The pedagogy of the college seminar: historical background and contemporary interpretation

Abstract

This article focuses on college seminars, created in eighteenth-century Germany, which was consolidated as a quintessential pedagogical tool, capable of objectively combining research and teaching, consequently giving rise to the emergence and assurance of the modern and contemporary researcher. It seeks to contribute, both theoretically and practically, to what is an always-unfinished discussion about pedagogy and scientific creation. The text is divided into two parts, the first of which attempts to capture the essence of the seminar, while the second describes an ongoing seminar experience today. In short, the article aims at identifying seminar pedagogy, then and now, as the expression of an adventurous spiral in which the academic “coming-to-be-together” is intrinsically connected to the creation of inventive thinking processes. A methodology attempting to overcome both time and distance is thus developed. On the one hand, it emphasizes the importance of oral exchanges between students and teachers; on the other, it focuses on the slow and systematic labor of intertextual appropriation. These two fundamental practices bring together all those who, past and present, identify themselves with a pedagogy of inventive writing and seek to reflect on it within the higher education.