author of the 
interpretation may not coincide with the proper meaning of the 
work analyzed, even if it goes without saying that the meaning 
of a pedagogical conception must flow directly from the work 
itself, interpreted in the social-cultural, scientific, complex 
context that has determined it.” (Csorba, 2015, p. 499). 



10 
 

In this problematic space we are interested in the 
predictive-objective qualities of hermeneutic strategies, the 
rigor and methodological objectivity that they must prove in 
the process of establishing the pedagogical, authentic meaning 
in determinative relationship with the historical truth, the 
scientific truth. 

Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German philosopher, 
appreciated in the book "Truth and Method" (2001) the idea 
that, "interpretation" as an act, is comprised of three moments: 
"understanding", "interpretation" and "application". Each of 
the three moments presents a particular, defining specificity: 
"to understand" implies to identify the true meaning or 
appropriate to the primary intention for which a message has 
been proposed, "to interpret" implies to give the message new 
and different understandings, “application” means adapting to 
a concrete, identifiable situation and extracting a practical-
educational meaning. The author emphasizes the idea, 
important for any hermeneutic act, that moments are in-
dissociable.  

We see this very clearly in the space of pedagogical 
hermeneutics: we cannot achieve understanding without the 
interpretation of messages. Synthetically derived significance in 
the end of a research of the history of pedagogy, is found in the 
preliminary anticipation from the beginning of the research, 
anticipation associated with interests and decisions 
conditioned by contemporary problems of theoretical or 
practical nature for which solutions are sought. 

For example, any reading of the history of pedagogy 
implies the highlighting of a meaning that cannot be dissociated 
from the guidelines, interests and even the cultural formation 
of the historian! An important notion proposed by philosophers 
helps us to understand more easily this inter-determination of 
the three moments. It's about the phrase "hermeneutic circle".  



11 
 

The teacher's consciousness, concerned with the research of 
education, will describe "circles" initiating infinite dialogues 
possible with the essence of the phenomena studied in order 
to then allow himself to build new perspectives of approach 
and understanding based on what happened through 
reconciliation with what is. 

The analysis of controversies in the study of the sciences 
of education is in the process of expansion and we notice how 
many polemics are born in this space. The methodological 
constraint that we feel in this context is the concern to follow 
with caution and wisdom the authors of pedagogical 
statements and not to do so in a teleological manner and to 
take them all seriously! A focal distance is needed in this 
respect: historical reporting and an anti-retrospective 
approach, with the authors who come to collectively define a 
meaning. 

More often than not, consensus occurs more easily when 
the material is standardized and researchers are cultured from 
each other and from the techniques they harness in research. 
In the space of education and its history as an object and as a 
theoretical court, the formulation of epistemological questions 
is an obvious difficulty and provokes us insistently. 

Educational reality is perceptible only fragmentarily and 
through prisms (social, cognitive, ideological, political, 
economic, philosophical, etc.) that are always deforming, and it 
is normal to appear a plurality of legitimate and interesting 
sentences. Even if we assume that in education the world is 
orderly and stable it never shows itself in its immediate truth. 
We will always be in the education research space in a position 
to initiate and re-initiate readings that will suggest what the 
order of the "pedagogical nature" might be! 

For a long time in the history of pedagogy, pedagogical 
evidence is the result of localized interrogations of a series of 



12 
 

educational ideas and practices. The scientific effort consists, in 
this case, of correctly appreciating their overall relevance. Of 
course, we will not forget to point out that lack of consensus 
plays a key role in science and particularly in the space of socio-
human sciences such as pedagogy.  A theoretical and "positive" 
discourse succeeds critical and approximate approaches and 
the "History of Pedagogy" offers rich opportunities for the 
formation of hermeneutic skills of future teachers. 

We must admit that any scientific activity is one of 
interpretation and invention placed in a spatial context 
(physical, social, etc.). Such a perspective conveys to us that any 
scientific approach in the field of education can be conceived as 
a temporal succession, as a sequential and progressive 
accumulation of discoveries. Depending on their veridicity, they 
are diffused and so we have a rather spatial representation of 
knowledge. We can recognize the heterogeneity of the regimes 
of legitimacy and harmonization––the agreement of the 
authors––on the substance and effects of pedagogical 
readings––that another future will contradict or not! 

Producing and negotiating meaning between the 
different actors of a pedagogical reading for the production of 
pedagogical knowledge is an essential condition of pedagogical 
hermeneutics.  The emergence and fixation of the meanings of 
the texts read requires an effort to explain and contextualize 
the multimodal. 

