Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue

Didaktik and Curriculum in
Ongoing Dialogue
Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue revives the dialogue between

the continental European Didaktik tradition and the Anglo-Saxon tradition
of curriculum. It highlights important research findings that bridge cultural
differences and argues for a mutual exchange and understanding of ideas.
Through analyses of shared conditions and cultural differences, the book
invites a critical stance and continued dialogue on issues of significant
importance for the current and future education of children and young people.
It combines research at empirical, conceptual, and theoretical levels to shed
light on the similarities between the Didaktik and Anglo-Saxon educational
traditions, calling for a comprehensive understanding of teaching and a renewed
focus on content and knowledge.
Addressing theoretical issues within contemporary educational scholarship,
the book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate
students in the fields of curriculum studies, education theory, and comparative
education.
Ellen Krogh is Emeritus Professor in Education Sciences in the Department

for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Her research areas
include disciplinary didactics, L1 studies, comparative education, and writing
in the disciplines.
Ane Qvortrup is Professor in Education Sciences in the Department for

the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Her research areas
include general didactics, curriculum studies, and student trajectories and
transformations of learning environments.
Stefan Ting Graf is Docent in Didactics and Pedagogy in the Faculty of

Education and Social Sciences at UCL University College, Denmark. His
research areas include learning media and digitalisation, teaching and learning
designs, curriculum studies, and theories of Bildung.
Didaktik and Curriculum
in Ongoing Dialogue
Edited by Ellen Krogh,

Ane Qvortrup, and
Stefan Ting Graf
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Ellen Krogh, Ane Qvortrup,
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-56810-8 (pbk)
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390
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Contents
List of figures vii

List of tables viii
List of contributors ix
Preface xiv
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction: Didaktik and curriculum in ongoing dialogue 1

E L LE N K RO GH, ANE Q VO RTRUP, AND STE FAN T IN G GR A F
PART I
Contemporary educational discussions within
a Didaktik/curriculum frame 23
1 Bringing content back in: rethinking teaching and teachers 25

Z O N GY I D E N G
2 From Didaktik to learning (sciences) 41

TO B I A S W E RLE R
3 Content in American educational discourse: the missing link(s) 65

N O R M F R I E SE N
4 Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung: deep learning in

the anglophone tradition of curriculum studies and the
Didaktik of north-west Europe 83
S T E FAN TI N G GRAF
5 Curriculum development as a complex policy process in

Denmark and Germany: two cases of competence-oriented
curricula in social science education 103
A N D E RS S T I G CHRI STE NSE N
vi Contents
PART II
Directions of educational scholarship within
the field of didactics 117
6 Towards laboratories for meta-reflective didactics: on

dialogues between general and disciplinary didactics 119
E L LE N K RO GH AND ANE Q VO RTRUP
7 Bildung as the central category of education? Didactics,

subject didactics, and general subject didactics in Germany 137
H E L M U T J O HANNE S VO LLME R
8 ‘Didactiques’ is not (entirely) ‘Didaktik’: the origin and

atmosphere of a recent academic field 164
B E RN A RD SCHNE UWLY
9 Non-affirmative school didactics and life-world

phenomenology: conceptualising missing links 185
M I C H A E L U LJE NS AND TI NA K ULLE NB E RG
PART III
How to construe the thematics of Didaktik
and curriculum 205
10 The dialogue between Didaktik and curriculum studies

within mainland China 207
BA N G P I N G D I NG AND XUN SU
11 Teacher responsibility over intended, taught, and tested

curriculum, and its association with students’ science
performance in PISA 2015 across Didaktik and
curriculum countries 222
A RM E N D TAHI RSY LAJ
12 Education as language and communication (L&C):

a blindness in didactics and curriculum theory? 234
S I G M U N D O NGSTAD
Index 254
Figures
3.1 The component phases of an instructional system 67

3.2 The didactic triangle 72
3.3 The didactic triangle 72
8.1 Schema of didactic transposition 172
8.2 Analysis of the didactic transposition 174
8.3 Concepts for analysing the functioning of the didactic system 175
11.1 Intended curriculum 228
11.2 Taught curriculum 229
11.3 Tested curriculum 230
12.1 Utterance in context as a combination of five constituents 241
12.2 Five basic aspects constituting utterance as communication 242
Tables
2.1 Reform phases and reform objectives of teacher education

in Scandinavia 44
2.2 Disciplines and subdisciplines of learning sciences 53
4.1 Forms of knowledge 94
4.2 Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung 97
5.1 Normative principles of democracy and demoi-cratic
criteria in OMC governance 111
11.1 Associations of teacher responsibility items and control
variables to PISA 2015 science performance (curriculum-
full model) 230
11.2 Associations of teacher responsibility items and control
variables to PISA 2015 science performance (Didaktik-
full model) 231
12.1 Overview over epistemologically related triads in different
fields and disciplinaries 240
12.2 The national curriculum for Norwegian (as L1) 243
Contributors
Anders Stig Christensen is a senior lecturer in teacher education at UCL

University College in Odense, Denmark. He did his PhD thesis on compe-
tencies in social science education at the University of Southern Denmark.
He was chair of the ministerial committee working on the curriculum for
social studies in 2014 and 2019. He has been a visiting researcher at the
Technische Universität in Dresden and the University of Hamburg and is a
member of the GPJE Society for Civic Education Didactics and Civic Youth
and Adult Education. He has also participated in organising the Nordic
conference on subject didactics, NOFA, and is co-editor (2021–2023) of
Nordidactica: Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education. He has pub-
lished mainly on social science didactics in journals including Nordidactica
and Acta Didactica Norden.
Zongyi Deng is Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the UCL Insti-
tute of Education, University College London. He is also an executive edi-
tor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies (JCS) and has held faculty positions
at Nanyang Technological University and the University of Hong Kong.
His interest areas include curriculum content or subject matter, curriculum
theory, didactics (Didaktik), curriculum policy and reform, and compara-
tive and international education. His publications appear in JCS, Curriculum
Inquiry, Comparative Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers and
Teaching, Cambridge Journal of Education, Science Education, and other interna-
tional journals. His latest book is Knowledge, Content, Curriculum Theory and
Didaktik: Beyond Social Realism (Routledge).
Bangping Ding is a professor of comparative education in the College of
Education, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China. His major research
interests centre on comparative didactics/pedagogy and international science
and technology education. He has published two books on international
science education in Chinese, some book chapters and journal articles on
science and technology education in English, including Encyclopedia of Sci-
ence Education (Springer, 2015), International Handbook of Research and Devel-
opment in Technology Education (Sense Publishers, 2009), Theorizing Teaching
x Contributors
and Learning in Asia and Europe: A Conversation between Chinese Curriculum

and European Didactics (Routledge, 2017), and Eurasia Journal of Mathematics,
Science and Technology Education, as well as over 100 articles on science and
technology education, comparative didactics/pedagogy, and other topics in
the Chinese journals.
Norm Friesen is Professor in the College of Education, Boise State University.
Dr Friesen has written over 100 articles in journals ranging from C-Theory
to AERA’s Educational Researcher and has published ten books. Dr Friesen has
recently translated and edited Klaus Mollenhauer’s Forgotten Connections: On
Culture and Upbringing (Routledge, 2014) as well as a book on Existentialism
and Education in the thought of Otto Friedrich Bollnow (Palgrave, 2017).
He recently completed The Textbook and the Lecture: Education in the Age of
New Media, a monograph from Johns Hopkins University Press exploring
how textbook and lecture remain pre-eminent in educational practice to this
day. Dr Friesen is active in the areas of educational technology, philosophy
of education, and qualitative research. He studied German philosophy and
critical theory at the Johns Hopkins University and has worked as a visit-
ing researcher at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the Leopold-Franzens-
University (Innsbruck), and the University of British Columbia (Vancouver).
Stefan Ting Graf is Associate Professor and head of the research programme
in general Didaktik at UCL University College Denmark. He has been in
charge and involved in several development and research projects with schools
at primary and lower secondary levels that focus on digitalisation of teaching
and educational media, and on related issues such as inclusion, differentiation,
inquiry-based teaching, learning platforms, and learning analytics. Besides
his work with realistic evaluation of interventions, his research interests range
from theory of general Bildung, citizenship education, and quality of teach-
ing and learning to special issues of liberal schools. Most recently, he edited
two anthologies: Digital Projektdidaktik (Didaktik for Digital Project Work,
Aarhus University Press, 2021) and Efterskolens praksis under lup (Praxis of
Independent Boarding Schools in Denmark, Klim, 2020).
Ellen Krogh is Emeritus Professor in the Department for the Study of Cul-
ture, University of Southern Denmark. She has held positions as head of the
Research Programme for Didactics at the University of Southern Denmark
and as chair or board member of national, Nordic, and international research
organisations such as ARLE (Association for Research in L1 Education) and
ISAWR (International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research).
Her research interests include disciplinary didactics, comparative and interna-
tional education, L1 studies, writing, and literacy. She has published widely
within these fields, both in Danish, addressing the Nordic community, and
in English. Her latest English language publications are the co-edited Under-
standing Young People’s Writing Development (Routledge, 2019) and chapters in
Green and Erixon: Rethinking L1 Education (Springer, 2020).
Contributors xi
Tina Kullenberg holds a doctor of philosophy in education at Kristianstad

University (Sweden), working as a lecturer with teacher students from vari-
ous programmes, and the Master’s Program in Educational Science. The
body of research includes both learning research and teaching research.
However, a special area of interest is pedagogical communication, applying
dialogic perspectives on teaching and learning. Moreover, she has a back-
ground from the area of music education, both in theory and practice. She
is also conducting a series of interviews for the conference network EARLI
and its special interest group for Educational Theory (SIG 25). Some of
her latest publications are “Transforming Volcanos to Buncanos in Eventful
Dialogues: Children’s Remembering-in-Interaction” (in Thinking Skills and
Creativity) and, together with co-authors, “Dialogic Analysis vs. Discourse
Analysis of Dialogic Pedagogy: Social Science Research in the Era of Posi-
tivism and Post-Truth” (in Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal).
Sigmund Ongstad was until 2015 Professor in Educational Sciences at Oslo
Metropolitan University and is now Professor Emeritus at this university. He
is a former leader of the International Association of Research in Mother
Tongue Education (MTE), the International Mother Tongue Education
Network (IMEN), and the Nordic Network for Research on MTE. Ongstad
has been a board member of Writing Across Borders (WRAB), of Council of
Europe’s project Language and/in Education, and deputy head of the board of
the Norwegian National Research School in Teacher Education (NAFOL).
His research concerns L1, communication, teacher education, curriculum
studies, writing, disciplinary didactics, genre theory, and biocommunication.
Results are found at https://app.cristin.no/persons/show.jsf?id=63544. His
latest research is on life-genres in Biosemiotics and L1 in Green and Erixon’s
Rethinking L1 Education (Springer, 2020).
Ane Qvortrup is Professor in the Department for the Study of Culture, Uni-
versity of Southern Denmark, and head of the Research Programme for
Didactics at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interests
include general didactics, curriculum studies, and longitudinal studies of
student developments and transformations of learning environments due to
disturbances from globalisation, reforms, and the like. She has published
widely within these fields, both in Danish and in English. Her latest pub-
lications are on student developments and historical changes in academic
standards in the Danish upper secondary school.
Bernard Schneuwly is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Educa-
tional Sciences at the University of Geneva where he taught Didactique des
langues. He was dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Educa-
tion, founder and director of the University Institute of Teacher Education,
and is currently director of the Competence Center of disciplinary didactics
in French-speaking Switzerland. He conducts research on the history of
didactics as an emerging research field and of school knowledge, on teaching
xii Contributors
first language in ordinary classrooms, and on Vygotskij’s theory. His last

co-edited books (in French) are Reading Reputedly Literary Texts in School:
Disciplination and Sedimentation, History of Educational Sciences in Switzerland
from the End of the 19th Century to the Midst of the 20th Century, and Imagina-
tion in Vygotskij’s Oeuvre: Texts and Comments (in press), and (in German)
Transformation of School Knowledge from 1830 to 1990 in Switzerland (in press).
Xun Su is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of International and Compara-
tive Education, the Department of Education, Capital Normal University,
Beijing, China. She taught Basic Theories of Pedagogy and the Didactics
and Curriculum Theory in a local college of Hebei province for six years.
Her research interests include didactics and curriculum theory, science edu-
cation, technology education, and STEM education. Her latest Chinese
publication is a textbook for primary teacher education students, entitled
Primary Education (Jiangsu University Press, 2019).
Armend Tahirsylaj is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of
Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His
research interests span across a number of research domains, primarily per-
taining to curriculum theory, Didaktik, education policy, teacher education,
international large-scale assessments, and international comparative educa-
tion. His latest publications focus on teacher autonomy, teacher monitoring
methods, and teacher education programmes and outcomes across curricu-
lum and Didaktik traditions as well as curriculum policy issues related to
competence-based curricula in national and international perspectives and
appear, among elsewhere, in Journal of Curriculum Studies, European Journal of
Teacher Education, Curriculum Inquiry, and Curriculum Perspectives.
Michael Uljens is Chair Professor of General Education and Educational Lead-
ership at Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, Finland, since 2003. He has held
positions as chair professor in education at Helsinki University, Finland, and
as visiting professor at different universities in Sweden, Germany, Malta, US,
and China. He is PI in an international research programme on Non-Affir-
mative Education Theory and Research. The non-affirmative position argues
that understanding schoolwork requires a multi-level and multi-professional
approach informed by core concepts in the theory of education. His books
include School Didactics and Learning (Psychology Press, 1997) and a co-edited
volume Bridging Educational Leadership, Curriculum Research and Didaktik
(Springer, 2017).
Helmut Johannes Vollmer is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Languages
and Literature at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, where he taught
English (as a foreign language) and English linguistics, but also applied lin-
guistics and subject didactics (EFL). Earlier positions were at the Universities
of Bremen and Leipzig as well as in England and the US. His research inter-
ests include pragma-linguistics, discourse analysis, bilingualism/bilingual
Contributors xiii
education, and more recently subject-matter didactics (especially EFL). He

directed the Research Center for Bilingual Education and Multilingual-
ism in Osnabrück. He published widely in Germany/Europe and North
America – his latest co-edited book (in German) was Learning within and
Beyond Subjects (Waxmann, 2020). He was the co-founder of the German Asso-
ciation of Foreign Language Research, of the Association for Fachdidaktik, and
also of two peer-reviewed journals: Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung (ZFF)
and Research in Subject-Matter Teaching and Learning (RISTAL).
Tobias Werler is Professor of Education in the Faculty of Teacher Educa-
tion, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. His research
interests cover Didaktik and Bildung theory, policy of teacher education,
as well as teacher education as performative practice. Werler has been
appointed member of the long-time research and evaluation panel on pre-
service teacher education reform (FFL, 2009–2015). Werler’s research spans
over theoretical and empirical work; his work is published in German, Nor-
wegian, and English. He is the Norwegian editor of the Didaktik-related
journal Nordisk Tidskrift för Allmän Didaktik (NOAD). Recently, he edited
the book The Struggle for Teacher Education (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Preface
The Network for Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue was estab-
lished in January 2018 at an opening seminar at the University of Southern
Denmark. The network takes its departure in the global educational changes
towards outcome orientation and the enhanced focus on learning objectives
and learning data. These shared conditions, however, neither even out regional
and national cultural differences nor eliminate the continuing need for inter-
national dialogue. Thus, the aim of the network is to revive and renew the
Didaktik–curriculum dialogue, formally initiated in the early 1990s, in the light
of current challenges.
The opening seminar called for theoretical as well as empirical studies in
curricula and teaching practices reflecting these challenges. The hosting Danish
research community welcomed participants from the Nordic countries, central
Europe, Singapore, and Canada for interesting and enlightening presentations
and discussions. Most of the chapters of the present book originate in the
seminar presentations. In addition, other prominent scholars within the field
have been invited to submit chapters on themes or fields that would otherwise
be missing in the book.
The 2018 seminar as well as this book created inspiration for future dialogue.
The open and explorative agenda of the opening seminar raised issues that call
for more focused elaboration and investigation. The second network seminar
and the related publication will focus on educational issues of knowledge and
Bildung within the wider cultural and political context of fake news and sus-
tainability. We envisage eminent scholarly dialogues and explorative studies that
throw new light on highly topical issues of the current educational field.
Acknowledgements
We are most grateful for the funding of the Danish Research Council for Inde-
pendent Research that enabled the establishment of the Network for Didaktik
and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue, the network seminars, and the publica-
tion of the present book. We also want to thank the seminar participants for
their contribution to vital dialogues and not least the authors of the chapters of
this book who maintained engagement in the project through comprehensive
processes of reviewing and editorial work.
We owe thanks to the unknown publisher reviewers whose critical remarks
and suggestions led to important improvements of our proposal. When chapters
were submitted, two prominent researchers within the field accepted to take
on the task of reviewing the book. We are highly grateful for their supportive
and critical reviews, which offered a substantial contribution to the quality of
the book. Thank you also to Maria Davidsen who prepared the manuscript for
submission and secured consistency and accuracy.
Finally, we wish to thank Professor William Pinar, University of British
Columbia, for inspiration and support. In November 2018, he generously
offered his time and effort during our visit to Vancouver, introduced us to
interesting scholars in his department, and organised days of truly complicated
and stimulating conversation across continents and educational traditions.
Introduction
Didaktik and curriculum in ongoing
dialogue
Ellen Krogh, Ane Qvortrup, and
Stefan Ting Graf
This volume aims to continue and update an international and intercultural

