‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’ and the World Education Research Association

Professor Brian Hudson

University of Sussex

Radio Edutalk

8th May 2014

Structure of input overall

Short overview of my background of the development of the World Education Research Association

My role on the WERA Council and the forthcoming WERA Focal Meeting in Edinburgh, 19-21 Nov 2014

My roles in leading the establishment of the EERA Network (2006-) and the WERA International Research Network (2014-) on ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’

My interests in ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’

The World Education Research Association (WERA)

WERA was established in 2009 as an association of national, regional, and international research associations aimed at advancing education research as a scientific and scholarly field. Individual membership has been introduced from 2014.

The next WERA Focal Meeting will be held in co-operation with the SERA Annual Conference at the University of Edinburgh, 19-21 November 2014. The Call for Papers is still open.

http://www.weraonline.org

EERA Network on ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’ – milestones

Grew out of TNTEE Network on Didactics (1996-99)

Curriculum Symposium on Didaktik: an International Perspective, ECER 2000, Edinburgh, September 2000.

Hudson, B. (2002) Holding complexity and searching for meaning - teaching as reflective practice, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34, 1, 43-57.

Network 27 established at ECER 2006 in Geneva.

http://www.eera-ecer.de/networks/didactics/

WERA International Research NW: Didactics – Learning and Teaching

Arose as a natural development of the EERA Network on ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’

Established in 2014 - web site: http://www.weraonline.org/?DidacticsIRN

Includes initial participants from Sweden, Ghana, Brazil, Canada, France, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, Niger, Benin, Thailand, Japan, UK and the United States.

My interests in ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’

Two key questions:

What has the study of Didactics offered me in terms of the development my own research, theories and practice?

What key issues have emerged from my search to derive meaning from this tradition in a way that makes sense to my own experience and practice?

Some key issues to emerge

Meaning making and intentionality

Recognising and holding complexity

Where attention is focused

Tools for holding complexity

The role of the teacher

Meaning making and intentionality

If we adopt the term Didaktik as a subsumption of all the mental effort directed at aspects of content, at the “what” of instruction and education (Allgemeinbildung) (as distinguished from the “how”, a topic of a theory of teaching and learning methods i.e. Methodik), the first task of a teacher engaged in preparation can be termed Didaktik Analysis.

(Klafki, 2000)

Klafki’s 5 questions for Didactic Analysis (What, What and How?)

1. What wider or general sense or reality do these contents exemplify and open up for the learner? …

2. What significance does the content in question or the experience, knowledge, ability or skill to be acquired through this topic already possess in the minds of the children in my class? ...

3. What constitutes the topic's significance for the children's future?

4. How is the content structured?

5. What are the special cases, phenomena, situations, experiments, persons, elements of aesthetic experience, ...

Recognising and holding complexity

Teaching as learning in practice (Lave)

Teaching and learning or teaching-learning ?

Obuchenie in Russian

Unterrichtfach in German

Opetus in Finnish as teaching-studying-learning

In Chinese ...

First character - to study ("I accumulate knowledge"/"a doorway")

Second character - to practice constantly("A bird flying"/"youth")

Where attention is focused

Through recognizing the complexity of the process of ‘learning’, particular attention is given to the studying aspect of this process, i.e. those key functions that need to be fulfilled in order to achieve the goal or end point of the process, which might be interpreted as a state of learning.

Tools for holding complexity - pedagogical relation

The Didaktik triangle

CONTENT

TEACHER pedagogical relation STUDENT

Figure 1 Pedagogical relation in the didactic triangle

Tools for holding complexity – the didactic relation

TEACHER

CONTENT didaktik relation STUDENT

Figure 2 The didaktik relation in the Didaktik triangle

Kansanen and Meri (1999)

Tools for holding complexity – the core of a teacher’s professionalism

Professional judgement or technical rules?

In view of the complexity of this aspect, it is observed that it is difficult to think that the didactic relation could be organised universally or according to some technical rules. Consequently teachers’ own practical theories and pedagogical thinking are seen to be of vital importance.

The role of the teacher (i)

Curriculum Managerial framework of curriculum technologies (Tyler Rationale)

Invisible agents of the system, animated and directed by the system

A/the major brake on innovation, reform and change of the system

Didactics Teacher at the heart of the teaching-studying-learning process

Sources of animation for the system

Teacher’s practice as the source of innovation, reform and change

The role of the teacher (ii)

Didactics provides a framework which places the teacher at the heart of the teaching/studying/learning process for teachers’ thinking about the most basic how, what and why questions around their work.

This follows from the emphasis that is placed upon Didactic analysis and from the relative professional autonomy of the teacher within this tradition.

The role of the teacher (iii)

Within the Didactic tradition, teachers are ‘licensed’ as self-determining professionals who work within a larger institutional framework that directs, but does not control, the details of their work. As in the case of lawyers and engineers, the work of teachers is based on an expectation of autonomy of practice and a system of self-discipline and peer review rather than of external control.

A final reflection

The ‘Didaktiker’ does not begin by asking how a student learns or what a student should be able to do or know. Rather, he or she looks first at a prospective object of learning in terms of Bildung, to ask what it can and should signify to the student, and how students themselves can experience this significance.

References

Hudson, B. (2002) Holding complexity and searching for meaning - teaching as reflective practice, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34, 1, 43-57.

Klafki, W. (2000) Didaktik analysis as the core of preparation for instruction. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann and K. Riquarts (eds), Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 197-206.

Künzli, R. (2000) German Didaktik: models of re-presentation, of intercourse, and of experience. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann and K. Riquarts (eds), Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 41-54.