The focus on a number of historically conditional needs 
determines the lack of depth of the research conclusions, 
because the actors of pedagogical readings are ideologically 
dependent on the networks in which they act. 

In historical research, the relationship between 
hermeneutics and hypothesis goes beyond the much-known 
meaning of the natural sciences, where the hypothesis is an 
unknown rationale of a sentence that gives the explanation of 



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a fact.  In its substance, the historical hypothesis is itself a form 
of interpretation, a sentence about the past before it is subject 
to verification, with a certain degree of retrospective - reflexive 
and anticipatory foundation.  

Pedagogical hermeneutics develops in a systematic 
process of analyses and synthesizes that will tamp in the 
process of retrospective knowledge of the world and the reality 
of education, which is of epistemological, axiological or even 
ontological interest. "The formulation and foundation of 
hypotheses in the pedagogical research process but also in the 
process of reflective interrogation on the decisions necessary 
to optimize professional practice, refer to the decoding of 
primary information through external and internal criticism of 
sources / data. The establishment of facts and explanation 
(including the establishment of the law) and the construction of 
the historical image is gradually achieved through successive 
integration and theoretical reintegration" (Csorba, 2015, p. 
500)  through the hermeneutics of the text. 

For the value of hermeneutics in the historical research of 
education, it is important to remember that, more often than 
not, contemporaries see only the literal meaning of each of the 
successive facts. The true meaning of events will only be shown 
to future generations. If in the phenomenological sense of the 
word, "understanding" represents the sense of the living 
meaning, the interpretation transcends the meaning of the 
lived, because it discovers a hidden meaning. 

The epistemological rupture between direct experience 
and explanatory theory about that experience is evident, from 
experimental science to interpretive science. In the first case 
theory is a set of formalized sentences (a mathematical 
language), in the second case, theory is a proposed meaning. Of 
course, we do not deny that an interpretation can be ingenious, 
convincing by its own light but always arbitrary because there 



14 
 

is no experimental device to validate its righteousness or 
falsehood! 

As a modern work of art in which the idea of "expressing 
the truth" is not predetermined in the unrepeatable act in 
which it was conceived, increasing its valences with the passage 
of time, being continually recreated and redefined by all those 
who become co-authors in the process of interpretive reading.  
In a broader analysis framework, the educational phenomenon 
is an "Opera aperta" an "open work", as Umberto Eco would 
call it, which makes all those who want to understand its 
meaning, "small new creators", broken away from foreign 
influences, identifying new messages, thinking critically, 
deriving new hypotheses, interpreting. 

 
3. Hermeneutics in Historical Research of Education: Possible  
     Applications or Pedagogical Reflexivity 
 

We can formulate hypotheses on how to decipher the 
information contained in the springs, hypotheses on their 
critical analysis, hypotheses about causalities, which can 
integrate all information about the past, proposing a specific 
narrative on which we will reflect. Questions are formulated 
and ways to find answers are anticipated. 

Hermeneutically, the hypotheses can be formulated as 
attempts to answer, before giving a basis to it and as an answer 
after its basis to the questions asked. In the process of 
formulating questions specific to historical research, as well as 
during the reflective process, we operate with three types of 
questions presented as fundamental (Csorba, 2015, p. 
498/500): (a) fact graphic questions such as: What happened? 
The answers consider describing the realities, their complete 
presentation, in most situations in a narrative perspective; (b) 
explanatory questions: Why did this happen? How did it 



15 
 

happen that it happened? What relevance does a current 
problem have in the recurring problematic context of past/but 
future educational theories and practices? (c) theoretical 
questions: What scientific laws can be established by studying 
the past of educational experiences, at the level of theory and 
generalized practice? 

Narrative responses can be formulated in many ways, 
theoretically infinite, but if we consider the legislative-
prescriptive answers we expect as precise formulations as 
possible, which requires rigour and objectivity in the reflective 
process of drawing the conclusions of our studies. 

Open to the philosophical positivist guidelines, taking 
over the models of nature research, pedagogues have sought 
and assiduously seek absolute truths to justify the science 
sense of their own pedagogical conclusions. In opposition, 
history determines the pluralistic structure of ideas and 
practices about education which, at a glance, suggests a 
"pedagogical anarchy", with Dionysian features, which 
prevent us from easily anchoring in the quiet port of a 
definitive and compact system. Certain opinions, contrary to 
pedagogy, state that there is no historical explanation in the 
scientific sense of the word but only a way of organizing 
stories about education, in an intelligible plot.  It is accepted 
that the pedagogical truth is from a historical perspective, a 
truth relative to the times, cultures, people! 