scholarly dialogue that was started in the 1990s. It is the outcome of the first
seminar of an international network project, initiated at the University of South-
ern Denmark in 2018 and funded by the Danish Research Council. While
acknowledging the tradition and the salient scholarly contributions to the dia-
logue, the present network project departs from a very different situation than
the original initiative. Today, heading into the 2020s, scholarly contact, shared
academic impulses, and cooperation across geographical and geopolitical borders
are more frequent than ever; neoliberal policies of quality assurance, account-
ability, and standardisation are globally shared conditions. Nonetheless, curricu-
lar policies and institutional practices – and research approaches – still tend to be
shaped by regionally sedimented “constitutional mind sets” (Hopmann, 2008,
2015). In the same way, as Autio has stressed (2014), although there is a shared
need for new intellectual, economic, and political theories of learning, curricu-
lum, and reform, important historical differences also have to be considered.
Thus, we face a changed and changing landscape that makes it no less important
to revive and renew scholarly endeavours of exchange and comparison.
The backdrop to the present volume is the preceding three decades of dia-
logue and research on cultural and geopolitical differences between the Anglo-
Saxon tradition of curriculum studies and the north-west European Didaktik
tradition. There is much knowledge to gain from the first wave of dialogue by
way of the conceptual understanding of culturally bound differences. The 1990s
forum for dialogue was initiated in the wake of increasing interdependence and
harmonisation of education systems across national borders, creating a need
for mutual exchange and understanding. Conferences and seminars resulted in
comparative research into the historical roots and core notions of the two tra-
ditions as well as translations of classical Didaktik texts into English (Gundem
and Hopmann, 1998; Hopmann and Riquarts, 1995; Westbury, Hopmann and
Riquarts, 2000). The dialogue initiative grew into the new millennium and led
to an impressive number of monographs and journal issues. This overwhelm-
ing field covers – just to mention some channels and contributions – a large
number of studies and several special issues of the Journal of Curriculum Studies,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-1
2 Ellen Krogh, Ane Qvortrup, Stefan Graf
as well as special issues of the European Educational Research Journal (2007, 2017),
representing work within Network 27 of the European Educational Research
Association (EERA). We should also mention edited volumes by Hudson
and Meyer (2011); Hopmann et al. (2012); and Siljander, Kivelä and Sutinen
(2012). An impressive and influential project is the comprehensive Handbook of
Curriculum Studies (2003), edited by William F. Pinar and in the second edition
from 2014 revised and extended to include local curriculum studies from 34
countries around the globe. As argued by Pinar:
However hounded by globalization, the curriculum remains nationally

based and locally enacted and experienced. Whether that fundamental fact
supports tendencies toward cosmopolitanism or provincialism cannot be
ascertained apart from studies of national context: historical, social, and
cultural.
(2014, p. 12)
Taking stock in 2015, Stefan Hopmann, a pivotal agent in this project, stated
that for him the project was primarily “an opportunity to investigate Didaktik
and curriculum theory as historically evolved forms of reflection within the social
system” (Hopmann, 2015, p. 14, original emphasis). He did, however, charac-
terise the situation in 2015 as complex and dystopian. At the level of policies,
he argues that chronic crises in the two traditions have made them “seek salva-
tion” by borrowing core tools from each other, ignoring the experiences and
empirical limits of the sources. Hence the continental European education sys-
tems have copied the US test culture, while state-based curricular formats have
spread in the United States and most of the Commonwealth countries (p. 14).
At the level of scholarly work, Hopmann finds that independent researchers
within both traditions face an almost insoluble dilemma between involving
themselves in, and thereby legitimising, current educational processes that lead
to foreseeable ‘collateral damage’, or being marginalised and thereby letting
down the teachers and their students to whom they are accountable in the first
place. Operating between these extremes, scholars need to search for options
for acting in a didactically responsible manner. Hence, Hopmann concludes:
This leads us, perhaps surprisingly, to the conclusion that it is not less, but
much more Didaktik and curriculum theoretical efforts and even more
dialogue – the international exchange of experiences – that is needed in
order not to lose our orientation on this rocky path.
(Hopmann, 2015, p. 20)
This call for continued and renewed dialogue is echoed by other contempo-
rary voices. Ligozat and Almqvist (2018) suggest that divides within the field
may be overcome through two parallel strands of comparative research. One of
these strands addresses the relationships between the theoretical constructions
Introduction 3
of research traditions and the epistemologies they are embedded in; this would
require the double process of examining the historical and philosophical roots
of their emergence and empirically examining how they operate. The second
strand addresses empirical issues of diference between educational contexts,
school subjects, curricula, and classroom practices.
Tröhler (2014) and Horlacher (2018) take the challenge of compara-
tive research a step further. Tröhler calls attention to the fact that differences
between the educational traditions of Didaktik and curriculum are not con-
fined to educational theories but also include the self-construction of educa-
tional scholars (Tröhler, 2014, p. 60). He further argues that understanding
education means understanding the cultural constructions of the child and
of the future citizen. Comparative research needs to reconstruct the genealo-
gies of these constructions, since by learning about other systems of reasoning
across times and spaces we gain the “chance of becoming aware of ourselves as
historical and cultural constructions” (Tröhler, 2014, p. 65). In her comparative
conceptual study of the German Lehrpläne and the anglophone curriculum,
Horlacher (2018) shows that these are not just exchangeable terms but imply
different belief systems of schooling as well as different styles of reasoning or
modes of thinking. She argues that research needs to be configured indepen-
dently of national theoretical and conceptual traditions in order to provide
truly internationally comparative research. Along similar lines of thought to
Tröhler, Horlacher suggests that the concept of curriculum or curriculum his-
tory may serve for inquiring into the ways societies institutionally organise
schooling, socialisation, and the learning opportunities they desire (Horlacher,
2018, p. 12).
The goal of the present network project is to rise to these challenges by
framing explorative approaches at three levels. We aim at:
1 exploring how the transnational shifts of the educational systems may be

understood in the light of the scholarly dialogue between Didaktik and
curriculum – as well as in the light of other relevant differentiations;
2 a investigating how these shifts manifest themselves at different empirical
and conceptual levels;
3 and, finally, developing comparative research strategies that serve to throw
light on these manifestations while meeting the just-discussed challenges.
Thus, we ask what constitutes truly international comparative research that
may also elucidate our scholarly self-constructions.
The Danish research community, which initiated and organises the current net-
work project, has not previously hosted activities within the ongoing Didaktik
and/or curriculum dialogue. For this research community, historically rooted
as it is within the Didaktik tradition, the main frame of international refer-
ence is the Nordic countries and Germany and German-speaking countries.
Within this cultural configuration, however, the changing educational and
scholarly landscape has given rise to new theoretical and conceptual devel-
opments (Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume), as well as a growing interest
in engaging in and contributing to the wider international exchange. The
concrete impetus for the network project was, however, radical changes in the
educational landscape as well as changes at the level of research funding and
academic practices.
At the level of educational policies, over the latest decades, frequent curricu-
lar reforms and neoliberal management strategies have transformed the Danish
educational system. Core manifestations are the shift from content-based to
outcome-based or competency-based study regulations, the enhanced focus
on transparency in learning objectives, and the preoccupation with learning
data (Ehlers, 2013). The backdrop against which these changes have unfolded
is the transnational trend of intensified political interest in education as a con-
tributory factor to economic growth, as in the OECD and the EU. We also
see a pattern of importation of educational strategies and tools from the Anglo-
Saxon curriculum tradition.
At the level of research funding and academic practices, the latest decade has
witnessed a growth in educational research due, among other things, to a new
governmental funding agency focusing on primary and secondary education
(cf. Holmberg et al., 2019, p. 10ff.). In parallel, there has been a shift in public
funding towards more policy-oriented and strategic research. In the field of
academic practices, whereas Danish educational research was previously domi-
nated by qualitative approaches, there has been an enhanced focus on quanti-
tative and mixed-methods methodologies, as well as design and intervention
research. Finally, we find a growing international orientation, mainly towards
English-language publication channels.
The network project thus originates in a strong call to examine and under-
stand these changes at a more fundamental level than through the optics of
immediate before/after dichotomies, and, through this, to develop departures
for new research strategies. This call has been echoed in ample indications that
Danish educational history is not exceptional, although probably most recog-
nisably in the Nordic region (e.g. Holmberg et al., 2019; Hopmann, 2008)
and in the wider field of countries and regions embedded in the Didaktik
tradition.
Our network project organises encounters and research exchange, aiming to
map existing knowledge on these issues and to develop models for investigat-
ing the impact of current educational changes at both theoretical and empiri-
cal levels. As documented in the present volume, this call has been met by a
diverse range of studies. Interestingly, a prominent trend in the comparative
empirical studies is that similarities or continuities rather than expected dif-
ferences have come to the fore. Still, we have also found studies of conceptual
differences between Didaktik and curriculum concerning issues of knowl-
edge and content. The general picture is of a complex field where different
new conceptualisations or theoretical approaches are offered in response to
Introduction 5
contemporary transnational discourses and to the changes and challenges of

education, schooling, and scholarly knowledge practices.
In the following sections, we investigate the main dualities and develop-
ments within the field that are discussed and responded to in this volume. By
relating the chapters to a more general picture before introducing them in
their own right, we aim to illustrate the exploratory approach of the network.
The network dialogues have investigated the current manifestations of reform
in different national and local educational contexts and also their impact in
these contexts. This cross-dialogue has allowed us to capture the global per-
spectives without leaving out the concrete manifestations and thus to gain the
important insight that contemporary societal challenges worldwide look very
similar, even if the cultural and national histories and traditions from which
they are approached are very different. The reciprocal movement between the
concrete, local/national and global perspectives has, however, also shed light
on the complicated pattern of change that globally shared conditions lead
to when they encounter the different regionally sedimented constitutional
mindsets (Hopmann, 2008, 2015). Thus, we need to repeatedly remind our-
selves that the configuration of Didaktik and/or curriculum is a cultural and
geopolitical issue, and that it is only appropriate to access and understand the
issue as such.
Dualities and developments within the contemporary

educational field
Teaching and learning

As indicated above, core manifestations of the changing educational landscape
are the shift from content-based to outcome-based or competence-based study
regulations, and an enhanced focus on learning objectives and learning data.
These manifestations have been a central focal point in the dialogues under-
taken in the network, and they are also discussed in several chapters in this
book.
The issue of learning objectives and data clearly relates to a global tendency
to understand schooling primarily as a place of learning and only to a lesser
degree a place of education (Horlacher, 2018). As suggested by Biesta (2012,
p. 37), we have witnessed a new language of learning in education, a shift from
teaching to teaching-and-learning – deliberately written in one word as this
is how many people seem to use it nowadays – leading to a ‘learnification’ of
the education system (Biesta, 2010). This trend has deflected attention away
from education and teaching, and consequently from the discipline of didactics
and from theories of instruction and has placed activities referring to learning
at centre stage (Haugsbakk and Nordkvelle, 2007). However, as one delves
into the national and local contexts, it is clear that the learnification of the
education system can be linked to three parallel and interacting, but distinct
discourses that coalesce in a shared and growing uncertainty about the aim and
content of education as it relates to enhanced societal complexity. As suggested
by Yates and Collins, curriculum “has been the subject of vigorous national
debate in recent years, debates both about who should control curriculum and
about what should be included in subjects” (2010, p. 89). In this volume we
find similar references to the current age being determined by uncertainty and
contingency (cf. Werler, this volume). Addressing the issue of contingency,
Krogh and Qvortrup suggest that contingency management and didactisation
are ways to maintain sensitivity towards the complexity of teaching in an age
where both concepts of knowledge and content and the aims of education are
under pressure in a state of permanent change. Taking a different and phenom-
enological approach to this issue, Uljens and Kullenberg argue that:
curriculum theory and didactics . . . need to explain how to balance and
span the gap between the regime of imposed curricula (that is, educational
values and means predefined from the perspective of society) and the more
open-ended, student-centred idea of freedom in schooling.
(p. 185, this volume)
In the following, we shall investigate three discourses of learning: the discourse

of the knowledge society, promoting the concept of competence the discourse
of efcient learning and learners, drawing on educational psychology; and the
constructivist discourse of learner-centred education.
The first discourse is related to the growing emergence of the ‘knowledge
society’ (Hargreaves, 2003). Within this discourse, knowledge and learning are
regarded as fundamental resources for future development. It made its mark glob-
ally with the UNESCO report of 2005, Toward Knowledge Societies: UNESCO
World Report, but it must be understood in the light of developments in the
Western world in the early part of the twentieth century: the so-called second
industrial revolution and the concept of ‘human capital’ (Becker, 1964; Mincer,
1958). Within this discourse, learning is often associated with the concept of
competence, such that:
the concept of competence is not formulated in terms of a particular, edu-

cational goal to be achieved but rather in terms of imparting the capabili-
ties necessary for the future, without actually having to specify what this
means concretely.
(Horlacher, 2018, p. 9)
We might also say that schooling changes “from an emphasis on knowing things
to being able to do things” (Yates and Collins, 2010, p. 89). In the volume,
the discourse of the knowledge society is the object of Christensen’s study.
In comparative analyses of the competence orientations of, respectively, social
Introduction 7
science education in Denmark and political education in Germany, Chris-

tensen documents the strong influence of the concepts of competence in the
OECD DeSeCo project and the European qualifications framework – arguing,
however, that the processes of integrating these concepts should be viewed as
new forms of international democracy.
The discourse of efficient learning and learners is inspired by an educa-
tional psychology that focuses on cognitive processes, often associated with an
interest in the effectiveness in and the effect of education and teaching (Hor-
lacher, 2018). Globally, it manifests itself in the OECD report of 2009, Creating
Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First Results from TALIS. When it
comes to effectiveness in education and teaching, the concrete actualisations of
this discourse appear, for instance, in a preoccupation with study abilities and
proficiencies, study time, etc., in the context of teaching students to become
efficient learners in relation to the variety of learning objectives that they meet
both inside and outside the education system. As suggested by Horlacher, “The
abilities and proficiencies of each student are the undisputed central focus, for
the key aim is to ensure that the individual student will be competent for his or
her future life” (2018, p. 9). When it comes to the focus on the effect of educa-
tion and teaching, the very clear example is the increased awareness of results
in and the transnational comparisons of PISA, TIMMS, etc., and other kinds of
high-stakes testing (Hopmann, 2008). Another example is the strong focus on
teachers’ efforts to design teaching activities based on meta-studies of the effect
of various teaching strategies (Hattie, 2009).
The discourse of efficient learning manifests itself in several book chapters,
Deng (p. 25) suggests that the “preoccupation with academic standards, learn-
ing outcomes and high-stakes testing” has driven the topic of content out of
both policy and academic discussions on teaching and teachers, and he advo-
cates that content be brought back into the conversation. Friesen emphasises
similar matters, both when arguing that, thanks to the learning discourse, a
differentiated notion of ‘content’ has been missing from American educational
and curricular discourse for decades, and when discussing approaches to reme-
diating this situation. Werler investigates whether the traditional Didaktik nar-
rative of Norwegian teacher education has been substituted by the OECD
narrative of learning sciences as necessary requirements for effective learning,
and argues for maintaining the Didaktik narrative, since Didaktik competence
allows teachers to teach in the complex and contingent world of schools and
classrooms.
As indicated, the third discourse – learner-centred education – has a con-
structivist orientation (Richardson, 2003; Terhart, 2003). This discourse was
evident in a number of influential 1990s projects across the globe: From Teach-
ing to Learning (Barr and Tagg, 1995), Responsibility for Your Own Learn-
ing (in Norwegian: Ansvar for egen Læring; Bjørgen, 1991), and PEEL, the
Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (Baird and Mitchell, 1986). Based on
a constructivist understanding, it was suggested that in education, “the chief

agent in the process is the learner” (Barr and Tagg, 1995, p. 21), which further
meant that:
learning environments and activities are learner-centred and learner-

controlled. They might even be ‘teacherless’. While teachers will have
designed the learning experiences and environments students use – often
through teamwork with each other and other staff – they need not be pres-
ent for or participate in every structured learning activity.
(p. 21f.)
According to Terhart (2003) and Richardson (2003), the ‘methodification of

didactics’ is a general trend and a product of the constructivist paradigm. In this
volume the discourse is discussed in Krogh and Qvortrup’s chapter, where it
is suggested that it has constructed teaching as a phenomenon associated with
conservative, authoritarian ideals of education. Deng, referring to Biesta, is
also concerned by the observation that teaching is “construed as facilitation of
learning that is constructivist and learner-centred, and the teacher as one who
no longer passes on content (knowledge) to learners”.
The three parallel and interacting, but distinct, discourses of learning identi-
fied across the chapters in the book make it clear that although learnification
generally represents a conceptualisation of education as an individual proj-
ect rather than a cultural common good, it is not realised as a distinct one-
track tendency with identical manifestations and consequences in all contexts.
Rather, it can be identified as a complicated pattern of change that is based
on shared conditions and refers to a growing uncertainty and debate about the
aim and content of education. In addition to illustrating how the discourses are
addressed in the various chapters, we have also identified different suggestions
for dealing with this uncertainty. Aside from the aforementioned, the growth
of disciplinary didactics or subject didactics in continental Europe is a mani-
festation of a historical development within European educational science that
addresses global trends of learnification and contributes conceptual and practi-
cal tools for the advancement of disciplinary teaching and teacher education,
as well as comprehensive scholarly development within the field (cf. Vollmer;
Schneuwly; Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume).
Knowledge and content

