Článek
1. The Vagueness of Language and the Constructivist Point of Departure
Human knowledge and communication are not primarily based on the kind of precision we know from mathematics, but on the flexibility, ambiguity, and contextuality of language. Language is not a system of absolute values, but a system of meanings that acquire significance through their mutual relations and in specific communicative situations. It is precisely this vagueness—the capacity of concepts to carry multiple meanings and adapt to context—that is one of the fundamental characteristics of human communication.
This also presents a problem in the analysis of educational documents. Concepts such as knowledge, competence, autonomy, wellbeing, or individualisation do not have meaning in themselves. Their meaning depends on their relations to other concepts, on the distinctions in which they occur, and on the communication that can subsequently connect to them. It is therefore not sufficient simply to count their occurrences. We need to reconstruct what meaning they acquire within a particular communicative structure and how this structure changes historically.
The philosophical point of departure for this problem is constructivism, whose roots can already be found in Kant. Kant overcomes the simple opposition between empiricism and rationalism: although knowledge begins with experience, it is not a passive imprint of experience. The way in which we know the world is simultaneously conditioned by the structures of cognition itself. The knowing subject therefore does not merely receive reality but actively structures it.
From this point of departure, a constructivist line develops in modern thought that emphasises the active role of the knowing subject. In education, this is reflected in an emphasis on learner activity, the construction of knowledge, interpretation, and the process of learning. This can be contrasted with a realist orientation emphasising the existence of reality independently of the subject and, in education, above all content, the structure of knowledge, and disciplinary knowledge. This is not, however, a simple alternative. Rather, pedagogy continually reproduces the tension between content and process, knowledge and competence, the structure of subject matter and learner autonomy.
One consequence of the constructivist turn is decisive for the discussion that follows: the observer has no access to reality independently of the manner of observation. Cognition always selects, distinguishes, and designates something.
It is precisely this idea that Luhmann’s systems theory radicalises. The question then becomes not only what we observe, but above all by means of which distinctions we observe. This opens the way from analysing the content of a document to analysing the manner in which the document constructs its object—and thus to semantic analysis. Conversely, the results of the analysis can then be used to demonstrate how communication, or more specifically the document under examination, influences and transforms a particular social system.
2. Luhmann’s Theory of the Educational System
In Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, education is understood as a relatively autonomous functional system of modern society that reproduces its own communication and operates according to its own structures and distinctions. The fundamental unit of a social system is not the human being but communication. Human beings participate in communication, but their consciousness belongs to the psychic system, not to the social system.
The function of education therefore cannot be reduced to the mere transmission of knowledge. Educational communication is oriented towards changes in persons and their abilities and is simultaneously connected with assessment, selection, and the allocation of educational and social opportunities. Education must be distinguished from socialisation: socialisation generally occurs as a consequence of a person’s participation in social communication, whereas education and upbringing seek to bring about changes in the person intentionally.
Here arises one of the fundamental problems of education, which Luhmann describes as the technology deficit. Pedagogy has no reliable causal technology at its disposal that would make it possible to derive a particular outcome from a particular pedagogical intervention. A teacher can explain, assign tasks, provide practice, or assess, but cannot operate directly within the pupil’s consciousness. The pupil’s psychic system processes communication through its own operations. Teaching therefore cannot be understood as a linear transfer of information from the teacher’s consciousness to the pupil’s consciousness.
For the purposes of semantic analysis, educational communication can be examined in terms of three basic orientations. The first concerns the pupil as a person in whom changes in knowledge, abilities, attitudes, or actions are intended to occur. The second is directed towards education’s own operations and structures—the curriculum, teaching, assessment, examinations, or the organisation of the educational process. The third concerns the social environment, for example politics, the economy, law, science, the family, or the labour market.
The educational system is operationally closed, but not isolated. It does not directly adopt the demands of its environment; it can process them only through its own communication. For example, a demand from the labour market for particular abilities must first be translated into educational communication—as an educational objective, a competence, content, an outcome, or a form of assessment.
It is precisely here that a space for empirical analysis emerges. Strategies, Framework Educational Programmes (RVP), syllabi, standards, or methodological guidelines can be observed as communication in which the educational system selects particular problems, constructs particular persons and roles, and stabilises expectations to which further communications can connect.
The object of our research, therefore, is not what actually takes place in the consciousness of the pupil or teacher, but how the educational system communicates about the pupil, the teacher, knowledge, learning, and the aims of education.
3. First-Order and Second-Order Observation
The concept of observation is fundamental to Luhmann’s theory. To observe means to make a distinction and designate one side of it. The observer therefore does not merely register reality but observes it through particular differences. It is precisely this principle that makes it possible to move from general systems theory to semantic analysis.
