ABSTRACT
Whenever scientists or philosophers thought and communicated about education, the planning of instruction in and outside schools was at the core of their pedagogical reflections. Good examples to demonstrate this are the theoretical considerations ofJ. Dewey (1922) or of Scherer (1907), who described mainstreams of empirical education since the days of Pestalozzi whereby he focused on German educational scientists such as Niemeyer, Frobel, Diesterweg, Ziller, and others. Evidently, their contributions to the so-called empirical education were primarily founded in the philosophy of the 18th and .19th centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new epoch began. Strongly influenced by the psychology of Wundt in Leipzig, Lay and Meumann developed novel conceptions of experimental education and didactics, respectively (cf. Lay, 1903, 1912; Meumann, 1907, 1914). Interestingly, these German scientists also considered experimental education a "linking science" (in the sense of Dewey) with its source domain in experimental psychology and its target domain in the educational practice of instruction and teaching. On the whole, Lay, Meumann, and also Fischer (1913) established a comprehensive program for empirical research on teaching that, at its core, continued to be valid until today.