The relativistic adherence of pedagogy to historical 
becoming has made history, apparently, a kind of guillotine. Are 
we passing or not, the test of time with the substance of 
wisdom of our conclusions about education? „Under the 
impact of the establishment and affirming of humanistic 
sciences and the resoundingly dispute over the issue of 
scientific rationality and other types of rationality, 
hermeneutics acts today as a major theoretical and 



16 
 

methodological enterprise, bringing together, through an 
authentic style of thinking, "the experience of truth" and the 
historical consciousness, as well as a cognitive model which 
subscribes an emotional participation in the modern 
reconstruction in logic, methodology and philosophy of science, 
in the history of philosophy and culture. In Plato's dialogue Ion, 
Socrates says that "poets are nothing more than translators of 
gods, each possessed by that one who has them in control", and 
performers, those who sing the texts of poets, are called 
"interpreters of the interpreters". Similar to poets, the experts 
in a domain, particularly those of education, are in a position of 
translating the significance of metaphors crystallized in time 
with regard to education. An exercise of historical analysis 
allows identifying the main metaphors that have led to the 
foundation of the educational process as a whole in the 
diachronic and the synchronous perspective” (Csorba, 2015, p. 
767). 

An absolute pedagogy could be recognized by its timeless 
character, severing any form of connection with the past, 
expecting from the future confirmation and preservation, 
perpetual. Hence the fear of approaching, in an apollinic spirit, 
the thoughts of education that reflect a reality, marked, 
especially in this century, by an unprecedented dynamic, of 
major transformations, difficult to predict and control. And yet 
time has no patience!  Precisely, the impossibility of a system 
of absolute truths, in terms of education, brings pedagogy 
dependent on history. Indeed, it could reduce pedagogy to its 
history. Not necessarily in the restrictive and harmful sense, 
that of reducing such a complex field to a number of 
associations between the educational ideas and practices of 
certain times, but especially with a view to accepting the 
dynamics of the field as a space for continuous becoming and 
transformation. 



17 
 

In pedagogy, the experience of truth is contextualized 
and it depends on the productive nature of the systemic 
understanding of specific realities. The concern to establish 
epistemological pedagogy, as socio-human science, 
systematically envisages references to an axiological and 
methodological framework of historical type. The 
hermeneutics of any pedagogical text refers to a specific 
period, well delineated over time. This approach does not take 
into account eminently historical reasoning, but, in particular 
and more often, (more or less declared), pedagogical concerns. 

The history of pedagogy is a product of pedagogy and not 
of history. The spirit in which a history of pedagogy is developed 
is the sure sign of the specific transformations of the field of 
pedagogy.  On these issues we continue to reflect. The 
reticence, more or less openly stated, concerning the 
exploitation of historical research in the evaluation of the 
educational phenomenon, synchronically and diachronically, 
call into question issues concerning the relativity of this type of 
approach.  

In a framework of analysis of the relationship between 
philosophy and history, Mircea Florian (2002) affirmed a 
significant aspect that can be analyzed prolifically in the space 
of the relationship history and pedagogy: "Until now historical 
research has been of great use a history of systems, types of 
thinking, not problems. The systems come and go, but the 
problems remain" (Florian, 2002, pp. 192-193). 

The problems facing the school of our time come and go 
back with a recurrence that is hard to imagine, in uncontrolled 
waves, no matter what solutions are proposed and what 
sources of pedagogical scientific foundation they may have. 
One of the purposes of pedagogy should systematically pursue, 
identify and historically reveal the problems that the school has 
faced and faces for a time and a space and how they have been 



18 
 

thought ably reflected in the pedagogical works of the time. 
Cultural problems and values demand historical temporality, 
but also ensure the independence of thought from the 
historical aspect. 

Pedagogy is forced to integrate history, time, the place of 
realization into an indefinite process of the problems it strives 
to solve by referring to the cultural values of humanity to which 
it is subordinated and for whose permanence justifies its 
existence and meaning. History thus becomes an integrative 
factor of a system of socio-human conceptions, and the 
association of temporality with pedagogy is not a sign of 
weakness but on the contrary. 

Pedagogy needs more than any other discipline of its 
history. If the sciences of nature, called exact, not by chance, 
can ignore people, pedagogy must not detach itself from them, 
their specific peculiarities and their human purpose, 
established at the level of destiny. The person is historically 
conditioned, and from this derives an essential peculiarity of 
pedagogy and its object of study – education – which is 
addressed to the unique people – the historical character. "The 
role of the historian is to discover, under these diverse 
appearances, the eternal man, always like his own" (Aries, 
1995, p. 66), Philippe Aries tells us in a reference work for the 
grounding of historical research. 

