Arts and Social Sciences Journal

According to Virilio, changes in society (hence globalization as well) can be monitored from the perspective of speed. From this point of view, it is also possible to explain the development of the society as a dromocratic development. In this case, we find that during a certain recent historical interval there was a fundamental event, which resulted in unusual acceleration in all areas of the society, and within the two centuries, the speed of some human activities reached its limit, the speed of light – for the first time in the history. Virilio thinks that in reality, there is no industrial revolution, but only dromocratic-speed revolution, there is any democracy, but dromocracy. Which means that by using terms such as the “industrial revolution”, “technological progress”, or globalization of modern thinking collectively refers only to the various striking phenomena, but the essential, less prominent issue eludesnamely, speeds. What characterizes the current form of globalization is an unstable mixture of fast information and slow movements, fast technology and slow society of technocratic liberalism. Besides monetary wealth standard, there is a globalized standard of the speed limit.

The research objective of this article is to identify didactic practice and its competence levels and discuss possible differences and common traits within these competence levels. Furthermore, the paper seeks to develop an understanding of didactic practice which is led by an educational interest related to the learning of an unknown future or that which is unforeseen. In search for a framework of such a didactic practice one of the findings of the paper is that hermeneutics falls short as this theory mainly revolves around understanding. If we are to take questions of the unknown and unforeseen seriously, so we argue, there is a need for another didactic approach. We suggest that ironic questioning may be complicit. Irony is about concealing and withdrawal of knowledge, so as to creating space for silence, doubt and reflection. Thus we argue that the ironic questioning may emerge as a complement to different competence levels of didactic practice, including planning, conducting and evaluation of teaching, and discussion of teaching and curricula or research, towards renewed didactic theory.