At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish a person or role in communication from first-order and second-order observation. When analysing a document, we are not primarily interested in the teacher, pupil, headteacher, or parent as concrete human beings, but as persons and roles constructed by communication. The statement „the pupil manages their own learning,“ for example, attributes particular abilities, responsibilities, and expected actions to the pupil. Another communication may construct the pupil primarily as someone who acquires knowledge and demonstrates mastery of it. Semantic analysis can therefore also reconstruct changes in the implicit image of the pupil and teacher.
First-order observation uses a particular distinction to observe the world without making the distinction itself the object of observation. A teacher, for example, assesses performance through the distinction „met/not met“. A curriculum document may observe education through distinctions such as knowledge/competence, teaching/learning, content/process, authority/autonomy, or performance/wellbeing.
Second-order observation, by contrast, observes how another observer observes. It does not merely ask whether knowledge or competences are more important, but why education is being observed through this distinction in the first place, how both sides of the distinction are constructed, which side is preferred, and what remains unobserved as a consequence of this distinction. It thus reveals the contingency of observation: reality could also have been distinguished differently.
It is precisely here that semantic analysis can be defined as second-order observation. It examines not only what the document says, but through which differences it observes education, what persons and roles it creates, and what semantic alternatives it leaves in the background.
4. Semantic Analysis
In Luhmann’s conception, semantics is not merely the vocabulary of a particular period. Semantic structures provide communication with forms of meaning through which society can observe, describe, and change itself. Consequently, as social structures change historically, semantics changes as well.
A methodological bridge between this general theory and empirical research is provided by Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen, who uses Luhmann’s theory to analyse historical changes in concepts and modes of observation. For our purposes, the crucial idea is that the object of analysis is not the isolated meaning of a word, but the historically variable reservoir of meanings available to communication.
On this basis, a three-level model of semantic analysis can be proposed.
The first, lexical level, answers the question: What is being said? We examine frequencies, keywords, collocations, the emergence of new concepts, or the decline of older ones. We may, for example, investigate changes in the occurrence of concepts such as knowledge, subject matter, competence, autonomy, or wellbeing. A change in frequency alone, however, does not yet constitute a semantic change.
The second, semantic level, asks: Through which distinctions is observation carried out? It examines relations, oppositions, and asymmetries between concepts. We therefore investigate not only whether „competence“ occurs more frequently, but what meaning it acquires in relation to knowledge, content, action, or the pupil.
The third, systemic level, asks: What becomes communicable through these distinctions? Here we reconstruct the consequences of semantic changes: what image of the pupil and teacher emerges, what expectations are stabilised, and which pedagogical possibilities become more readily available for further communication.
The methodological procedure therefore moves from the empirical surface of the text, through the reconstruction of semantic differences, to systemic interpretation. At the same time, this prevents the researcher from imposing their own conclusion on the documents in advance.
The central thesis of the method can therefore be formulated as follows: The aim of systems-theoretical semantic analysis is not to quantify pedagogical vocabulary, but to reconstruct the historical transformation of the space of communicative possibilities within the educational system.
5. Meaning as Actuality and Potentiality
For the third level of analysis, Luhmann’s concept of meaning—Sinn—is fundamental. Here, meaning does not refer to the meaning of an individual word or to the content of a particular message. It is the medium of psychic and social operations that makes it possible to relate every actual communication to a horizon of further possibilities.
Every meaningful communication therefore simultaneously actualises something while leaving other possibilities in potentiality. It is precisely the selection of one possibility against the horizon of other possibilities that constitutes meaning. For semantic analysis, therefore, it is important not only what the document says, but also in relation to which alternatives a particular statement acquires its meaning.
This can be illustrated clearly by a simple example: „Fractions are taught in Year 4.“
This statement actualises a particular curricular possibility. Fractions could be introduced earlier or later, they could have a different scope or progression. By selecting one possibility, the curriculum creates expectations to which further communications can connect: the standard specifies the required level, the textbook elaborates the content, the teacher teaches it, and assessment verifies its mastery.
If such a specification is absent from the central curriculum, this does not mean that the corresponding meaning or structure „disappears“. It means that the central document does not stabilise the particular selection and that the decision is transferred to another level of the educational system. This transfer of selections between the RVP (Framework Educational Programmes), the School Educational Programme (ŠVP), the textbook, and the teacher can itself also become an object of semantic analysis.
This is connected with Luhmann’s distinction between medium and form. A medium consists of more loosely coupled elements that permit a greater number of combinations; a form emerges through their tighter coupling. The distinction between medium and form is relative to the level of observation: a particular form may itself function, at the next level, as a medium for the emergence of further forms.
This is precisely what is important for curriculum analysis. Meaning is the general medium of communication, but at a lower level a curriculum document can create a common medium for subsequent educational communication. What matters here is not the mere existence of the document, but the degree to which it bindingly stabilises particular selections.
In this sense, it can be said that syllabi created a common curricular medium of meaning: not because they were identical with Luhmann’s universal medium of Sinn, but because, through binding selections, they reduced the number of possible curricular arrangements and created a common basis for subsequent communication.