Multi-perspective in history research is not simply the 
application of the hermeneutic method. It aims to expand the 
scope and depth of historical analysis on a particular theme or 
phenomenon.  Until the 1980s and 1990s, historical research 
was focused on transmitting a huge amount of information, 
organized chronologically, with a predominant focus on events 
and personalities. After the 1980s, the first concerns differed 
from those previously mentioned, which must be considered by 
both education historians and reflective teachers. 



19 
 

There is currently a widening of the centers of interest, 
aiming at a "total history" encompassing different evolutionary, 
philosophical, economic, social, political, cultural, educational 
series capable of providing a systemic picture of reality in its 
temporal perspective.  The problem of a predominantly 
narrative history (important to be properly recognized and 
harnessed) is today subordinated to a new perspective of 
analysis and interpretation, following the conflicts of ideas and 
phenomena of anticipation or constancy that mark and/or 
structure a certain evolution. Account shall also be taken of the 
interdisciplinary relationships that exist and can be highlighted 
in evolution. Deepening a temporally determined stage sends 
interrogations to the content of a previous or/and future 
period, addressing the invitation to open new investigations, 
recalling that there is still "unwritten history" and un-
interpreted (see Csorba, 2015, p. 33). 

 
4. Open Conclusions: New Spaces for Pedagogical  
    Hermeneutics 

 
The use of the past allows a better understanding of 

concepts, their emergence and dynamics, their reflection in 
educational practices, as well as current scientific methods. It 
can be appreciated that there is a genuine historical evolution 
of the notions of a field and that with the passage of time many 
expressions have changed their meaning, but in a symbolic 
sense of context, they can be used inappropriately. History 
allows the practice of the skills to achieve interpretations and 
correlations between categories of facts, ideas, realities, 
allowing clarification of the relationships between the 
development of individual thinking and that of configured 
temporal scientific ideas. 



20 
 

History helps to explain and understand the nature of 
research/knowledge activity, allowing the demarcation 
between the ideologies of some epochs, between the initiated 
scientific theories and the promoted school practices. Routine, 
the proposed models of action for imitation are critically 
analyzed, from the perspective of clear benchmarks in their 
area of theoretical foundation as well as in that which has in 
mind the educational practice with advantages and limits, 
vulnerabilities, special conditions. 

Interpretation of current practices will be achieved by 
reference to a coherent set of theoretical models and 
pedagogical applications, validated or invalidated by time, or 
temporarily ignored for objective or subjective reasons (see 
Csorba, 2015, pp. 20-22). 

On the basis of the same sources, representations of 
educational facts, accepted and proven pedagogical theories 
argued in educational practice can lead to more or less similar 
reconstructions of the past as well as reflective projections of 
formative, future approaches.  The history of pedagogy, like the 
history of any field of socio-human knowledge, recognizes that 
the more a sentence refers to a greater chronological and 
geographical area, the more its theoretical character extends 
beyond the constraints of individual facts. The so-called 
"ontological spaces of the historian" (Topolski, 1987, p. 6) are 
thus created, being, as the framework drawn in research by 
one's own knowledge, attitudes, within which the research 
undertaken can be moved. 

Both education historians and reflective teachers must 
build common hermeneutic spaces that allow for axiological 
and praxiological understanding. Of course, independent of 
their own hermeneutic spaces, reflexive historians and 
practitioners must critically question - interpretively the 



21 
 

universe of education, prolonging any hermeneutics in the 
space of solving contemporary school problems. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



22 
 

References 
 

Aries, Ph. (1995). Timpul istoriei. București: Editura Meridiane, 
București. 

Csorba, D. (2011). Scoala activă. Paradigmă a educației 
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Csorba, D. (2014). Recursul la trecut. O istorie deschisa spre 
viitor! Revista Concept, 8, 30-42. 

Csorba, D. (2015). Metaphor in Science Education. 
Implications for teacher education. Procedia-Social and 
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Csorba, D. (2015). Historical experience-principle of 
pedagogical reflection. Management Intercultural, 34, 
497-502.  

Florian, M. (2002). Experiența ca principiu de reconstrucție 
filosofică. București: Editura 100+1 GRAMAR. 

Gadamer, H-G. (2001). Adevăr şi metodă. Bucureşti: Editura 
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Topolski, J. (1987). Metodologia istoriei.  Editura Științifică și 
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