In the previous section, learnification was discussed as a challenging condi-
tion of the educational project, conceptualising teaching and learning as an
individual project rather than a common good. In this section, we discuss what
also becomes invisible in learnification discourses: the issue of knowledge and
content.
Introduction 9
Historically, the issue of content has been at the heart of educational discus-
sions several times in the Western world, for instance after the second world
war in Germany (Tübinger Resolution, 1951), in connection with the Sputnik
shock in the United States (1957), and now again as related to the ‘knowledge
society’, where knowledge has become a commodity and a human capital and
where nations compete in the ranking of their students’ knowledge and skills
in international comparative studies (TIMMS, PISA, ICCS, ICILS, PIRLS).
Although Ding and Su (this volume) demonstrate from a Chinese perspective
that the Western narrative does not apply to all countries, it is still possible to
identify a pattern of responses to the policies of economisation, standards, and
benchmarks of quantifiable competencies.
We have identified four general responses to these global trends. First,
advocating the return to a canon of knowledge. Second, re-actualising the
concept of Bildung. Third, engaging in the development of a framework of
competences relevant for future challenges. And fourth, arguing for the value
of specialised knowledge and for the importance of researching processes of
transposition or didactisation. In addition to responding to policies of econo-
misation and the commodification of knowledge, these positions also respond
to each other, opposing or integrating aspects. We find, however, that they
represent important distinctions within the field, which are explored in the
network and in this volume.
The first response issues a new call for knowledge in schooling and educa-
tion. In the United States, E. D. Hirsch is a well-known advocate for closing
the knowledge gap in schools (Hirsch, 2006, 2016). In Germany, publications
entitled Bildung: Alles, was man wissen muss (Bildung: All You Need to Know;
Schwanitz, 1999) and Die andere Bildung: Was man von den Naturwissenschaften
wissen sollte (The Other Bildung: What You Should Know about Natural
Sciences; Fischer, 2001) have caused critique and discussion regarding what
knowledge matters for becoming an educated individual (Oelkers, 2000). In
other countries, similar returns to knowledge canons can be identified, more
or less tied to subjects, disciplines, or domains. Although there are differences
of focus among these canon approaches as well as in how they are presented,
they put forward the idea of concrete and finalised knowledge in the humani-
ties and/or sciences. The canon position is discussed by Uljens and Kullenberg
(this volume), who argue that both the promotion of a canonised content
of education and the call for competence orientation in education emphasise
output-oriented policies, and consequently risk leading to instrumental teach-
ing and learning, while also leaving out the overall Bildung aims of personality,
cultural identity, and citizenship.
The second response identified is precisely the re-actualisation of the con-
cept of Bildung. In Germany, Bildung has been debated in many ways and still
functions effectively as an important point of reference. Distinct interpretations
can be found in Hartmut von Hentig’s essay on Bildung (1996) and Manfred
Fuhrmann’s Bildung: Europas kulturelle Identität (Bildung: Europe’s Cultural Iden-

tity; 2002. Cf. also Vollmer, this volume). In the Nordic countries, the Bildung
concept is also advanced in opposition to neoliberal educational policies (Løv-
lie, 2003; Kemp, 2015). The Dutch scholar, Gert Biesta, in continuation of his
rejection of learnification, advocates a post-structural conception of the concept
of Bildung (2006). As argued by Rebekka Horlacher in her historical analysis
of Bildung, the use of the concept is culturally bound, and different claims and
visions are united by ahistorical uses of this flexible concept (2016, p. 131). Hor-
lacher describes how this originally German concept entered the anglophone
discussion, lends legitimacy and hope in opposition to the measurable world,
gives a refined prestige to the everyday business of education, and even appears
in policy papers at the OECD and the World Bank (p. 126ff.).
Three chapters in this book discuss the potential of Bildung-oriented Didak-
tik in the version developed by Wolfgang Klafki. While heavily criticised from
the perspective of historical concept analysis in the German-speaking countries
(Tröhler, 2004; Horlacher, 2016), it is interesting that from anglophone per-
spectives, Klafki’s theory appears to contain arguments that have been over-
looked in the contemporary German discourse. The chapter by Zongyi Deng
compares theories by Michael Young, Joseph Schwab, and Klafki, discussing
what distinguishes a theory of knowledge from a theory of content for school-
ing. According to Deng, the arguments missing from Young’s theory concern
the justification of a meaningful encounter with content, reflections on his
sociological approach, and his ignoring of educational science literature. From
the point of view of North America but in a similar fashion, Norm Friesen
unfolds the core of the contemporary curriculum discussion (Tyler, Shulman,
Pinar, Young) and discusses key conceptual elements of the Bildung-oriented
Didaktik of Klafki and Martin Wagenschein. Friesen argues that self-alienation
is an indispensable component of Bildung, and he supports this argument by
drawing in hermeneutics. As we shall see later, the competence-based curricu-
lum assumes a high relevance for life after school, but the phenomenological
foundation of Didaktik presents another conception of the life-world that not
only plays a role in relation to learning for life but also underlines students’
prior experiences and preconceptions. In this volume, the phenomenological
conception of the relation between subjectivity and intersubjectivity is dealt
with by Michael Uljens and Tina Kullenberg.
Two further chapters thematise Bildung, albeit less explicitly as a response
to current educational policies. In Stefan Ting Graf ’s contribution, the start-
ing point is the tension between the assumption of Bildung-oriented teach-
ing in Denmark and the recent increasing use of established taxonomies for
learning (Bloom, Biggs, Marzano). Graf asks whether it is possible to bridge
these two approaches, construing content differently as they do. Finally, in his
chapter on general subject didactics, Helmut Johannes Vollmer argues that
to prepare teachers and students for the challenges of the twenty-first cen-
tury, the content specificity of didactics needs strengthening and the notion of
Introduction 11
education as Bildung needs extending and redefining on both a personal and

a functional level.
The third response to the policies of economisation, standards, and bench-
marks is the increasing research effort that has been devoted to developing
frameworks of competences that could play a role in curriculum development.
The notion of competence thus informs both discourses of learning and con-
ceptions of knowledge and content. Core examples of this effort are the United
States-based initiative for 21st Century Skills (Ananiadou and Claro, 2009) and
the OECD project DeSeCo (2005). The notion of competences or broad skills
as a way of prescribing the output content of a curriculum is not new. It goes
back to the earliest American curriculum developers (e.g. Franklin Bobbitt),
who argued that the content of education should provide students with the
necessary skills of the older age of the industrial society. Besides the revivals
of this approach in the anglophone countries in the 1960s, it was imported to
Germany by Saul B. Robinsohn, who also introduced the term ‘curriculum’
there. A curriculum based on competences or skills is highly focused on what
students should be able to perform in the workplace and in public and private
life. The competence concept, however, is currently also applied to disciplinary
educational goals of further education, as in Scandinavian teacher education
curricula (cf. Werler, this volume). Once entrenched in curricula, however, the
concept could be said to be losing some of its original idea.
Two contributions in this book deal with competence-oriented curricula,
investigating the transforming processes that take place when the concept of
competence is transplanted to teacher education in Norway (Werler, this vol-
ume) and when it is integrated in political education/social science education
in Germany and Denmark (Christensen, this volume). These two chapters
emphasise the importance of studying the transformations of seemingly identi-
cal concepts in concrete contexts.
The fourth response to current educational policies is to argue for the
importance of specialised knowledge, not least for the importance of research
into processes of transformation or transposition of disciplinary knowledge into
school subjects (cf. Schneuwly, this volume). Starting with analyses of con-
temporary competitive knowledge economies, it is further argued that what
specialised knowledge agents (such as teachers and educational researchers)
need to prioritise in the current environment is discussing, reflecting on, and
developing specialised knowledge and content to meet permanent pressures for
change and reform (Ongstad, 2006). As documented in the present volume,
within this response, theories of the transformation of knowledge into content
are already informing educational research programmes (Schneuwly; Vollmer;
Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume). As is elaborated later, these theories have
given rise to paradigmatic developments within the scholarly field of didactics.
This analysis of responses to contemporary challenges within the field of con-
tent indicates both important distinctions and shared conditions of uncertainty
as to the intergenerational purpose of schooling. Although the distinctions may
perhaps be problematised and naturally call for more extensive elaboration, this
attempt at charting the field will hopefully give rise to further investigation
and discussion of knowledge and content as a core aspect of education and
schooling.
Didaktik and didactics: translations, developments,

and conceptualisations
In this volume, the construct Didaktik and/or curriculum is both an impor-
tant general reference and a concrete frame for comparative studies. However,
whereas the field of curriculum studies is not represented in the specialised
investigations of these chapters, developments within the field of Didaktik or
didactics are in focus in several of the chapters. The backdrop to this imbalance
is not just the circumstantial fact that our network project is hosted within the
cultural frame of Didaktik. More substantially, this book offers a strong argu-
ment for the importance of representing recent paradigmatic shifts within the
Didaktik field to the wider educational community. At issue are scientifically
specialised responses to current educational challenges that contribute con-
ceptual innovation as well as tools for reflective practice within teaching and
teacher education.
The field of Didaktik, or didactics, confronts difficult issues of translation
in the anglophone educational community. At the time of the first wave of
Didaktik and/or curriculum dialogue, the German spelling of Didaktik was
adopted in order to sustain connotations such as the “comprehensive inter-
twining of action and reflection, practice and theory” (Gundem and Hop-
mann, 1998, p. 2). As Gundem and Hopmann explained, the English term
‘didactics’ is “generally avoided in Anglo-Saxon educational contexts since it
refers to practical and methodological problems of mediation and does not aim
at being an independent discipline, let alone a scientific or research program”
(p. 2). A parallel translation issue also arises for the key term ‘Bildung’, which
likewise has no counterpart in English that conveys its meaning within the
Didaktik tradition. Added to this, both Didaktik and Bildung are historical and
cultural configurations that have long histories of interpretation and impact
within different national and regional contexts (cf. Horlacher and De Vincenti,
2014; Horlacher, 2016).
Whereas Bildung is now accepted as the established term in English-language
contexts and debates, this is not the case for Didaktik. As will be obvious from
the book chapters, for very good reasons, both ‘Didaktik’ and ‘didactics’ have
become established terms.1 ‘Didaktik’ is generally used when referring to the
Didaktik tradition of north-west Europe as such, and this programmatic usage
is sustained in the present book. But if more recent developments in the field
are to be captured, a more differentiated terminology is required. Regions and
nations have met transnational challenges differently and have configured their
fields of teacher education and academic educational institutions differently.
Introduction 13
The cultural construction ‘Didaktik’ is too monolithic to allow us to distinguish

between different national educational cultures. Hence, despite the derogatory
and narrow connotations, the non-anglophone educational community has ven-
tured to reinterpret the term ‘didactics’ to become a common English-language
denominator of this more differentiated educational field.
The term ‘didactics’ grows out of yet another differentiation, namely in the
academic field. As elaborated in several of the chapters, in the later decades of
the twentieth century specialised school-subject didactics grew to become an inde-
pendent academic field of didactics in response to the tertiarisation of teacher
education and the massification of secondary education (Schneuwly, this vol-
ume; cf. Vollmer; Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume). This field has grown in
importance during the latest decades in response to the trends just discussed:
learnification, the adoption of competency aims at the curricular level, and
growing pressure on established knowledge fields to adapt to economic calls for
utility and productivity (Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume; cf. Deng; Friesen,
this volume). The field has grown in several dimensions. Single-subject teach-
ers and researchers develop specialised didactics exploring the specific teaching,
learning, and literacies of their knowledge fields in processes of communicative
reflection or didactisation (Ongstad, this volume; cf. Krogh and Qvortrup, this
volume). At the scholarly level, comparative or general disciplinary/subject
didactics has grown to become an important further organisation of the field
(Vollmer; Schneuwly; Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume).
Disciplinary didactics is a young field and still developing fast at the scholarly
level. From the status of being a subfield of general didactics focusing mainly on
instructional methodology, it has established itself as an independent field next
to general didactics (cf. Vollmer; Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume), or even in
the francophone context as the singular field of didactics (Schneuwly). We need
to keep this in mind as the backdrop to the various different translations of
the field in this book. As reflected in the chapters, the francophone didactiques
disciplinaires indicate a field where there is a focus on processes of transposition
of knowledge from the academic disciplines to the school subjects; further,
research within this tradition is oriented towards how the didactic system func-
tions, rather than towards transforming and improving it (cf. Schneuwly, this
volume). The German subject didactics and general subject didactics indicate a
focus on school-subject teaching and learning, together with a research focus
on developing and improving teaching and learning within the content areas.
And, finally, the Danish and Norwegian disciplinary didactics indicates a focus on
established knowledge in school subjects, but also in the wider societal context;
here the research focus is predominantly exploratory, although interventionist
research is also found (Krogh and Qvortrup; Ongstad, this volume).
As discussed by Vollmer and Krogh and Qvortrup, the field of general didactics
faced backlashes during the period when disciplinary didactics was growing
into an independent field. According to Vollmer, within the German con-
text, to some extent general didactics is being replaced by socio-psychological
approaches with sophisticated models of teaching and outcome orientation. In

the Danish context, however, whereas the general didactics field was hit harder
by the learnification agenda than disciplinary didactics, general didactics has
regained a fairly strong position, establishing a research community in which
systems-theoretical didactics is the theoretical basis and empirical research is a
new focus.
Uljens and Kullenberg (this volume) introduce school didactics as a delineation
of disciplinary didactics that takes the specific school context for teaching and
learning into account. The fact that learning opportunities are now so wide-
spread that schools have lost their unique character as ‘temples of learning’ may
have contributed to a crisis of general didactics, but for Uljens and Kullenberg
it has created a need for renewed exploration of what kind of pedagogical
knowledge is required for understanding teaching, studying, and learning in
schools. Welcoming the rediscovery of teaching as a problem in didactics and
curriculum research, and emphasising the central focus on content, their chap-
ter declares their interest in developing a ‘non-affirmative school didactics’ as
a theory that allows for concepts to be refined as analytical tools for the edu-
cational field.
Didaktik and/or curriculum: future opportunities

and challenges
A highly interesting Chinese perspective on the Didaktik and/or curriculum
dichotomy is found in Ding and Su’s chapter. Their study shows how questions
of didactics or curriculum have historically been related to overarching Chinese
political and cultural preferences: perceived by Chinese scholars as ‘Western’
concepts, they were seen as culturally the same. Viewed from this outside per-
spective, our endeavour needs to be expanded so as to include questions about
what is shared, historically as well as in the present age. Ding and Su’s important
contribution makes a strong call for expanding the intellectual perspectives and
the geopolitical scope of the network project.
Several other studies in the present book may add to this agenda. This goes
for Deng’s contribution, where he brings together the intellectual contribu-
tions made by Schwab and Klafki to form arguments for bringing content
back into the discussion, and for Tahirsylaj’s chapter, which concludes that
differences across both Didaktik and curriculum countries regarding teacher
responsibility point towards a continuum rather than a dichotomy.
In accordance with the exploratory ambition of the network dialogues, our
immediate future aim for the next stage of the network is to take more specific
issues as gateways to investigating differences in historical tradition, geopoliti-
cal position, and scholarly approach. Thus we shall focus on two urgent global
challenges for the educational project: Bildung/the educated subject in the
light of sustainability, and Knowledge, content, and disciplinarity in the post-
factual era. Here we interpret sustainability in a wide sense, as incorporating
Introduction 15
issues of climate and environment, society, democracy and welfare, and cultural
and individual diversity. We also suggest a similarly wide understanding for ‘the
post-factual era’, which may address issues of fake news, access to vast amounts
of internet information, and pressure on established disciplinary knowledge
and expertise to prove its relevance and worth. These are the two highly topical
themes that will guide the next stage of the network’s investigations, both in
symposium and publication form.
Introduction to the individual chapters

