On the dichotomy of teacher-centred instruction and self-regulated learning in Russian didactics

The author describes the situation of didactics in Russia from a historical perspective. He develops his argumentation with respect to three comparative studies, relates the comparison to the history of Russian didactics since the 19th century, and includes an analysis of international influences on Russian didactics. The comparison focuses on the dichotomy of teacher-centred instruction and self-regulated learning. In the light of this dichotomy, Russian didacticians have stressed the importance of the ??leading role?? of the teacher and of the ??teacher??s personality??.The Russian didactic tradition may become interesting for future research from an international and even global perspective since teacher-centred instruction seems to be receiving a new, positive evaluation based on empirical studies.     

Culturally colored didactics: The sociopolitical at the heart of second/foreign language teaching in Francophone geolinguistic spaces

This article analyzes sociopolitical influences in the construction of national didactic spaces. First, it provides a general framework of analysis. Second, it argues that Francophonie (the French-speaking countries and communities of the world collectively) constitutes geopolitical spaces sharing linguistic, cultural, economic and institutional constructions but that it is culturally and linguistically varied. This sociopolitical context gives rise to particular ideologies of language and to the consequent need for second/foreign language didactics. The examples of France and Quebec are used to show how contexts influence these didactics. Third, from the locus of professional associations, the paper shows empirically how geographic didactic clusters are both culturolinguistically colored and continentally influenced. It concludes that dealing with diversity (didactic diversity or linguistic and cultural diversity) is not an easy task: Both second/foreign language didactics and the constituent communities of Francophonie are searching for ways of being together in a postmodern world.     

School knowledge and didactic analysis: A research perspective in comparative didactics

The article presents some aspects of an approach to disciplinary teaching phenomena that adopts the new perspective of comparative didactics. This approach consists of implementing research projects that examine teaching problems in a comparative study of various specific didactics.In the first part of the article, examination of the origins of school knowledge leads to the proposal of a new tool for analyzing the phenomena of didactic transposition in a broader perspective. In the second part, a new tool is proposed for analyzing in-class teaching phenomena for different disciplines.     

Do teachers make all their students play the same learning games? A comparative study of learning games in biology and English as a second language

This article, based upon the field of comparative didactics, seeks to contribute to the identification of generic and specific features in the teaching and learning process. More particularly, its aim was to examine, through the study of two different school subjects: biology and English as a second language, how passive didactic differentiation can develop and account for the gap in progress growing between more-able and less-able students. For our analysis, we adopt a didactic viewpoint basing our study on what is going on in the class when the teacher and her students interact and use notions borrowed from the Joint Action Theory in Didactics. At the end of the article, we mainly argue that more teacher training focused on ‘objects of learning’ and ‘knowledge-in-use’ is necessary if we want teachers to be able to produce didactic milieus adapted to students with mixed abilities and, more generally, if we want to increase epistemic access.     

Introducing Secondary Education Students to Algorithms and Programming

In Greece, the development of the teaching of Information Technology (IT) in schools has been greatly influenced by the rapid development of technology, making IT literacy a priority for all individuals. Consequently, the teaching of algorithms and programming, with the ulterior motive of teaching modeling as well as problem solving, has been greatly limited in Secondary Education. However, we strongly believe that algorithms and programming constitute an important intellectual tool and should be included in basic education. In any case, both the research literature findings, as well as, our own experience confirm the fact that novice programmers come up against many mental obstacles in their attempts to understand the functioning of programs or the construction of algorithms. In order to deal with these difficulties and successfully teach the elementary concepts of algorithms and programming, we have developed didactic scenarios, which are based on specially designed educational software. In conjunction with this, we are attempting to develop a program for the systematic training of those students who will become IT teachers in Secondary or Primary Education. The most significant findings of our research are summarized as follows: (a) The development of educational software and its experimental use in the teaching process allow us to formulate several general rules related to the specific didactic characteristics, which these environments should include. (b) Educational software is effective only when it is incorporated within the framework of the didactic scenarios that the teacher organizes and which are supported by the software. (c) Teachers do not spontaneously use educational software in the context of this rationale. Therefore, specific training is required so that they adopt and use such software in didactic scenarios.     

Zur Erklärung der Teilnahme an hochschuldidaktischer Weiterbildung

In recent years, the need for didactic training in the field of higher education has become a focus of education policy. According to empirical evidence, however, only some of the university teaching staff participate in training opportunities. So far, only little empirical research has been undertaken to investigate the determinants of training intention in the area of university didactics. This article applies Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (TPB), for the first time, to this specific context and highlights the importance of perceived behavioral control and attitude in explaining training intention. For subjective norm, however, no direct effect could be found. In addition to the TPB predictors, direct and indirect effects of previous training participation on intention as well as the effect of training context on perceived behavioral control were assessed. Adding past behavior to the model resulted in a direct effect on intention and an increase of explained variance. With regard to the question of the sufficiency of the TPB, possible explanations are discussed.     

