In his posthumously published work on education, Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) described his approach to the sociological observation of the educational system as a formal one. Only by refraining from more substantial definitions, based on what teachers hope to convey, he claimed, can education be understood in all its historical and geographical varieties. By rereading his oeuvre as a socio-historical account of modern school education’s morphogenesis, I inspect this so-called formal approach more closely and show how it brings together different understandings of its central notion, form. The underlying theoretical movements of Luhmann’s formal approach, composed of indication and delimitation, of generalisation and re-specification, provide useful hints for the study of those forms of education which today increasingly emerge outside of its formal institutions.

尼克拉斯·卢曼（Niklas Luhmann，1927-1998）在其死后出版的教育著作中，将他对教育系统的社会学观察方法描述为一种正式的方法。他声称，只有根据教师希望传达的内容，避免使用更实质性的定义，才能理解教育的所有历史和地理变化。通过重读他的作品作为现代学校教育形态发生的社会历史描述，我更仔细地检查了这种所谓的形式方法，并展示了它如何将对其中心概念、形式的不同理解结合在一起。卢曼形式化方法的基本理论运动，由指示和定界、概括和重新说明组成，