The first section of the volume discusses contemporary educational issues in the
light of the curriculum/Didaktik traditions.
Zongyi Deng argues that content – knowledge selected into the curriculum –
has disappeared from current global policy discourse concerning teaching and
teachers, and he attempts to bring content back into the conversation on teach-
ing and teachers. With reference to the work of Michael Young and his col-
leagues concerning ‘bringing knowledge back in’, Bildung-centred Didaktik,
and Joseph J. Schwab’s curriculum thinking, the chapter yields an educational
and curricular understanding of teaching and teachers, by making three argu-
ments. First, teaching (content) is an ‘intergenerational’ task that is vital to
social reproduction and innovation. Second, by way of the meaningful encounter
between content and students, teaching contributes to students’ self-formation
and the development of human powers and dispositions. Third, teaching is a
practical, interpretive act that calls for curriculum thinking that is centred on
the ‘what’ (content) and the ‘why’ (purpose) of teaching.
Tobias Werler’s chapter examines the hypothesis that the traditional core nar-
rative of Didaktik in Norwegian teacher education has been replaced by an
OECD narrative of learning sciences. Based on narrative methodology and his-
torical and theoretical analyses of the Didaktik and learning-science traditions,
Werler conducts “narrative curriculum analysis” of Norwegian teacher educa-
tion, with particular focus on the core discipline, Pedagogy and Pupil Knowl-
edge (PPK). This subject was traditionally Bildung-led, teacher-oriented, and
content-focused. The present curriculum documents are, however, dominated
by the concept of learning (in various forms and shapes). Werler concludes that
the present PPK curriculum stands out as a hybrid construct amalgamating
Didaktik with learning-science knowledge, a “palimpsest of broken narratives”
which does not resolve the question of what knowledge of pedagogy future
teachers need to have to develop and deliver good teaching.
In his chapter, Norm Friesen departs from an analysis of what he views as a
“missing link” in American educational discourse since the rise of behaviour-
ism in the early twentieth century, namely an understanding of what makes
instructional content specifically educational. In the face of this neglect of con-
tent in American approaches to psychology, instruction, and design, Friesen
conducts a critical analysis of contemporary configurations of learning theory
and curriculum theory and sets out to develop an account of curricular con-
tent as material that is inherently pedagogical. With reference to Lee Shulman’s
concept of “content knowledge”, Michael Young’s “powerful knowledge”,
and Wolfgang Klafki’s understanding of didactic preparation, Friesen suggests
a general “hermeneutic” theory of knowledge transmission that is commen-
surate with the understanding of curricular content as inherently pedagogical
material.
Stefan Ting Graf enters into a dialogue with the increased interest in taxono-
mies that in Denmark has followed in the wake of the 2015 shift to a goal-
oriented curriculum for the Folkeskole (primary and lower secondary level).
Often, the references for working with taxonomies are previous works from the
anglophone educational context, referring to concepts of teaching and learn-
ing which, according to Graf, cannot adequately cover the overriding aims of
the Danish Folkeskole because they leave out the central curricular notions of
knowledge and generic skills, deep learning and progression, as well as content
and purpose. In the chapter, Graf examines the taxonomic thinking of Bloom’s
taxonomy and the SOLO taxonomy. With reference to Wolfgang Klafki and
Martin Wagenschein, he suggests a taxonomy for general Bildung, founded
in a phenomenological understanding of learning in the sense of categorical
learning.
In his chapter, Anders Stig Christensen discusses the decision-making processes
that have generated social science curricula in Germany and Denmark. In both
cases, the process of developing curricula is tied to international and national
standards that support outcome- or competence-based curricula. This apparent
uniformity, however, covers significant diversity, which Christensen documents
in his comparative analysis of how the international frameworks have been
interpreted and transformed by local/national stakeholders. Not only do the
subjects differ in scope from one country to another, but the applied concept
of competence differs significantly, as do the role and influence of local actors.
Christensen raises the question whether curriculum developments should be
analysed from an international point of view, taking into account overriding
issues of democracy and the national traditions of curriculum or Didaktik. To
understand this complex process that involves more than one demos, he suggests
the concept of demoi-cracy.
The second section introduces the emergence of recent conceptual and
organisational developments within the field of Didaktik. These chapters pro-
vide insight into the continental European construction of educational science
as an independent scientific field: one that undergoes paradigmatic shifts in
response to changes within the educational field.
Ellen Krogh and Ane Qvortrup’s chapter builds on the case of didactics in
Denmark. They suggest that contemporary general and disciplinary didactics
should be conceptualised as complementary, meta-reflective scholarly fields that
may contribute answers to present challenges for schooling and for educational
Introduction 17
research. Thus, there is a need for educational agents to master processes of

‘contingency management’ and ‘didactisation’, notions inspired respectively by
sociological systems theory and semiotic communications theory. From these
positions, the Danish scholarly fields of general and disciplinary didactics have
succeeded in establishing a fruitful, explorative dialogue within so-called labo-
ratories for eclectic, meta-reflective didactics.
In his chapter, Helmut Johannes Vollmer argues that in Germany, traditional
Bildung-oriented general didactics has lost its orientating function for teacher
education and professionalisation. This he attributes to a shortfall in empiri-
cal orientation, the disappearance of content from the discussion, and a too-
narrow definition of Bildung as a merely personal dimension of education. In
recent decades, however, the field of ‘subject didactics’ has grown to meet these
weaknesses, not just through advancements in individual subject didactics, but
also, and not least, through the organisation and scholarly progress of the field
of ‘general subject didactics’. An important result here has been the develop-
ment of an expanded notion of Bildung that covers a functional as well as a
personal dimension.
The setting for Bernard Schneuwly’s chapter is the multicultural country of
Switzerland, where two different scientific cultures, the germanophone and the
francophone, meet. Schneuwly introduces the latter of these two fields, the didac-
tiques disciplinaires, an important school of thought, yet less known in the Didaktik/
curriculum dialogue. The driving forces behind the didactiques disciplinaires were
the tertiarisation of teacher education and the massification of secondary educa-
tion from the 1960s, accompanied by a more marked organisation into disciplines
and profound transformations of curricular contents. At the core of disciplinary
didactics lie the questions of the transposition and the teaching of knowledge.
How does knowledge become teachable and learnable through teaching? How
is it taught and learned through teaching? These questions are addressed by a
theoretical body of concepts shared by the academic field. Through the over-
arching concepts of didactic transposition and the didactic system, this body of
knowledge is introduced and exemplified in the chapter.
The chapter by Michael Uljens and Tina Kullenberg brings up conceptual miss-
ing links between life-world phenomenology and educational theory. Against
the backdrop of a broad and context-sensitive understanding of school didactics
in conjunction with a hermeneutic, Bildung-centred tradition of theorising
education, they explore the paradox of life-world in the educational endeav-
our. The authors discuss the relation between subjectivity and intersubjectiv-
ity and ask how we can conceptualise an initial shared life-world of different
individuals and an educational process where a shared world leads to students
becoming unique. To grasp the paradox, Uljens and Kullenberg suggest a non-
affirmative theory of education, centring on the classical didactic concept of
Bildsamkeit. The core idea of this concept is to secure the freedom to transcend
the shared world for both teacher and learner.
The final section introduces three chapters that, each in a different way, offer
critical perspectives on the theme of the present publication and through this
raise inspiring challenges for the project.
The chapter by Bangping Ding and Xun Su argues that in the Chinese per-
spective, both Didaktik and curriculum studies were seen as Western traditions.
By presenting and analysing the historical trajectories of the various influences
on mainland China and the content of influential publications, the authors
underline the importance of ideological, political, and cultural forces on the
framing of the didactical field. Following the consecutive introductions in the
early twentieth century first of Didaktik and then of curriculum theory, both
traditions somehow coexist, although curriculum studies became predominant
after the Cultural Revolution. Ding and Su pinpoint misinterpretations in the
import of both traditions, and they suggest conceiving didactics as an indepen-
dent university discipline with the obligation of enacting academic reflection
on the complementarity of the two traditions and relating this to challenges in
educational policy and practice. At the same time, the authors make a strong
argument for the revitalisation of Chinese harmonism, based on Confucianism,
for such a blended discipline.
In his chapter, Armend Tahirsylaj draws on data from PISA 2015 for an empir-
ical comparison of teachers’ responsibility for the intended, taught, and tested
curriculum across six Didaktik and six curriculum countries. On the basis of the
assumption that the theoretical and cultural differences between the Didaktik
and curriculum traditions are still in play in the countries he surveys, Tahirsy-
laj tests the hypothesis that teachers in Didaktik countries are ascribed greater
responsibility for all three aspects of the curriculum. Despite some indications
of difference, however, the results of his study contest the theoretically framed
dichotomy and point rather to a continuum in Didaktik and curriculum coun-
tries. The results testing a second hypothesis, that higher teacher responsibil-
ity impacts students’ science performances, remain discouraging, and call for
follow-up studies.
In the final chapter of the volume, Sigmund Ongstad raises a critical and
overarching perspective on curriculum studies and Didaktik, arguing that both
traditions suffer from low awareness of or even direct blindness to the constitu-
tive relation between education and language/communication (L&C) as well
as the intimate relationship between disciplinarity and discursivity. Ongstad
introduces a semiotic and systemic conceptualisation of ‘language and com-
munication’ and documents its capacity to throw light on basic aspects and dif-
ferences of curricula as well as schools of educational thought. He suggests that
this expanded theory of L&C should be an integral part of disciplines of gen-
eral theory of knowledge within master’s and doctoral studies of educational
sciences. In the final section of his chapter, Ongstad further shows how aspects
of this conceptualisation of education are addressed in the chapters by Friesen,
Krogh and Qvortrup, Vollmer, Schneuwly, and Uljens and Kullenberg.
Introduction 19
Note
1 For this reason, we have chosen to refrain from the standard practice of italicising Didaktik
and Bildung in this volume.
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01417.x.
Part I
Contemporary educational
discussions within a
Didaktik/curriculum
frame
Chapter 1
Bringing content back in

Rethinking teaching and teachers
Zongyi Deng
Content – knowledge selected into the curriculum – is an indispensable ele-

ment in talking and thinking about classroom teaching. In common language,
the term ‘teaching’ means the imparting of content or knowledge. In the Ger-
man Didaktik tradition, teaching is conceptualised by way of the Didaktik
triangle – comprised of three general, essential elements: content, teacher, and
student. In US curriculum theory, teaching is construed as consisting of four
indispensable, and equally important, curriculum commonplaces: subject mat-
ter (content), teacher, learner, and milieu (Schwab, 1973).
However, content as a topic of discussion has disappeared from current global
policy discourse concerning teaching and teachers. Across the globe, curricu-
lum policy has shifted from a concern with content selection and organisation
to a preoccupation with academic standards, learning outcomes, and high-
stakes testing (Yates and Collins, 2010; Young, 2009a). Accompanying that
shift is a move to depict teaching as focused on promoting students’ academic
outcomes measured by high-stakes tests, and teachers as accountable for stu-
dents’ learning outcomes, through the employment of evidence-based practices
(Hopmann, 2008).
The omission of content is also evident in the current popular discourse on
teaching and teachers within the academic education community – promoted
by a new ‘language of learning’ – a discourse also widely adopted by education
policymakers in different parts of the world (Biesta, 2005). In that discourse,
teaching is construed as facilitation of learning that is constructivist and learner-
centred, and the teacher as one who no longer passes on content (knowledge)
to learners but one who supports and facilitates the learning process (Biesta,
2005, 2010).
In the academic literature on teaching and teachers, content is also the least-
discussed commonplace. Much of the discussion on teachers has centred on
teachers’ characteristics, self-identity, agency, learning, and professional devel-
opment. Most discourse on teaching has focused on instructional strategies
and models, the student–teacher relationship, the context in which teaching
takes place (classroom, school, national, international, or global), the social and
political nature of teaching, and instructional policy and reform (see Saha and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-2
26 Zongyi Deng
Dworkin, 2009; Biddle, Good and Goodson, 1997). When content is discussed,
it is often treated as something to be transferred to or constructed by students,
apart from a concern for the broader purpose of education (see Deng, 2018b).
This chapter attempts to reintroduce content into the conversation on teach-
ing and teachers through revisiting the recent work of Michael Young and his
colleagues concerning ‘bringing knowledge back in’ (e.g. Young, 2008; Young
et al., 2014; Young and Muller, 2015) as well as Bildung-centred Didaktik and
Joseph J. Schwab’s curriculum thinking.1 The recent work of Young and his col-
leagues is examined because their work has important things to say about teaching
and teachers in light of the distinctive function of schooling – the transmis-
sion of disciplinary knowledge that students cannot acquire at home. Bildung-
centred Didaktik is selected because it provides a sophisticated, elaborate theo-
retical account of content in relation to education, curriculum planning, and
classroom teaching.2 This branch of Didaktik is inextricably connected with
the rich tradition of European education and Didaktik thinking associated with
Kant, Schleiermacher, Humboldt, Comenius, Herbart, Dilthey, Nohl, Weniger,
and Klafki, among many others. It has a profound impact on the Scandinavian
tradition of Didaktik thinking and has been “at the centre of most school teaching
and teacher education in Continental Europe” (Hopmann, 2007, p. 109).
Schwab’s curriculum thinking is selected because Schwab is one of the
very few US theorists who has provided a well-informed, complex theorical
account of the role of knowledge and content in relation to education and
curriculum. And his thinking concerning knowledge and content is rooted
in and developed out of the rich tradition of curriculum thinking – notably
represented by John Dewey (1859–1952), Joseph Schwab (1909–1988), and
Ralph Tyler (1902–1984), among others – within the University of Chicago,
arguably the birthplace of American curriculum studies. The examination of
these three schools of thought, as will be seen, yields an educational, curricu-
lar understanding of teaching and teachers that goes far beyond what current
policy and academic discourses can capture.
Bringing knowledge back in