The situation is different with a vaguely formulated framework curriculum. If, for example, the RVP specifies only a general outcome or competence but does not determine the concrete content, its scope, sequence, or temporal placement, it leaves a greater proportion of these selections within the horizon of potentiality. Although the RVP still structures communication, it creates a common medium for its further concretisation to a lesser extent. The same selection must then be made again by the ŠVP, the textbook author, the school, or the individual teacher.
The difference between syllabi and a vague RVP can therefore be described in systems-theoretical terms as a difference in the degree of prior stabilisation of selections. Syllabi reduced complexity already at the central level; the framework curriculum transfers a greater proportion of complexity to subsequent levels of the system.
The example „fractions in Year 4“ simultaneously illustrates all three dimensions of meaning: the factual dimension—what is to be taught; the temporal dimension—when it is to be taught; and, indirectly, the social dimension—who may expect whom to have mastered a particular content. A binding syllabus thus creates not merely a content requirement but a stabilised structure of expectations to which further educational communications can recursively connect.
The problem of a vague RVP therefore lies not only in the fact that it contains less information. What is systemically significant is that it reduces complexity to a lesser extent and stabilises common expectations less strongly; it transfers the work of selection to lower levels of the system.
It is precisely this difference that can be captured by semantic analysis: it examines not only what has been actualised in the document, but also how broad a horizon of further possibilities the document leaves open and where it transfers the necessity of their further selection. The transformation of this relationship between the actualised and the possible is one of the objects of diachronic curriculum analysis.
6. Application to Diachronic Curriculum Analysis
The proposed procedure can be used, for example, to compare different generations of the Czech curriculum. The purpose is not to demonstrate in advance that education has undergone a shift from knowledge to competences, from the teacher to the pupil, or from performance to wellbeing.
At the lexical level, we can examine which concepts appear, become more prominent, or recede in individual documents. What matters is not only frequency, but also the emergence and disappearance of concepts and changes in their context.
At the semantic level, we investigate the semantic relations into which these concepts enter and the distinctions that the document creates through them. What matters is not only whether both sides of a distinction appear, but also their asymmetry: which side is marked positively, which requires justification, and which, by contrast, gradually recedes.
At the systemic level, finally, we ask whether these changes transform the space of possible further communication. If, for example, in one generation of documents the pupil is associated primarily with verbs such as know, acquire, practise, and master, while later associations such as choose, reflect, plan, cooperate, or manage one’s own learning appear, we can investigate whether the semantic construction of the pupil as a person is simultaneously changing. In the same way, it is possible to analyse changes in the role of the teacher or in the relationship of the educational system to psychological, economic, legal, or health-related issues.
A particular field of research is the determination of the degree to which curricular selections are stabilised. It is possible to investigate whether the transition from concretely specified subject matter, its sequence, and its standard to more general competence-based formulations broadens the horizon of possible concretisations and thus transfers a greater proportion of the work of selection from the central curriculum to the ŠVP, the textbook, the school, and the teacher.
Diachronic analysis therefore examines not only changes in individual concepts, but changes in the very architecture of educational communication.
7. Conclusion
Semantic analysis based on Luhmann’s systems theory and developed using Andersen’s analytical strategy makes it possible to connect the abstract theory of social systems with the empirical analysis of educational documents. The proposed procedure can be summarised in three questions:
What is being said? — the lexical level.
Through which distinctions is observation carried out? — the semantic level.
What thereby becomes communicable? — the systemic level.
Semantic analysis as second-order observation therefore does not merely trace changes in vocabulary; it reconstructs the differences through which educational communication observes its object, how it constructs the pupil and the teacher, and how it stabilises particular possibilities for further communication. Diachronic semantic change therefore need not mean merely the replacement of concepts. It may mean a transformation of what can be said about education as self-evident, how its problems can be formulated, and which statements further communication can connect to.
I repeat: The aim of systems-theoretical semantic analysis is not to quantify pedagogical vocabulary, but to reconstruct the historical transformation of the space of communicative possibilities within the educational system.
References
ANDERSEN, Niels Åkerstrøm; PORS, Justine Grønbæk. From Self-evident Norms to Contingent Couplings: A Systems-theoretical Analysis of Changes in the Relationship between Schools and the Function Systems in Denmark. European Educational Research Journal, 2021, 20(6). DOI: 10.1177/14749041211009742
ANDERSEN, Niels Åkerstrøm; KNUDSEN, Hanne; SANDAGER, Jette. Potentialising the Potential: Dream of Everything You Can Become, and Become Everything You Dream of. European Educational Research Journal, 2024, 23(4). DOI: 10.1177/14749041231167063
LUHMANN, Niklas. Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984.
LUHMANN, Niklas. Das Erziehungssystem der Gesellschaft. Ed. Dieter Lenzen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002.