Experiences of a Research-based Approach to Teacher Education: suggestions for future policies

There is an ongoing discussion about teacher education today: its organisation, its academic status and the competence that results from different programmes. There is no one best way to organise teacher education. Rather, the appropriateness of organisation is related to the desired aims. In this article, we discuss one way to organise and implement academic education for class teachers, namely, a research-based approach, which has been used in Finland for the last 30 years. We elaborate on a theoretical framework for research-based teacher education and present empirical evidence for ways of implementing teacher education programmes, experiences and evaluations. Based on this evidence, we consider the present state of teacher education and suggest guidelines for the future. Research-based teacher education in Finland has been underway long enough to examine its results and its effectiveness in educating class teachers today. Together with our own research findings, the high-level performance of Finnish pupils in international examinations suggests that teacher education in Finland has been on the right course. We recommend that departments of teacher education should be established within universities and that teachers should obtain Master's degrees. Such steps will ensure that a higher conceptual level is adopted and that research is part of teacher education. Although our context is teacher education in Finland, the viewpoints expressed may be valuable for teachers, teacher educators and researchers on teacher education in a broader European context.     

Higher education journals as didactic frameworks

During the last 20 years, we have witnessed a growing interest in research in teaching, learning and educational development in higher education (HE). The result is that ‘Higher Education Didactics’ has established itself as a research field in its own right. This article explores Higher Education Didactics as a framework for academics’ professional reflection on teaching and learning, by mapping the didactic topics in all contributions in four journals in the period 2008–2015. Two of the journals are based in Scandinavia, where the European tradition of didactics (Didaktik) has been highly influential, while the others stem from the Anglo-Saxon curriculum tradition. The mapping shows that all journals are strongly occupied with teaching methods, especially methods grounded in theories of active and social learning. In contrast, didactic categories such as goal, content and assessment are rare topics. Students as participants and learners are a frequent topic in especially one journal, but receive little attention in the other journals. Also, educational technologies receive a varying degree of attention across the journals. Based on the mapping, this article discusses Higher Education Didactics as a framework for professional reflection in HE. It concludes that a broader range of research topics would be desirable and asks for future collaboration on the currently uncharted topics.     

Study and research courses as an epistemological model for didactics

The aim of this paper is explain how the notion of “study and research course”, a recent construct in the anthropological theory of didactics, provides a general tool to model mathematical knowledge from a didactical perspective. We do this from two points of view. First, the notion itself arose as a tool for didactic design, particularly in mathematics teaching involving modelling type subjects, and we introduce a new diagrammatic representation in order to present and analyse a selection of such designs. Secondly, we demonstrate how the same representational tool can be used to analyse other didactic processes as study and research courses. In both cases, our examination of cases reveals that designers and teachers are often more explicit about their intention to enable students to do “research” (e.g. exploring a challenging problem) than to enable students to engage in autonomous “study”; moreover, the role for students is mostly confined to search for answers to questions raised, essentially, by the teacher. These observations point to directions which deserve more attention in design research related to the notion of study and research course.     

德语国家普通教学论的核心命题与时代课题

德语国家(德国、奥地利以及瑞士)普通教学论历史悠久,对整个教育学科的建立与发展意义重大。普通教学论作为系统性、普遍性的教学理论,强调自身理论的主体性、师生对话的意义建构、教师清晰的指导与管理、教学的反思性实践。新的时代背景下,德语国家普通教学论的发展既坚守传统,又积极转向,系统分析其优劣特质可以发现:相关理论一方面具有整体性、独特性、指导性、反思性、规范性等特征;另一方面也面临着诸如学科地位下滑、缺乏实证研究支撑、自身理论发展缓慢、缺乏课程研究支持等问题。为应对信息技术时代学校教育的异质性、融合教育、移民教育、健康教育、数字化教育等新兴教学情境,相关研究呈现出新的发展趋势,转向"技术支持下团队合作"、"多主体协同建构"、"制定数字化教学新标准"。     

Lifting the cover: developing an analytical tool to unravel environmental education resources

Abstract

Evaluations of environmental education (EE) programmes and resources are becoming increasingly visible and important. While benefits accrue through evaluation, many programmes and resources have yet to realise these. Issues such as a lack of clear objectives, reliance on traditional, summative approaches and inattention to context have prevented rigorous evaluation occurring. This paper reports on the development of an analytical tool designed to unravel EE resources. Its theoretical basis is a socially acute questions (SAQ) approach and educational configurations teachers use when implementing this approach. Using these configurations, a series of interrogatory questions were developed to unravel a resource writer’s education intent – what type(s) of knowledge are valued, the view of science presented and the view of learning. Two contrasting resources were analysed to test this tool. This analysis revealed that one resource viewed knowledge as universal, had a scientistic epistemic posture and a doctrinal/pragmatic didactic approach whereas the other viewed knowledge as contextualised, had a relativistic epistemic posture and a problematising/doctrinal didactic approach. Consequently, this tool showed that it was able to unravel a resource writer’s intent, identify gaps so teachers could adapt a resource and build capacity for didactics of EE and its evaluation.     