Over the last ten years, Michael Young and his colleagues have embarked on a
project of ‘bringing knowledge back in’ to the recent global discourse on cur-
riculum policy and practice (e.g. Young, 2008; Young et al., 2014; Young and
Muller, 2015). Informed by social realism and based on the works of Émile Dur-
kheim and Basil Bernstein, they develop a social-realist theory of knowledge that
differentiates between academic, disciplinary, and everyday knowledge, and, fur-
ther, between different types of disciplinary knowledge. While reflecting human
interests or standpoints, disciplinary knowledge has its own properties, trustful-
ness, and explanatory power (see Young, 2008). Created by specialist communi-
ties of scholars, it is powerful knowledge because it provides the best understanding
of the natural and social worlds. The acquisition of this knowledge facilitates the
Bringing content back in 27
imagining of alternatives, and enables people to move beyond their particular

experience (Young and Muller, 2013). As such, disciplinary knowledge is wor-
thy of being taught in its own right and to its own end.
With this theory of knowledge as an essential point of departure, Young
and his colleagues argue that the central purpose of schooling is to help stu-
dents gain access to disciplinary knowledge that they cannot acquire at home
(Young, 2009b). Furthermore, access to this knowledge is an entitlement of all
students – and (thus) a social justice issue. After all, this purpose is essential if
we are to enable the next generations to create new knowledge based on exist-
ing knowledge. As will be argued in the last section of this chapter, it imbues
the task of teaching and the responsibility of a teacher with intergenerational
significance. In this connection, curriculum planning is a process of recontex-
tualising an academic discipline into a school subject – which entails selecting,
sequencing, and pacing academic knowledge in view of the coherence of the
discipline and the constraints created by the developmental stages of students.
The differentiation of different forms of disciplinary knowledge and clarifi-
cation of their inherent structures provide a necessary basis for curriculum
planning that is geared to the effective transmission of disciplinary knowledge
(Young, 2013).
Accordingly, teaching is viewed as a process of passing on a body of disci-
plinary knowledge that students cannot acquire at home. The central task of a
teacher is to promote epistemic access to disciplinary knowledge and to take
students beyond their existing experience or what they already know (Young
et al., 2014). To do this, the teacher needs to interpret the national curriculum
to identify what knowledge is powerful for students at different ages, in light
of the central purpose of schooling – the why of teaching – with a view to
creating educational encounters in the classroom through addressing the how
of teaching (means and methods). As such, teachers need to have a theory of
the curriculum – a theory of the knowledge students must acquire at various
grade levels – in addition to disciplinary knowledge and general pedagogical
knowledge (Young et al., 2014).
In short, by way of a social-realist theory of knowledge, Young and his
colleagues have contributed to bringing knowledge back into the conversa-
tion on teaching and teachers. However, there are two issues. With an exclu-
sive focus on the internal properties and explanatory power of knowledge,
they take knowledge as being an end in itself, rather than as a means to some
larger purpose of education. They seem to be concerned with, borrowing from
David Hamilton, the immediate, present question of “what should they [stu-
dents] know?”, rather than the future-oriented question of “what should they
[students] become?” (Hamilton, 1999, p. 136). Another issue, related to the
first, concerns the focus of their discourse – knowledge rather than content. As
alluded to earlier, content results from institutional curriculum making – a spe-
cial selection and organisation of knowledge for the school curriculum – that
takes place prior to and independent of classroom teaching (Karmon, 2007;
28 Zongyi Deng
also see Deng, 2009). Such content constitutes the locus of classroom teaching:
it frames a teacher’s practice and perspective on teaching (Deng, 2009).
These two issues, overall, have to do with the theoretical underpinnings –
sociological rather than curricular and educational – of the work of Young and his
colleagues. As I have indicated elsewhere, Young and his associates have ignored
two bodies of literature – one on curriculum theory and the other on Didaktik –
that examine the role of knowledge and content in education, curriculum mak-
ing, and classroom teaching from educational and curricular perspectives (Deng,
2015; also see Gericke et al., 2018). As such, they have lost touch with deeper
questions about educational purpose, content, and teaching that “have animated
pedagogics and didactics” (Hamilton, 1999, p. 136) – and curriculum theory as
well.
Bildung-centred Didaktik
Bildung-centred Didaktik provides a theory of teaching and learning pertaining
to implementing the state curriculum in the classroom. Central to the theory
are the concept of Bildung and a theory of educational content. Standing for the
German ideal of (liberal) education, Bildung refers to the formation of the full
individual, the cultivation of human powers, sensibility, self-awareness, liberty and
freedom, responsibility, and dignity (von Humboldt, 2000; also see Hopmann,
2007). It speaks for “an aesthetic self-understanding with a claim to truth and
goodness” (Horlacher, 2012, p. 138). The concept is extended by Klafki (1998)
to include the development of self-determination (autonomy), co-determination
(participation), and solidarity. Furthermore, Bildung is not limited to any spe-
cific group or class in society. Bildung is Allgemeinbildung, or Bildung for all, and
applies both to general and vocational education (Klafki, 1998).
Bildung is achieved through linking the self to the world (social and natural)
in “the most general, most animated and most unrestrained interplay” (von
Humboldt, 2000, p. 58). The world, independent from us, is processed by
human thought represented by academic disciplines (Lüth, 2000). With the
concept of Bildung as a point of departure, German Didaktikers conceive of
the role of disciplinary knowledge in relation to education and curriculum.
Knowledge is to be “used in the service of intellectual and moral Bildung”
(Lüth, 2000, p. 77), rather than something that is to be gained for its own
sake. Academic disciplines are an indispensable resource or vehicle for Bildung
(Klafki, 2000). There are several forms of disciplinary knowledge – historical,
social, linguistic, geographic, physical, chemical, and biological – each of which
gives us access to a particular aspect of reality and each of which has potential
to cultivate a particular type of human power and disposition (Weniger, 2000).
Furthermore, German Didaktikers establish a theory of educational con-
tent (Theorie der Bildungsinhalte) that serves to inform curriculum planning and
classroom teaching for Bildung. It consists of four related concepts: contents of
education (Bildungsinhalt), educational substance (Bildungsgehalt), the elemental
(das Elementare), and the fundamental (das Fundamentale). The contents embod-
ied in the state curriculum are characteristically called by curriculum designers
‘contents of education’ that result from a deliberative process of selection and
organisation of the wealth of the academic knowledge, experience, and wis-
dom for Bildung:
Curriculum designers assume that these contents, once the children or

adolescents have internalized and thus acquired them, will enable the
young people to ‘produce a certain order’ (Litt) in themselves and at the
same time in their relation to the world, to ‘assume responsibility’ (Weni-
ger), and to cope with the requirements of life. The contents of teaching
and learning will represent such order, or possibilities for such order, such
responsibilities, inevitable requirements and opportunities.
(Klafki, 2000, p. 150)
In other words, such contents are seen as embodying educational potential –

in terms of potential impact on or contribution to self-formation and the
development of human powers and dispositions. Furthermore, such potential
consists in the educational substance of content comprised by the elemental –
the concentrated, reduced content in the form of penetrating cases, concepts,
principles, values, etc. The fundamental refers to the ‘primordial’ experience
that the elemental can bring out or the potential impact on the perspectives,
modes of thinking, dispositions, and ways of being-in-the-world of individuals
(Krüger, 2008).
Informed by the theory of educational content, the state curriculum frame-
work only lays out school subjects and their contents to be covered in schools,
but does not specify the educational substance, meaning, and significance of
content – these are to be identified and interpreted by a teacher in a specific
classroom situation (Hopmann, 2007). Teachers are entrusted with a high level
of professional autonomy to interpret the state curriculum framework. They
are viewed as curriculum makers ‘working within, but not directed by’ the state
curriculum framework, informed by the idea of Bildung and the Didaktik way
of thinking (Westbury, 2000, p. 26).
With reference to the notion of Bildung and the theory of educational con-
tent, German Didaktikers articulate what teaching is and what responsibility
a teacher needs to have. Classroom teaching is seen as a ‘fruitful encounter’
between content and the learner for Bildung (Klafki, 2000) – rather than a
mere transmission of academic content. Such an encounter leads to a deeper
understanding of the world, modifications in perspectives, and cultivation of
human capacities or powers. Students are seen as unique individuals, with their
own experiences, motivations, and interests. Therefore, in instructional plan-
ning, the teacher is to identify the elemental aspects of content (penetrating
cases, basic ideas, concepts, methods) and ascertain the value and significance of
content with reference to individual students, ‘with a particular human context
30 Zongyi Deng
in mind, with its attendant past and its anticipated future’ (Klafki, 2000, p. 148).
Furthermore, he or she is to transform content into forms conceived as mean-
ingful by students themselves.
To support this vision of instructional planning, Klafki formulated a five-
step set of questions that assists teachers in exploring educational potential of
content and its actualisation:
1 What wider or general sense or reality does this content exemplify and open
up to the learner? What basic phenomenon or fundamental principle, what
law, criterion, problem, method, technique, or attitude can be grasped by
dealing with this content as an ‘example’?
2 What significance does the content in question, or the experience, knowl-
edge, ability or skill, to be acquired through this topic, already possess in
the minds of the children in my class? What significance should it have
from a pedagogical point of view?
3 What constitutes the topic’s significance for the children’s future?
4 How is the content structured (which has been placed in a specifically
pedagogical perspective by questions 1, 2 and 3)?
5 What are the special cases, phenomena, situations, experiments, persons,
elements of aesthetic experience, and so forth, in terms of which the
structure of the content in question can become interesting, stimulating,
approachable, conceivable or vivid for children of the stage of development
of this class?
(2000, pp. 151–157)
Questions 1, 2, and 3 concern the substance (i.e. the elemental) and potential
of content in terms of what should be taught, what the content signifies, and
why it is significant for students. Questions 4 and 5 deal with the means of
teaching the content and actualising its educational potential in terms of con-
tent structure and pedagogical representations.
Schwab’s curriculum thinking

Central to Schwab’s curriculum thinking are a vision of a liberal education, a
theory of knowledge for the kind of liberal education envisaged, and a theory
of content that serves to inform curriculum planning and classroom teach-
ing towards that vision. For Schwab, the central purpose of liberal education,
which is akin to Bildung, is the development of an empowered, autonomous,
and active individual. Such an individual possesses an understanding of culture
and the world and a set of powers and dispositions that allows him or her to face
the challenges and problems in the society of his times. The powers and disposi-
tions of an educated person, further articulated by Schwab, include a ‘capacity
for “syntactical communication”, a disposition to ‘quest, beyond mere survival,
for a state called “happiness”’, an ability to ‘deliberate wisely about technolo-

gies based on science’ and ‘to choose thoughtfully among several technological
methods’ (Levine, 2006, p. 119). The powers also include ‘abilities and insights
to face the new problems of our times and to use the new instrumentalities
with wisdom and freedom’ (McKeon, 1953, p. 113) and ‘critical and organis-
ing power and deliberative command over choice and action’ (Schwab, 1978,
p. 125), among others. The cultivation of such intellectual, social, and civic
powers and dispositions is achieved through the interaction of individual stu-
dents with various forms of knowledge embodied in contemporary academic
disciplines.
The primary concern of Schwab, like the one of German Didaktikers, is
with the contribution of academic disciplines to human formation and the
cultivation of human powers and dispositions – rather than the epistemologi-
cal properties, structures, and explanatory powers of disciplinary knowledge
per se (see Fenstermacher, 1980). Accordingly, Schwab articulated a theory of
knowledge that conceives of the essence of academic disciplines in ways that
are productive in cultivating those human powers and dispositions. Following
McKeon, he differentiated three types of academic disciplines – natural sci-
ences, social sciences, and humanities – each of which has potential for the cul-
tivation of a particular type of human power and disposition. The significance
of each discipline type is determined by a distinct set of arts or methods of inquiry
rather than contents or subject matters per se. As Levine explained:
[T]he place of the natural sciences in general education was determined

by the arts required to analyse problems, validate knowledge, and commu-
nicate statements about natures and things. The place of social sciences in
general education was determined by the arts required to deal with prob-
lems concerning associations set up by humans to achieve common values.
The place of the humanities in general education was determined by the
arts required to analyse the great achievements and products of human
creativity when considered with respect to their formal structure.
(2006, p. 99)
In this connection, Schwab argues that the contribution of an academic discipline

to the cultivation of human powers lies in the methods or arts of inquiry embed-
ded in the discipline. An academic discipline consists of not only statements/
conclusions but also arts or methods employed in disciplinary inquiry, an under-
standing of which enables the development of liberating human powers that are
applicable to wide-ranging situations and practices:
The ‘intellectual’ arts and skills with which the liberal education curricu-
lum is concerned are not then intellectual as to subject matter, and thus
exclusive of other subject matters, but intellectual as to quality. They are the
32 Zongyi Deng
arts and skills which confer cogency upon situations and actions whether
these be scientific, social, or humanistic, general and abstract or particular
and concrete. The liberal arts, however formulated, are to be understood as
the best statement of our present knowledge of the human make, of vari-
ous means – some special in their application to specific subject matters,
some general – by which the understanding frees us from submission to
impressions, beliefs, and impulses, to give us critical and organizing power
and deliberative command over choice and action. A liberal curriculum is
one concerned that its students develop such powers.
(Schwab, 1978, p. 125)
Consistent with this theory of knowledge, Schwab formulated a theory of con-

tent that serves to inform curriculum planning and classroom teaching. This
theory consists of a particular notion of content and a set of categories that
could serve to reveal the educational potential of content for the cultivation of
human powers. Identified from the fund of academic knowledge, contents take
the form of scholarly materials (histories, scientific reports, literary works, etc.)
that reflect the ‘revisionary’ character of knowledge (concerning how knowl-
edge was developed) rather than just ‘rhetoric of conclusion’ (knowledge as
a final product) (Schwab, 1962). The set of categories, called three faces, are
explained as follows:
1 The first face is the purport (educational meaning and significance) con-
veyed by the material, referring to, for instance, an account of a political
event by a historical segment (an extract from a historical source), a way
of classifying physical phenomena by a scientific report, a moral dilemma
or an image of person by a literary work. Having students encounter the
purport as such can open up opportunities for widening their horizons,
transforming their perspectives, and cultivating their moral sensitivity.
2 The second face is the originating discipline from which scholarly material
derives, referring to a coherent way of inquiry – a problem identified,
an investigation executed, the data or argument sought, and a conclu-
sion reached. Having students understand and experience the problem,
method, principle and conclusion of a disciplinary inquiry can give rise to
the development of independent critical thinking, an ability to judge the
validity and reliability of knowledge claims, and an understanding of the
merits and limitations of a particular mode of inquiry
3 The third face refers to access disciplines that can be brought to bear on
scholarly material to disclose its full complication and sophistication. When
a piece of material is scrutinised by asking different types of questions,
using different perspectives and different methods of inquiry, it can render
diverse opportunities for cultivating critical thinking, freedom of thought,
self-understanding and prudent thought and action.
(Deng, 2018a, pp. 342–343; also see Schwab, 1973)
Informed by this theory of content, curriculum planning entails a deliberative

and interpretive process of selecting the contents from academic disciplines
with a view to their educational potentials, within a particular instructional
context, with a particular group of learners in mind. The process entails a dis-
covery of the educational potential of scholarly material under consideration,
by means of the three faces – purport, originating discipline, and access disci-
plines. The final decision on inclusion of a particular piece of scholarly content
into the curriculum is made with reference to its educational potential and in
view of the four curriculum commonplaces – subject matter, milieus, learner,
and teacher (Schwab, 1973).
What teaching is and what responsibility teachers need to have, take on spe-
cial meaning in regard to the vision of a liberal education, the theory of knowl-
edge, and the theory of content. As with Didaktik, classroom teaching is seen
as an encounter between students and content to achieve the kind of education
envisioned. A student is seen as a unique individual, with eros – ‘the energy
of wanting’ – an instrument that the teacher needs to make use of (Schwab,
1978). In instructional planning, the teacher is to recover the meaning in schol-
arly material through ‘arts of recovery’ – in terms of the meaning conveyed
(the purport), a particular way of inquiry involved (the originating discipline),
and multiple ways of inquiry brought forth (access disciplines) that could be
brought to bear on the material (Schwab, 1969). By means of these three cat-
egories, a scholarly material or text is made to open up manifold opportunities
for challenging the understandings of students and cultivating their intellectual
and moral powers and dispositions.
Theorising content, teaching and teachers:

comparison and contrast
Despite being developed in different social, historical, and cultural milieus,
Bildung-centred Didaktik and Schwab’s curriculum thinking have significant
resemblances with respect to theorising teaching and teachers. As a point of
departure, both employ a vision of education – centring on the cultivation of
human powers and dispositions – for thinking about the role of knowledge in
education and curriculum. Both treat disciplinary knowledge not in and of
itself but as a resource/vehicle for that cultivation. Both view content, which
results from a deliberate selection of academic knowledge, as embodying edu-
cational potential. Both see classroom teaching as an educational encounter or
meeting between students and content and stress the necessity of unlocking the
educational potential of content for cultivating human powers and dispositions.
There are, of course, differences between Bildung-centred Didaktik and
Schwab’s curriculum thinking. The former views the cultivation of human
powers and dispositions as resulting from interactions with not only academic
knowledge but also society and culture, whereas the latter conceives of it as
primarily resulting from interactions with disciplinary knowledge. The former
34 Zongyi Deng
views academic disciplines as established bodies of knowledge, whereas the lat-

ter sees them in terms of not only achievements but, more importantly, arts or
methods of inquiry.
Differences aside, both Bildung-centred Didaktik and Schwab’s curriculum
thinking are markedly different from the thinking of Young and his colleagues. In
the latter, a sociological theory of knowledge – rather than a vision of education –
is employed as a point of departure for thinking about the purpose of education,
curriculum planning, and classroom teaching. Disciplinary knowledge is viewed
as having its own powers, worthy of being taught for its own sake or to its own
end. Classroom teaching is seen as a process of transmitting disciplinary knowl-
edge to students.
Behind these similarities and differences are two rather different types of
educational theorising that are associated with two distinctive traditions of edu-
cational thinking. Both Bildung-centred Didaktik and Schwab’s curriculum
thinking exemplify a way of theorising in the European Pädagogik tradition
which is distinctively educational, normative, and hermeneutic. (For an explanation
on the convergence in educational theorising between Schwab and Didak-
tikers, see Künzli, 2013; Reid, 1980.) This way of theorising is educational
because it is centrally concerned with questions pertaining to human forma-
tion and development. It is normative because the theorising is informed by
a conception of what education ought to be. Furthermore, both Bildung-
centred Didaktik and Schwab’s curriculum thinking have a strong hermeneutic
and interpretive inclination, a proclivity towards interpreting and unpacking
the meaning and significance of content by means of a set of categories. After
all, the European tradition seeks to establish Pädagogik as a distinctive human
science with “its own terminology, its own points of departure, its own meth-
ods of investigation and verification” (Krüger, 2008, p. 216).
By contrast, the way of theorising used by Young and his colleagues reflects
the anglophone disciplines of education tradition – in which perspectives or theo-
ries used to think about education are derived from or developed based upon
theories of foundational disciplines (psychology, sociology, philosophy, and
history) (Furlong and Whitty, 2017). Such perspectives or theories are then
used to establish theoretical principles concerning curriculum planning and
classroom teaching. The tradition has a strong dependency on foundational
disciplines for its language, theoretical perspectives, and methods.
Conclusion: towards an educational and curricular

