Mimetic Didaktik: Why "The Medium is the Message" in Teaching

Abstract

How can digital media contribute to the student’s Bildung in teaching? This paper presents a new set of concepts to deal with this challenge by regarding digital media in the classroom as mimetic objects (mimesis: Gk. imitation, representation, 400-500 BC). When media are used by the teacher to represent content in the classroom, they are not teaching methods neutral to meaning; media have great influence on how meaning is created. The main issues discussed are the challenges for the teacher posed by the digital screen enticing the students’ imagination. In the view of the paper, digital media can contribute to the student’s Bildung in teaching if the teacher, in her showing or telling, takes digital media’s aesthetics appeal to the senses seriously and is able to restrain or frame what is told or shown. The mimetic Didaktik perspective which is presented is supplemented by media aesthetic theory in the tradition of Marshall McLuhan.