Exemplets didaktik

Abstract

This article is a philosophical investigation of the example's function as a didactic practice. In teaching, it is common to use examples to concretize, clarify and give students a knowability of the taught content, but this knowability also implies something. But this knowability also means something specific. The article specifically discusses religious education and religious diversity in a Swedish school context. In the article I argue, drawing on Giorgio Agamben's understanding of the example, how the example stands for itself, but which also, in its specificity and singularity, moves towards what is visible next to it. The example and its knowledge have a movement between two singularities – and not as a movement between a part and the whole, i.e., not between the particular and the general. It creates something, Agamben writes, which not only involves methodology (and subject didactic questions) but also ontology. The article argues that the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a didactic strategy, which also can have implications for students' subjectivity. Overall, the article is a theoretical contribution which show how the use of examples in teaching has the potential to function as a vital didactic strategy within teaching.