understanding of teaching and teachers
This chapter concerns the disappearance of content in current global policy and
academic discourses concerning teaching and teachers. These two discourses,
as noted at the beginning, have been respectively shaped by the accountability
movement – that reduces teaching to the promotion of students’ academic
outcomes through evidence-based practices – and a language of learning that

reduces teaching to the facilitation of learning. Invoking the recent work of
Michael Young and his colleagues, Bildung-centred Didaktik, and Schwab’s
curriculum thinking, I attempt to bring content back into the conversation
on teaching and teachers. In view of the preceding discussion, I now present
three arguments that seek to move beyond current policy and academic dis-
courses and towards an educational and curricular understanding of teaching
and teachers.
The first argument is that teaching (content) is an ‘intergenerational’ task vital for
social reproduction and innovation. Teaching is a deliberative and purposeful edu-
cational undertaking.
Teaching, in the words of Biesta, ‘is always framed by a telos – that is, by a
sense of purpose – which means that teachers always need to make judgements
about what is desirable in relation to the different purposes that frame their
practice’ (2013, p. 36). As noted earlier, according to Young and his colleagues,
the central purpose of schools is the transmission of a body of disciplinary
knowledge that allows students to move beyond their particular experience,
envisage alternatives, and participate in social and political debates. This purpose
is also vital for enabling the next generations to create new knowledge based on
existing knowledge. Therefore, through passing on disciplinary knowledge to
students, a teacher contributes to processes of social reproduction and change –
i.e. ‘reproducing human societies’ and ‘providing the conditions which enable
them to innovate and change’ (Young, 2009b, p. 10).
This distinct purpose of schooling calls for, on the part of teachers, making
deliberate, well-informed decisions on what ‘powerful’ knowledge or content
is that we want all students to have access to. This requirement is inextricably
connected with the ethical responsibility of a teacher aptly captured by the
intergenerational question – ‘what does the older generation want with the
younger?’ – raised by German philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–
1834). Concerning this question, Uljens and Ylimaki observed that
Teaching . . . is about dealing with how to live out our responsibility to
support the student’s stepwise development toward an independent cul-
tural being and citizen able to participate in common tasks of the society,
culture, politics and economy [labour market].
(2017, p. 28)
Furthermore, Friesen argued that the ethical responsibility of teachers with

regard to Schleiermacher’s question takes on greater significance in the current
world:
[W]e must prepare them to inherit the world we have helped to create. This
is a world characterized by rapid change, radical uncertainty and sometimes
36 Zongyi Deng
rapid competition, but it is also one that can be secured by ties of family,
love, identity and belonging. It is also a world where adults and previous
generations have made irreversible decisions regarding the lives of children
and future generations. In this sense too, we adults want – or have in effect
demanded – something from them.
(2017, p. 7)
In view of this, thinking of teachers and teaching in terms of learning or via the
learning discourse ‘simply darkens or conceals the question of adult respon-
sibility’ and distracts and detracts from Schleiermacher’s urgent question of
‘why the older generation is doing what it is doing’ (p. 8).
The second argument, closely related to the first one, is that teaching, by way of
a meaningful encounter between content and students, contributes to their self-formation
and the development of human powers. Teaching is an educational intervention that
aims to bring about something new, something impactful for students. The
intervention, for Young and his colleagues, is achieved through passing on a
body of disciplinary content that can take students beyond their immediate,
surrounding experience – a distinctive purpose of schooling. From the perspec-
tive of German Didaktik and Schwab’s curriculum thinking, this purpose is
inextricably connected with another more fundamental purpose (i.e. Bildung or
liberal education). The intervention is in terms of a student-content encounter
that gives rise to opportunities for students to cultivate intellectual, moral, and
social powers and dispositions. Through making such an encounter possible,
the teacher “opens up a world for the student, thus opening the student for the
world” (Hopmann, 2007, p. 115).
To argue for teaching as an educational intervention is to counter the per-
vasive, popular learning discourse that reduces teaching to the facilitation of
learning and a teacher to a facilitator of learning. A teacher must be positioned
as someone at the heart of the educational process rather than as someone
“who literally stands at the sideline in order to facilitate the learning of his or
her ‘learners’” (Biesta, 2013, p. 38).
The third (last) argument is that teaching is a practical, interpretive act that calls
for curriculum thinking centring on the ‘what’ (content) and ‘why’ (purpose) of teaching.
Teaching is a practical endeavour because a teacher works with specific content,
specific students, and specific materials in a specific classroom context (Schwab,
2013). It is also an interpretive act because it involves content (in the form of cur-
riculum texts) which is to be interpreted and acted upon by a teacher towards
educational ends. For Young and his colleagues, a teacher necessarily identifies
what powerful knowledge is through interpreting the national curriculum, so
as to help students to gain epistemic access to disciplinary knowledge. From the
perspective of Didaktik and Schwab’s thinking, a teacher necessarily interprets
the content in the institutional curriculum, identifying its elemental elements
and ascertaining the educational potential of content for developing human
powers and dispositions. In both cases, the interpretation calls for a special kind
of curriculum thinking centring on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of teaching – that is,
on the content and purpose questions. In this regard, a teacher can be seen as
a ‘curriculum theorist’. Doyle explains:
Teaching is, at its core, an interpretive process grounded in conceptions

of what one is teaching and what value that content has for students and
society. And the choices that teachers make with respect to their content
have enormous consequences for the lives of students and the health of
the society. To teach effectively, teachers much be responsible curriculum
theorists.
(Doyle, 1992, p. 77)
In other words, a teacher has an ethical responsibility to reflect on the what and
why of education – for which the learning discourse is empty (Biesta, 2013).
These three arguments, overall, outline a curricular and educational contour
of meaning of teaching and being a teacher which is far beyond what current
policy and academic discourses can capture due to the omission or neglect of
content. My attempt to bring content back into the conversation on teaching
and teachers, I hope, makes it clear that teaching is an ethical and intellectual
undertaking vital for social reproduction and innovation, human development,
and flourishing – for which content is an indefensible resource. And a teacher,
being (as they are) at the heart of such an undertaking, is a curriculum maker
(or theorist) who must grapple with the intellectual and moral questions of
what content should be taught, why it should be taught, and how it should be
taught within a particular classroom context.
Notes
1 A slightly different version of this chapter, titled “Rethinking Teaching and Teachers:
Bringing Content Back into Conversation”, was published in London Review of Education,
16(3), 2018. The author is grateful to UCL IOE Press for granting permission to reuse
the material in this book.
2 There are many models or branches of Didaktik in Germany and German speaking coun-
tries, such as Bildung-centred Didaktik (Bildungstheoretische Didaktik), Berliner Didaktik,
and Psychological Didaktik, experimental Didaktik, Dialectical Didaktik, etc.
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Chapter 2
From Didaktik to learning

(sciences)
Tobias Werler
Learning: a new core narrative for teacher

education?
Until recently, Didaktik was the major narrative in and for the curricula of
teacher education in Scandinavia. This was the narrative that shaped the cur-
ricular content of the subject Pedagogikk or pedagogy in teacher education
programmes (Kansanen, 1995; Westbury, 2000). As a knowledge domain,1 the
Didaktik narrative highlighted the central pillars of teacher education curricula
in Scandinavia (Skagen, 2006; Werler et al., 2009; Werler, 2014). Didaktik was
considered to be the language of Pedagogikk, a linkage that links teaching with
learning (Werler and Sæverot, 2017). According to this narrative, knowledge
of Didaktik enables teachers to act in a way that creates meaningful pedagogic
situations for their pupils. The argument went further and held that narratives
of Didaktik “restrain teachers”, in Hopmann’s phrase, towards the idea of Bil-
dung (Hopmann, 2007). The assumption was that as student teachers acquire
knowledge of Didaktik, this will support and guide their decision-making pro-
cesses towards pupils’ meaning-making in schools.
One of the consequences of the strong focus of Didaktik on teacher
autonomy has been that teacher education programmes following this narra-
tive across Scandinavia are based largely on principle, rather than pragmatism
as is the case in the curriculum tradition (Reid, 1997). It has been critically
pointed out that Didaktik’s traditionally philosophical rather than empirical
focus (Künzli, 2000) has contributed to the distancing of teaching practices
from the school curriculum. Questions have been raised about the persistence
of this concept, whether it should survive as the core of central (and northern)
European teacher education (Pantić and Wubbels, 2012). The study on which
this chapter is based shows, among other things, that a shift has taken place in
Scandinavian teacher education towards the curriculum tradition. It is not to
be expected, however, that change in these core narratives will be rapid and
comprehensive. Examples from eastern Europe show that new narratives may
have some features in common with old ones (Anchan, Fullan and Polyzoi,
2003). Furthermore, it is not unlikely that the fuzzier and more blurred a new
narrative is, the more long-lasting the old narrative may be.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-3
42 Tobias Werler
The subject of this chapter is the changes and subsequent modifications

made to the reformed Norwegian curriculum for primary and secondary
teacher education since 2010. Its particular interest is the new subject Pedagogy
and Pupil Knowledge (PPK) and the changes to teacher education represented
by its core narrative. The chapter provides insights into the framework of so-
called learning experiences, the framework that forms the basis Pedagogikk og
elevkunnskap (pedagogical studies), the only non-school subject taken by cur-
rent student teachers. The chapter therefore examines the hypothesis that the
traditional core narrative of Didaktik in Norwegian teaching education has
been replaced by a narrative of ‘learning sciences’. The main aim of the chapter
is to examine the advocacy of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD), a powerful stakeholder, for the implementation of
learning-science content in teacher education. The research behind this chap-
ter is thus a contribution to curriculum research in teacher education, contrib-
uting in particular to the opening of the black box of the teacher education
curriculum. In particular, the chapter considers the differences between the
historical and the desired core narratives of teacher education. Such a proce-
dure identifies consensual and/or competing forces in the process of education
reform (Fullan, 1993).
The chapter consists of four sections. Section one investigates the relation-
ship between Didaktik and teacher education; section two discusses epistemo-
logical aspects of ‘learning sciences’; section three asks whether learning is the
answer in teacher education; and section four examines the consequences of
enactment of the reform for teachers’ professionalism.
Section one: the Scandinavian way of teacher

education – Norway as a case
This chapter takes Norway as an example of the Scandinavian tradition of
Didaktik-driven teacher education. Norway provides a paradigm case of the
substantial and conceptual development of teacher education across all Scandi-
navian countries. Key to this type of Didaktik-driven teacher education is that
it derives its inspiration not from academic disciplines close to the natural sci-
ences, such as psychology, sociology, biology, or economics, but from people’s
lived lives and what it means to develop as a human being. Such a pedagogy,
based on what it is to be human, is linked to the arts and humanities as well as
to philosophy.
Scandinavian teacher education programmes have in common that they
are rooted in the seminar tradition, applying Herbart’s consideration of the
paradox of schooling and the pupil’s subjectivity (von Oettingen, 2016). Gen-
erally, these curricula have in common that they aim to promote the freedom
of the individual. The pupil is given the opportunity to free him or herself
from his or her roots in society through teaching. Hence, teacher training aims
to qualify the individual for a universally free and responsible life. Student
From Didaktik to learning (sciences) 43
teachers should therefore learn to teach what cannot be learned in any other
place in society.
Because of their shared basis, Scandinavian teacher education programmes
share a similar value structure: one that is Bildung led, teacher oriented, and
content focused. This conceptual triad is intended to safeguard the autonomy
and responsibility of professional teachers. Today, by contrast, Scandinavian
teacher education is primarily characterised by integration of school-subject
knowledge with the teaching perspective. This means that the emphasis is on
the curriculum of the school and on instruction in school subjects rather than
academic knowledge. But key to these same programmes is enabling future
teachers to make autonomously meaningful decisions in insecure and ill-
defined situations – decisions that are intended to create just and fair educa-
tional situations for all pupils.
These shared general principles underlie the centrality of Didaktik in Scan-
dinavian teacher education. The central aim is that teachers should contribute
to social equality. As part of this, teachers must be put in a position to practise
interaction between teachers and pupils. For this reason, Scandinavian teacher
education is conspicuous in being based on teaching from first to fourth grade,
and from fifth to tenth (or ninth) grade, rather than on school subjects as such.
It is therefore characteristic of the Scandinavian teacher education tradition
that teachers are generalists.
Although it has been argued that teacher education varies structurally
between the Scandinavian countries (Werler et al., 2009), this may be an insid-
er’s view. Seen from outside, the core structure consists of studies in the school
subjects, pedagogical studies, and school practice. Pedagogical studies comprise
60 European Credit Transfer System and last between four (in Denmark) and five
years (in Sweden and Norway), thus making up the largest share of the cur-
riculum. Further, the Scandinavian countries also have in common that teacher
education is centrally governed by framework curricula.
Another indicator of a shared core of teacher education in the region is the
recent reform policy. Standardisation, modularisation, demands for stronger
specialisation, and an increased focus on ready-to-teach competence charac-
terise all the national Scandinavian policy responses (Elstad, 2020; Trippestad,
Swennen and Werler, 2017a).
Having discussed the common and central characteristic of Scandinavian
teacher education programmes, the following section presents challenges
linked to recent teacher education reform movements, as well as discussing the
research problem and illustrating the research approach taken.
Reforms in Scandinavian teacher education

Curriculum reforms are the rule rather than the exception in Scandinavian
teacher education (see Table 2.1). Such reforms reflect the shifting tides of stake-
holder expectations for the functionality and modes of operation of teacher
44 Tobias Werler
Table 2.1 Reform phases and reform objectives of teacher education in Scandinavia
Reform wave 1 2 3
I II III IV V VI
Denmark 1966 1991 1997 2001 2006 2012
Norway 1973 1994 1999 2003 2010 2017
Sweden 1965 1978 1988 2001 2011
Reform Stabilising Pedagogy and Structural Learning
objective teacher Didaktik as modification (sciences)
education core of the and adoption
structure programmes according to
the Bologna
Process
education. The current wave of teacher education reform (Trippestad, Swennen

and Werler, 2017b) in Scandinavia has however been driven by the critique that
the teaching force is inadequately trained and prepared. The perceived proof
was disappointing national PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment)
results. The inference, as presented by government policymakers, was that these
measurement results were due to the poor professional qualification of teachers
and institutional underperformance by national teacher education programmes.
This rhetorical construct resulted in several national programmes to evalu-
ate teacher education, which documented severe shortcomings (in Denmark,
in 2003 (EVA, 2003); in Sweden, in 2004 (HSV, 2005); and in Norway, in
2005/06 (NOKUT, 2006a, b)). In summary, the reports argued that candidates
lacked a clear knowledge base. Furthermore, they did not have pedagogical
competencies capable of satisfying the needs of schools. It was also demon-
strated that teacher education programmes lack coherence, apply inadequate
concepts of knowledge, and are not anchored in current research. The rhetoric
of political reform used in these documents stressed, across all three countries,
that all efforts to improve student performance will fail unless the quality of the
future teaching force is improved. Here the reports took up ideas on the corre-
lation (note, not causation!) between teacher quality and student performance
(Darling-Hammond and Youngs, 2002).
The evaluation projects had been preceded by the OECD study, Teachers
Matter: Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers (2002–04; OECD,
2005) on the effectiveness of teacher education. Scandinavian country reports
had been published as early as 2003 (in Denmark, Jacobsen and Thorslund
(2003); in Norway, the Work Research Institute (AFI, 2003); and in Sweden,
the National Advisory Committee (2003)). A common feature of the studies
was that they all reported concerns about qualitative shortfalls. Teachers were
described as not having the ‘right’ knowledge to meet schools’ needs.
A follow-up OECD recommendation report (OECD, 2005) suggested that
the quality of teacher education in terms of pedagogic as well as professional
knowledge must be improved. In order to improve pedagogical knowledge, it