Keyword: Didactics in Europe

Despite seeing great diversity in the European didactic landscape, the author searches for ground that is common to this diversity. He looks back to the ??Pampaedia?? of the founding father of didactics, Jan Amos Comenius, and attempts a constructive new start with the so-called didactic triangle in order to satisfy the scientific quest for certainty and security. Yet neither approach is convincing. The author therefore searches for elements that can be used in the construction of a future systematic approach by taking Gérard Sensevy??s Joint Action Theory in Didactics as an example. Application of this theory to the analysis and evaluation of four national reports on didactics, i.e. on Sweden, the UK, Spain, and Russia, runs into difficulties, although the reports yield interesting information for the delineation of comparative didactics. The Joint Action Theory is compared with the dialectical didactic theory of Lothar Klingberg, opening up further perspectives for comparative didactics in Europe. The four national reports, the systematic didactics of Sensevy and the example of dialectical analysis help identify the common ground for the future of European didactics.     

Solidarische Rivalen: Geschwisterbeziehungen in der Frühen Neuzeit aus der Sicht der Emotionsgeschichte

Teaching science is again receiving increased attention in educational science, didactic and political debates. This review article will present the focal points of research concerning the didactics of science and perspectives for the development of science teaching. It will look at the goals of science education, on the one hand, and at the topics of empirical research and studies concerning a substantive development of teaching and lessons in science, on the other. The contribution closes with an outlook on the implementation of new developments and future perspectives for science education.     

Gibt es Erkenntnisfortschritte in der Allgemeinen Didaktik? Ein empirischer Beitrag zur disziplinären Entwicklung der Schulpädagogik

This article deals with the disciplinary development of school pedagogy using the example of the development of general didactics theories. Addressing the question of progress in scientific knowledge of general didactics, we examine whether school pedagogy has established typical forms of disciplinary communication. In order to answer this question, we present the findings from a research project on the representations of the concept of didactics in pedagogical reference books. New knowledge from didactical research is rarely reported and the predominance of a few approaches cannot be explained by the availability of more or substantial knowledge. The findings confirm recent research which demonstrates that school pedagogy exhibits structural characteristics of a scientific discipline but makes only limited use of those to maintain typical forms of disciplinary communication.     

讨论式教学法在教师培训中的应用探析——以现代教育理论课程为案例

讨论式教学法是一种教师引导下以学生间的讨论交流为主的教学方法。从教学方法选择的六个依据出发,结合现代教育理论课程的特点,讨论法在教师培训中具有可应用性。     

Educational expertise: the concept of ‘mind frames’ as an integrative model for professionalisation in teaching

Professionalisation in teaching has been the topic of extensive research in recent years, following in general two different approaches: the ‘competence-based approach’ and the ‘critical reflection approach’. With large-scale comparative studies such as PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS at the beginning of the 21st century, the former approach came to dominate the field and—especially in Germany—a specific model of professionalisation advanced to the status of a paradigm. However, this model does not seem unproblematic when one considers its roots. In this article I begin by inquiring into the concept and methodology behind the status quo in order to reveal its limitations. As a means of developing this concept further, I then introduce a model of educational expertise that takes as its theoretical foundation the didactic triangle, which has a rigid systematic structure for critical and reflective thinking about teaching and is backed up by empirical findings. At the core of this model of educational expertise are mind frames, a concept established by John Hattie. They may be seen as a theoretically founded and systematically structured interaction between competencies and attitudes backed up by empirical findings. Thus, they stand for an integrative model for professionalisation in teaching. Finally, I use this model to provide an outlook on university teacher education.     

Moral education trends over 40 years: A content analysis of the Journal of Moral Education (1971–2011)

In 2011 the Journal of Moral Education (JME) celebrated its 40th anniversary of publication. It seemed appropriate to examine and reflect on the JME’s achievements by reviewing its evolution and contribution to the emerging field of moral education and development. Moral education trends, as reflected in the 945 articles published in JME from 1971 to 2011, were investigated by content analysis. The research objectives were: to discover the trends in moral education as represented by published articles and special issues (by analysis of disciplinary approaches, key topics, research methodologies and age-related educational levels) and to examine the international and gender-related development of the journal and the influence of its contributors (by analysis of first authors and editorial board members). The findings identify important concerns, key research topics and neglected areas in moral education and development. Analysis offers an insight into the contribution of JME as the main international interdisciplinary journal in this field, to the history of moral education, to theory and practice and in the changing socio-cultural contexts of the past 40 years. Discussion of the findings is offered, limitations are acknowledged and implications for future directions for the journal considered.     

Didaktische Entwicklungsforschung als Transferförderung

“Transfer” from research into practical applications is mostly seen as an autonomous domain between research and practice. For educational research, the author develops a conception in which transfer is a part of research, especially of applied educational research with a focus on teaching activities and teaching-learning materials. The criticism of traditional teaching research is examined and a research and development approach to didactics is proposed as a chance to combine theory and practice. The article comprises considerations on the scientific nature of research and development in didactics borrowing concepts from Bunge and Stokes and R & D in the economic sciences. The last section shows two research examples and closes with considerations for process and product evaluation in didactic research and development.