was pointed out that evidence-based knowledge should be applied.
The teacher education reforms came in waves. The first two waves of reform
were on the national level and were concerned with creating teacher profes-
sionalism. The first of these responded to the need for mass education related
to the reproduction of the nation state; internal coherence and effectiveness
were then the major target areas for the second wave. Then, in a third wave of
reform, against the background of the PISA policy discourse and the evaluation
results just mentioned, the governments of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark
initiated substantial measures to change both the structure and the curricu-
lar content of teacher education programmes. This third wave was completed
in two steps (see Table 2.1). As a first step, teacher education structure was
adapted to international trends. Several key elements – including admission
requirements, the structure of training, the length and level of education, and
quality standards – were modified in all the Scandinavian countries. Structur-
ally, the reforms pushed teacher education from the seminar tradition towards
“universitification” (Werler, 2014, p. 116). They also forced through the com-
modification of teacher education (Werler, 2016) and of a curriculum based
on taxonomic learning-outcome descriptions (Werler, 2017b). The new
teacher education structure presents teacher education as something technical,
accountable, and measurable.
In the second step (VI) of this third wave, the reform focus moved on to
curriculum aspects. The central concern of these reforms was to replace iden-
tity patterns that were now regarded as obsolete with new patterns of action
through gradual universitification and scientification. Two reforms were imple-
mented to bring the curriculum closer to the ideal of scientific research and
training. A primary take was the implementation of various research-based
teacher education approaches (Munthe and Rogne, 2015; Werler et al., 2012;
Alvunger and Wahlström, 2018; Werler et al., 2009). With reference to the
importance of teachers’ knowledge about upbringing and about teaching and
learning, the core domain of teacher education – Pedagogikk (educational/
pedagogical studies, pedagogy) – was now transformed in a government white
paper into something new: Pedagogikk og elevkunnskap (Pedagogy and Pupil
Knowledge) (Ministry of Education, 2009, p. 20).
The research problem: a new core narrative

for teacher education?
In order to achieve the scientification and modification of education studies,
the OECD established the narrative that the “pre-scientific discipline” of peda-
gogy (OECD, 2002, p. 10) should be removed from teacher education. It was
suggested that such knowledge and practice should be replaced by curricular
content from the so-called learning sciences (pp. 22, 26, 88, 90). The OECD
pronounced that it values the learning sciences as a powerful tool “to shed new
46 Tobias Werler
light on questions about human learning” (p. 27). It argued that “brain sci-
ence” (p. 25) suggests ways in which “the practice of teaching can better help
young and adult learners” (p. 27). Further, the learning sciences are judged
to be necessary requirements for “effective learning” (p. 27). A recent study
(Trippestad, Swennen and Werler, 2017b) has documented the strong influ-
ence of the OECD on recent teacher education reform efforts. Until recently,
the “pre-scientific discipline” of Didaktik had formed the backbone of teacher
education programmes.
Against this background, this chapter explores the current space and place
of Didaktik compared to ‘learning sciences’ in Norwegian teacher education.
Although the study is limited to teacher education for primary and lower
secondary school, it also investigates changes in the professional knowledge
domain of teachers in order to understand how teachers might be enabled to
develop “public good professionalism” (Walker and McLean, 2013).
After narrowing its research focus down to the narratives on which educa-
tion programmes are based, the chapter operationalises this focus through three
research questions:
1 In order to develop an understanding on the basis of which to conduct a

comparison between narratives, it is essential to outline the Didaktik narra-
tive of the first two phases of teacher education. The first research question –
What characterises the Didaktik narrative and what was its purpose in earlier
teacher education programmes? – can therefore be answered by a brief narra-
tive analysis of Didaktik related to teacher education. This answer is provided
in section two.
2 The second research question is: How does the OECD (2002/07) explain
and frame its conceptualisation of the learning sciences? This part of the
research investigates the OECD’s conceptualisation of the ‘learning sci-
ences’. Once again, narrative analysis will help to reveal this. In order to
gauge how far the OECD concept may deviate from the scientific dis-
course on the issue at hand, international handbooks on the learning sci-
ences (Sawyer, 2006; Fischer et al., 2018) are consulted. Readers will find
the answer in section three.
3 A comparison of the distilled narratives of Didaktik and ‘learning science’
with the core narrative of the current teacher education curriculum will
answer the third research question: What narrative elements of the OECD
approach can be found in the third wave of teacher education curricu-
lums in Norway? Answering this question will help to explain how far the
OECD conceptualisation of the learning sciences has actually impacted on
the current curriculum for teacher education. A response to this question
is provided in section four.
The research questions are addressed by the application of curriculum analy-

sis, a method not yet widely used in teacher education research. To answer
the research questions, the concept of a narrative curriculum analysis is devel-

oped, based on considerations of commonplaces as common denominators of
practice (Schwab, 1977; Werler, 2006). Here the central idea is to follow the
development of one of the commonplaces of teacher education: the subject
matter as text (Schwab, 1977). The corresponding approach is outlined in the
following section.
Narratives and the teacher education curriculum

In his book After Virtue, MacIntyre (2007) argues that human beings are essen-
tially storytelling animals. Humankind is homo narrans (Fischer, 1984). Narrating
or telling stories helps humans to organise themselves. If these arguments are
taken seriously, it means that stories – narratives – organise people’s knowledge
and memory. But it goes further than this: applying narratives helps people to
understand the actions of others (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 212). Since human life –
and thus by definition teacher education – builds upon narration as a commu-
nication paradigm, research has to answer the prior question: of what narratives
are teacher education a part? This ontological reflection on the human being
constitutes the starting point for the approach I have chosen for the investigation.
Because it refers to past curriculum making, the research behind this chap-
ter is informed by a narrative historiographic approach (White, 1980; Bruner,
1991). Following Hayden White (1980), reporting on the very nature of reality
is narrative, because of the nature of culture – and so education is narrative.
Any narrative translates human beings’ knowing into telling (Bruner, 1986):
this is how information is transmitted between persons (Bruner, 1991).
A text narrative is a hermeneutic compositum in which the text may mean
different things to different persons. Hence, there is no definite measure to
extract its truth (White, 1980), so there is no empirical method for extracting
reality or truth (Bruner, 1991). While narratives are generic and normative
(Bruner, 1991), they organise a person’s experiences and represent the memory
of human actions. That means that narratives are human constructs, mixing
facts and human interest (Shiller, 2017). In other words, narratives provide
models of identity and agency to their members (Bruner, 1986). Shiller (2017)
reports on controlled experiments documenting people’s strong and positive
response to narratives. The approach used here, however, works without any
reference to narrators (White, 1980, p. 7). Thus, the research is dealing with
the qualities of a text rather than its agents. In proceeding this way, the narra-
tive account helps to reveal the political and social order of curriculum making
(Hegel, 1986).
A teacher education curriculum is a core narrative offering society a legiti-
mate plan for the preparation, training, and knowledge domains (to be learned)
of student teachers. Such a plan is a logical and coherent system of interrelated
and sequential arguments that build upon a core of knowledge domains accepted
by stakeholders as powerful or important. Such knowledge is characterised by
48 Tobias Werler
those stakeholders as justified true belief. That does not mean, however, that
that core of knowledge is true: rather, that it is accepted as true and potent.
Such curriculum narratives are indeed potent, because it is through them
that teacher-educators interpret their surrounding world. By creating and
organising these stories, teacher-educators go on to build a sense of coher-
ence among student teachers and establish trajectories for future action that
will allow them to aspire to become capable of teaching other people’s chil-
dren (MacIntyre, 2007). As argued by Fisher (1984), a narrative in the teacher
education curriculum offers symbolic actions (words) that create a certain
sequence and meaning for teacher-educators. Taking a narrative perspective in
research is therefore linked to decisions already taken regarding the content of
teacher education curricula. The importance of studying curriculum narratives
lies in the fact that their practical implementation determines the professional
development of future teachers against the background of local curriculum
development activities (Conle, 2000).
In identifying the core of the ‘knowledge’ narrative, we learn what stake-
holders define as the major task of teacher education. The analysis of narratives
reveals the focus of teacher education stakeholders on social problems and how
they are to be addressed and solved, as well as the knowledge they regard as
important for solving the problems linked to teaching other people’s children.
The elaboration of narratives is enormously meaningful because they are such
important social and political forces, capable of changing reality.
The empirical material consists of classic texts as outlined in the Didaktik
and/or curriculum dialogue, the curriculum guidelines for teacher education
in Norway (KUD, 2009), the OECD documents on the use of learning sci-
ences, and the handbooks on learning sciences.
As Saarinen (2008) has pointed out, it cannot be taken as given that the
policy documents analysed (the teacher education curricula) describe some-
thing that really exists in teacher education practice. But these documents are
not mere rhetoric, detached from real-life activities in teacher education.
The following section explores the Didaktik narrative and its purpose in
previous teacher education programmes.
Section two: Didaktik and teacher education

Against the background of these arguments, the chapter reads Didaktik as a nar-
rative. The Germanic term ‘Didaktik’ is derived from the Greek verb didaskein,
meaning to teach and by extension to learn (Heursen, 1997; Knecht-von Mar-
tial, 1985). In general, the term was first used in the Didascalia treatise, the
first Church Order and a rhetorically composed didactic poem presenting the
teaching of the 12 apostles (Lagarde, 1854/1967; Blankertz, 1975, p. 14). In
education, the most suitable interpretation of the meaning of this word is the
art of teaching. The educational history of Didaktik stresses that it is related to
philosophical thinking, theorising, and the construction of theoretical models
for education. In all these cases, Didaktik theorising is used to answer the ques-
tion of how to think, in such a way as to create both content and teaching
activities that will form the educated personality. Thus, Didaktik is a normative
statement system of how to construe teaching/learning processes according to
various world views, concepts of humanity, or other guiding principles.
Based on Herbart’s teaching work, General Methods of Instruction Derived from
the purpose of Education (Herbart, 1806), the Didaktik narrative was developed
primarily as the core discipline of teacher education (Seel, 1999). In this con-
text, numerous theories and methods about ways of teaching and learning were
developed. As instruments of teacher education, Didaktik narratives were con-
ceptualised as concepts of Bildung. Hopmann illustrates this point and argues
that “Bildung cannot be achieved by Didaktik. The only thing Didaktik can
do is restrain teaching in a way opening up for individual growth of the stu-
dent” (Hopmann, 2007, p. 115). In short, Bildung will be the outcome of the
pupil’s teacher-led confrontation, treatment, and transformation of the differ-
ence between subject matter (Inhalt) and the pupil’s experience of its individual
meaning (Gehalt).
Typical Didaktik narratives address the context of at least three subject areas
of teacher education. At the content level, they make statements about what
culturally and socially important content should be taught by teacher-educators
and learned by student teachers. Further to this, they come up with statements
about what pedagogic methods should be used in classroom teaching. This
applies both to teachers as they unfold the content and to the pupils’ ways of
learning. Unlike theories that are justified by the argument of ‘effectiveness’,
narratives of Didaktik demonstrate a normative and ethical reflection on reason-
ing. Such models are visualised in the well-known ‘didactical triangle’ model
(Paschen, 1979; Prange, 1983), which links the subject to be taught and learned,
the learner, and the teachers.
Place and space of Didaktik narratives

For the last 180 years, teacher education – both in institutions and in programmes –
has served as the place and space of autonomous Didaktik development. The
advancement of Didaktik narratives was concentrated in central and northern
Europe (Seel, 1999; Gundem and Hopmann, 1998). However, teacher education
also served as a teaching and learning arena for Didaktik theories. This outcome
was achieved on the one hand through teacher education curricula, on the other
through textbooks.
Several major narratives framed that development throughout the formation
and development of the nation and welfare state. In telling the ‘story of great
men’ such as Montaigne, Comenius, Fénélon, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fröbel,
Dewey, or Makarenko – to mention only a few – early teacher education
intended to support the transformative identity work of future teachers. A
proper preparation for teaching was seen as dependent on the future teacher’s
50 Tobias Werler
introduction to the heritage of the past in order to form their mindset and
educational perspective. After the Second World War, the teaching of critical
pedagogical approaches was intended to strengthen the future teacher’s profes-
sional autonomy. Towards the end of the twentieth century, subject-matter
didactics became the backbone of those programmes through their provision
of narratives of Didaktik.
It can be argued that such stories about Didaktik (or about the ‘great men’ of
Didaktik) were in fact the semantic content of teacher education; as such, Dida-
ktik becomes the subject matter of teacher education. However, it is not the ‘great
men’ stories that matter. What matters is the presentation of the ‘great men’s’
educational philosophy in its context in such a way as to help future teachers
understand the traditions they should become part of. The teacher’s Didaktik
thinking should be formed by the student teacher’s encounter with subject mat-
ters such as general pedagogy, educational philosophy, and ethics. Further, learn-
ing about Didaktik in teacher education was regarded as having the potential to
help future teachers to cope with uncertainty. Having the opportunity to learn
about pedagogic knowledge in teacher education was thought to enable stu-
dent teachers to make responsible and smart decisions in a situation that is often
unforeseeable and characterised by dilemmas (Englund, 2000; Werler, 2017b).
The Didaktik narrative in teacher education

The fundamental aspiration of Didaktik narrative is to transform the ill-defined
problem of the relationship between teaching and learning into better-defined
models capable of describing how teaching can generate learning of defined
subject matter or skills. The narrative offers a specific language for education,
one that does not originate in other academic disciplines such as sociology
or psychology (Werler and Sæverot, 2017). Such Didaktik narratives establish
ideas about how and why the teaching of collective cultural content (matter)
should be connected with the creation of individual significance (meaning)
(Hopmann, 2007). It is crucial for the experience of individual significance that
the learner experiences some of this content as existential (Sæverot, 2013). In
other words, the narrative supplies future teachers with a well-founded meta-
plan that answers the question as to how to impart a society’s culture to learn-
ers. Such plans bring together fundamental ideas about cultural knowledge
and about the teaching and learning of that knowledge. In short, Didaktik
narratives are characterised by their aspiration to reduce both cultural and social
complexity and contingency. However, even the most advanced narratives of
Didaktik are not capable of developing teaching technology that guarantees
learners will learn something specific, such as particular knowledge or a skill
(Werler, 2015, 2017a). In contrast to evidence-based teaching methods, the
use of Didaktik narratives generates flexible and viable thought patterns for the
construction of teaching.
In teacher education, Didaktik emerges as narrative when it is demonstrated

in the prescribed course reading that teachers are capable of reflecting on what
should happen in the classroom (planning and organisation), what is happen-
ing in the classroom (leadership, discipline, enabling a learning environment,
relationships), and what has happened in class (assessment, evaluation, analy-
sis). In the context of teacher education, Didaktik narratives in teacher edu-
cation address teaching and learning at a general level, taking into account
participants, conditions, processes, and effects. In the given context, Didaktik
is described as an encounter between the pupil, the teacher, and the teaching
material (KUD, 2009, p. 16).
In the Norwegian case, examples of these narratives can be found in the
three modules of Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge (PPK). These are available as
a ‘learning outcome’ description, and they address important aspects of Dida-
ktik such as the representation of the subject matter and the interplay between
all actors and the pupils’ learning experiences (Künzli, 2000). Because no one
can learn in chaos and randomness, teachers must create a pedagogical order
and structure in the classroom. Such a disciplinary structure concerns both
the choice of material and the discipline of the pupils. Therefore, the PPK
description includes the requirement that teachers must know about “class-
room management” and about “leadership of learning, development of a good
learning environment and an inclusive learning culture” (KUD, 2009, p. 17).
To be able to offer teaching as an opportunity for learning, teachers must know
about “leadership of teaching work” and be able to “plan, lead, vary and evalu-
ate their work” (p. 18). Further, the curriculum also addresses issues related
to teaching and learning methods in which pupils are the hub of all actions.
Student teachers are expected to be able to create “mutual pupil relationships,
pupil cooperation” and to use “various teaching aids” (p. 18).
In particular, Didaktik narratives in teacher education address the overarch-
ing goals of schooling as well as the complexity of good teaching. With this
in mind, one may characterise various Didaktik narratives as the professional
language of teachers. Those narratives set out general frameworks for teachers’
development of lessons; they provide knowledge about teachers’ work in social
and political contexts; and they offer knowledge about teaching, assessment,
and judgement. Through constructive and prescriptive capacity (that is, through
model generating), the teaching of Didaktik narratives is understood to con-
tribute to student teachers’ development into autonomous, self-developing, and
professional actors.
It must be stressed in concluding this section that Didaktik is not congru-
ent or identical on both epistemological and ontological levels with the nar-
rative of general pedagogic knowledge (GPK) developed by Shulman (1987).
Such a category error was indeed prominently asserted in the TEDS-M model
(Blömeke and Delaney, 2014) and replicated in several other contexts (Voss,
Kunter and Baumert, 2011). However, Didaktik narratives can best be seen as
52 Tobias Werler
bodies of reflective knowledge, which means that they are therefore beyond
empirical testing of knowledge by means of psychometrics.
Section three: the learning sciences:

a well-defined narrative?
The groundbreaking work done in the late twentieth century in teacher edu-
cation on Didaktik was based on an epistemology that named the philosophi-
cal foundations of education – educational psychology, school theory, general
didactics, and curriculum theory – as the basis for the profession. More spe-
cifically, it became a requirement for teacher education to be set within a
“pedagogical framework” (NOU, 1988, p. 42). Didaktik in teacher educa-
tion was thus recognised as the leading framework of teacher education, bind-
ing the entire programme together. A decade later, the Norwegian parliament
demanded the strengthening of educational foundational thinking as well as the
philosophy of education (NOU, 1996, p. 144). Corresponding implementation
work was guided by the teacher education curriculum of 1999 (KUD, 1999).
However, the trigger for the third wave of reform was the narrative that
teachers are inadequately qualified (NOKUT, 2006a, 2006b). The initiatives
behind the 2009 white paper were motivated by the argument advanced in
2002 in the OECD’s Understanding the Brain: Toward a New Learning Science
“that pedagogy should be replaced by neuroscience or learning science since
these were perceived to be more effective for teachers’ work” (Summak, Sum-
mak and Summak, 2010; Hardiman et al., 2012; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2008) –
although there is no evidence for that claim (Werler, 2017b).
In order to contextualise the outlined epistemological change in the curricu-
lum, the chapter now continues with a review of contemporary understandings
of ‘learning science’, based on Sawyer (2006, online-update 2012) and Fischer
et al. (2018). These two handbooks represent a contemporary repository of
state-of-the-art knowledge about the learning sciences.
A content comparison between the two volumes makes it clear that there
is no agreement at all on the contents, theories, or methods of the learning
sciences. The synopsis of the contents of the two volumes (Table 2.2) shows
that the authors essentially do not deviate from established ideas on learning;
on the contrary, these are presented in a classical way, albeit with modernised
vocabulary. It is noticeable that both volumes include a considerable number
of chapters devoted to technological questions. By contrast, there is only one
chapter on neuroscience (Varma et al., 2018), and none on pedagogical or
content-related aspects of learning. These findings are in line with the com-
prehensive analysis carried out by Nathan and Alibali (2010). Both volumes
address the topics listed in Table 2.2 (in alphabetical order).
In principle, they see learning sciences not as an academic discipline but
rather as an interdisciplinary field (Sawyer, 2006; Fischer et al., 2018), pro-
ducing knowledge of different aspects of human beings’ learning. Based on a
Table 2.2 Disciplines and subdisciplines of learning sciences
Psychology Biology Education Technology
Behavioural Cognitive Curriculum studies eLearning

neuroscience neuroscience
Psychological Cognitive Open and distance Technology in
science psychology education education
Educational Research methods
psychology in education
comparative analysis, both volumes can be identified as a multi-method, multi-

perspective inquiry into understanding and fostering thinking and learning in
school and beyond. In order to allow for a direct comparison between the con-
ceptualisation of the sciences of learning in the scientific field and the OECD’s
understanding of the field, their view is presented later, along with a brief dis-
cussion of how the OECD explains and frames its understanding of the learning
sciences.
In parallel with phasing-in the PISA surveys (OECD, 2001), in the early
2000s the OECD (2002) began to recommend changes in member countries’
curricula for teacher education. The implementation of a new subject was
recommended, which should include “elements of cognitive neuroscience: the
nature of the brain, how the brain learns” (2002, p. 22). Furthermore, the new
subject was to be based on neuroscientific, psychological/medical, and educa-
tional diagnostic content (p. 88, 90). The lobbying organisation (i.e. OECD)
required nothing less than that future teacher education should be based on a
“solid theory of learning” (2002, p. 26). Beyond that, it was argued that both
“brain science” and ICT (p. 25) would suggest how “the practice of teaching
can better help young and adult learners” (p. 27).
It is noteworthy that the OECD was presenting learning sciences as a homo-
geneous and established discipline as early as 2002. The suggested subject nar-
rative appears to be transdisciplinary (p. 81) and has the brain as its fulcrum.
At the same time, the OECD narrative of the learning sciences links “effective
learning” (p. 17) with pupils’ achievement of “health, wealth and happiness”
(p. 17). This rhetorical juxtaposition allowed the narrative to move ideas of
teaching (Didaktik) off centre stage and replace them with ideas of learning
(the brain). According to the OECD, all learning must be understood through
the prism of neuroscience. Therefore, learning-sciences content is defined as a
crucial prerequisite for any reformed teacher education curriculum.
A comparison between the two positions makes it clear that the OECD had
created a random, yet easy-to-understand, narrative about learning sciences
that did not correspond to an established understanding of the field of learning
sciences. The analysis reveals that the OECD adopted an instrumental view of
neurobiological knowledge, rather than basing its position on an evidence-based
54 Tobias Werler
interpretation of the field. In several respects, the OECD was establishing its
own narrative about learning, as distinct from the academic discourse of the
learning sciences. Founded in a neurobiological point of view, this narrative
defined learning as the solution to the technology deficit of Pedagogikk.
Such an understanding of the learning sciences has significant consequences
for non-specialists. Given its apparent authority and recognition, it can be
assumed that the OECD’s learning-sciences narrative will be adopted and
implemented by educational and other policymakers. This means that other
ways of understanding learning will be treated as invalid. An educational view
of teaching and learning is therefore off the agenda. That educational planning
is a prerequisite for learning (of a given content) has gone unnoticed.
Is learning the answer in teacher education?

This chapter is based on the assumption that policy documents have an impact
on the curriculum as a text for teacher education and that they are an educating
and ‘governing’ force in professionalisation processes. The curriculum as text is
a preliminary stage to the enacted curriculum. This section therefore explores
the hypothesis that the focus on Didaktik in Norwegian teacher education
was modified in accordance with the OECD’s interpretation of the learning
sciences. This section therefore reveals those curricular aspects of the OECD
narrative that can be identified in the new curriculum of Pedagogy and Pupil
Knowledge.
To underline that transformation, a brief comparative analysis of key cur-
riculum documents (KUD, 2009, 2016a, 2016b) will be undertaken regarding
the frequency of learning-outcome descriptions that use the terms ‘learning’
and ‘teaching’. Here ‘learning’ is understood as an indicator for knowledge
and competence related to psychology, whereas ‘teaching’ is understood as an
indicator for Didaktik. It is important to bear in mind that these teacher edu-
cation curricula are legally binding documents which define student teachers’
expected learning outcomes. The frequency distribution of learning outcomes
will therefore indicate whether teacher education is likely to operationalise
either the learning or the Didaktik narrative.
Frequency analysis reveals that the term ‘learning’ (as verb, noun, or com-
posite) is used 25 times in the 2010 regulation, and 20 times in 2017. The
term ‘teaching’ is used three times in 2010 but is not used in 2017. A similar
picture emerges from the guidelines for Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge. In the
2010 documents, the concept of learning is used 49 times and the term ‘teach-
ing’ three times (KUD, 2009, pp. 16–22). Seven years later, ‘learning’ is used
33 times and ‘teaching’ six times (UHR, 2016, pp. 18–22). The proportional
comparison underlines the central position of the concept of learning in the
curricula. In 2010, the term ‘learning’ constitutes 3.7 per cent of the guide-
line text and 3.1 per cent of the regulation text. In 2017, these figures have
increased to 4.6 per cent and 3.8 per cent respectively.
The analysis reveals that the concept ‘learning’ (in various forms and shapes)
is a dominant term in the curriculum documents. This finding emerges with
especial clarity from a comparison with the use of the term ‘teaching’ (undervis-
ning), a typical indicator for the Didaktik aspects in a curriculum. As teaching
is the main activity in a classroom, despite all other tasks, this finding is quite
surprising. The analysis emphasises that the curriculum semantics are charac-
terised by the concept of learning.
To widen our understanding of this transformation, a curriculum analysis
is carried out in the following section, applying the narrative historiographic
approach.
New content: new curriculum?!

This section endeavours to answer the question of what narrative elements of
the OECD’s ‘learning sciences’ approach are to be found in the Norwegian
teacher education curriculum (KUD, 2009). The 2010 curriculum was signifi-
cant in that it introduced a paradigmatic change in the subject of Pedagogikk,
while the modified plan of 2016 was less significant in this regard (hence its
omission here).
Based on a governmental regulation in conjunction with detailed cur-
riculum guidelines (KUD, 2009), the standards-based reform was rolled out
between 2010 and 2014. In accordance with the idea that “pre-scientific disci-
pline” pedagogy (OECD, 2002, p. 10) should be replaced by content from the
so-called learning sciences (KUD, 2009, pp. 22, 26, 88, 90), the new subject
of Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge was introduced, replacing the traditional
teacher education subject of Pedagogikk (pedagogy).
The subject of PPK was divided into three modules (totalling 15 credit
points). These focus on:
• (Year 1) the teacher as facilitator of pupils’ learning and development

• (Year 2) pupils’ academic, social, and personal learning and development
• (Year 3) the development of teachers’ professional role and identity
The first topic emphasises that teachers must be able to plan, implement, and
evaluate their own teaching. Most interestingly, the narrative of the teacher
who teaches has disappeared from the curriculum. The concern is no longer
teaching content but how pupils can be made to learn. The teacher is seen
merely as an enabler of pupils’ learning. The respective learning outcomes are
anchored by the following themes:
planning of learning activities, learning theory, classroom management, learn-

ing environment, professional ethics, legislation, beginner training, basic skills,
assessment, digital tools and observational knowledge.
(KUD, 2009, pp. 17–18)
56 Tobias Werler
Throughout the second year, the focus is on pupils’ learning. Pupils are to
understand the significance of their fellow pupils’ social, cultural, and linguistic
heterogeneity. Substantial themes in this topic are:
socialization in different social, linguistic, religious, cultural and media con-

texts, adopted teaching, cultural, linguistic and gender-related heterogeneity,
the child as school beginner, children’s language and concept development,
gender identity, children in difficult life situations as well as learning strategies
and meta-cognitive understanding.
(KUD, 2009, pp. 18–19)
In their third year (the last year in which education is the subject matter), stu-
dent teachers are to learn about the foundations of schooling, school develop-
ment, and professional ethics. Pupils are expected to learn to:
analyse interactions in classes, stimulate student democracy, carry out devel-

opment talks, create aesthetic experiences, use local context for pupil learn-
ing, understand teacher roles.
(KUD, 2009, pp. 19–20)
An overview of the PPK curriculum reveals a clear and striking focus on train-
ing student teachers to understand teaching as indistinguishable from learning.
Furthermore, student teachers are to learn skills that will help their pupils
achieve learning outcomes. To this end, they are to learn psychologically based
concepts of learning. Pedagogy in this setting is reduced to ‘educational diag-
nosis’, the task of which is to identify learning disabilities or learning obstacles.
The findings document that the Ministry of Education sees the primary
objective of the PPK subject as to enable student teachers to diagnose and
interpret their pupils’ learning needs. The learning-outcome descriptors of the
curriculum suggest that Norwegian teacher education institutions must accept
the idea that teachers are to be ‘equipped’ with learning-science knowledge
(KUD, 2009, p. 17).
The success of this strategy is documented by a recent teacher education
curriculum analysis. It shows that the course syllabus in about 80 per cent of
Norwegian teacher education programmes (that is, in 38 programmes) con-
tains learning-outcome descriptions regarding learning-science knowledge,
competences, and generic skills (Werler et al., 2012). Almost all institutions
have implemented learning outcomes regarding the planning of learning activ-
ities; the theory of learning; classroom management; the learning environ-
ment; socialisation in various social, linguistic, religious, cultural, and media
contexts; in adopted teaching; and in cultural, linguistic, and gender-related
heterogeneity. About 50 per cent of these institutions have introduced topics
such as planning of learning activities, professional ethics, and evaluation and
assessment.
Section four: the new learning narrative

This final section discusses empirical findings that acknowledge the fact that
any (hi)story of change must always consider a comparison between previous
and current sates. The discussion therefore begins by focusing on the achieve-
ments of the narratives in teacher education.
Didaktik narratives in teacher education function as holistic, and therefore
powerful, stories about how to hand down cultural assets from one genera-
tion to the next. Didaktik appeals to both the imagination and the visualisa-
tion of the student teacher. This gives the narratives a power to go beyond
what facts alone can convey. Both imagination and visualisation create a rich
and imaginative experience, showing a coherent and meaningful solution to
typical problems of teaching and learning. Even if Didaktik competence can
be seen as similar intuition-like, it supports the profession’s specific capability
to make important classroom-relevant decisions (Kroksmark, 1997; Kahne-
man and Frederick, 2005; Myers, 2002). It helps teachers in sense-making, in
understanding situations related to their teaching. Didaktik competence allows
teachers to teach in the complex and changing world of schools and class-
rooms, a world that is determined by uncertainty and contingency. Beyond
this, teacher education based on the Didaktik tradition prepares student teach-
ers to adjust the corresponding scope of teaching in an intuitively meaningful
way if a classroom situation is experienced as broken, or if a teaching sequence
no longer works. Didaktik competence supports teachers in improvising reflec-
tively and intelligently (Werler, 2015).
As shown, the Didaktik narrative is able to address the ill-defined problem
of education at the level of content. Didaktik narrative enacted in teacher
education supports the transformation of the ill-defined problem into a better-
defined model of the relationship between teaching and pupil learning. Such
a model explains how teaching generates learning of a particular content in a
way that pupils will experience as meaningful to them. It reveals the principles
of meaning-producing actions, and it triggers pupil learning and growth. In
short, teachers’ Didaktik knowledge helps them bridge the gap between pupil
learning and the world from which that learning is separated.
The argument of the OECD in advocating change in the school curriculum
so as to focus on increased teacher efficiency was that education knowledge
was “pre-scientific” (OECD, 2002, p. 10). This argument denied education its
scientific standard. It was argued that the knowledge base in education does not
stem from an autonomous discipline and has no specific theoretical foundation
(p. 10). This criticism alone might lead us to expect that the OECD’s learning
narrative will be clearly reflected in the curriculum.
The preceding analysis demonstrates that a strong narrative about ‘learning’
is constructed in the curriculum of teacher education. In particular, it indicates
that it is doubtful how far the OECD narrative actually applied to teacher edu-
cation in Norway at the beginning of the third and last reform wave. It is also
58 Tobias Werler
doubtful whether the OECD has succeeded in establishing a ‘solid theory of

learning’ in the teacher education curriculum. The OECD reading does not
seem to have been fully accepted by Norwegian teacher education stakeholders.
The Didaktik narrative – judged by the OECD as an art, not a science
(OECD, 2002) – still holds a strong position in the Norwegian curriculum. This
is already evident in the cautious renaming of the subject Pedagogikk as Pedagogy
and Pupil Knowledge. The fact that knowledge about pupils (Pupil Knowledge)
has been added as a supplement to Pedagogikk indicates that Didaktik is recog-
nised as a scientific language about pedagogy and pedagogical actions.
Even though the OECD’s proposal to institutionalise neuroscientific, psycho-
logical/medical, and educational diagnostic content has not been realised, it
cannot be denied that Norwegian teacher training is now partly following a
new paradigm in which shared content has been supplemented or exchanged.
The blurred understanding of Didaktik may in fact have favoured its survival.
At the present time, the linchpin of Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge is a new
learning narrative that approaches learning from multiple perspectives. It is
unclear, however, how knowledge about learning is ultimately operationalised
in the practical work of teacher-educators. The extent to which Pedagogy
and Pupil Knowledge is capable of providing a new conceptual frame – a new
knowledge architecture – for teacher education requires examination. The fol-
lowing section discusses some consequences, both intended and unintended,
of the recent reform wave.
Achievements and challenges: the new learning narrative

in teacher education curriculum
As the analysis reveals, these two conceptualisations of the curriculum for
pedagogical studies in teacher education are markedly different. Today, the
PPK curriculum stands out as a hybrid construct, amalgamating Didaktik with
knowledge about learning. Given that the curriculum’s new narrative repre-
sents various stakeholders’ interests in teacher education, it should safeguard it
as well as seemingly replacing it. It seems reasonable to assume that this double-
bind situation is holding the new subject back (and equivalent subjects in Den-
mark and Sweden) from developing as a nave of teacher education.
Another consequence has been the fragmentation of the knowledge domains
in the PPK curriculum. This raises the question whether general pedagogical
theories and theoretical knowledge and learning topics can be sufficiently cov-
ered in teacher education. Furthermore, in PPK, student teachers encounter
the different languages of Didaktik and the learning sciences. This makes the
development of a developed professional language supporting student teachers
transformation in public good professionals unlikely.
The OECD’s proposal on learning sciences has weakened the position of
Didaktik in teacher education curricula. Although the objective of anchor-
ing its learning-sciences narrative has not fully succeeded, its advocacy by the
OECD triggered the creation of a learning narrative in Norwegian teacher

education curriculum. Various learning-outcome descriptions about the pro-
cess, the function, and the value of learning have now become part of the PPK
curriculum. This narrative tells a different story about how learning happens
and how it should be supported.
Compared to the Didaktik narrative, the new learning narrative has not
proved capable of achieving a powerful or holistic language capable of describ-
ing how to choose and unfold content for the younger generation. The learn-
ing narrative is also over-strained when it attempts to explain how pupils are to
experience meaningful learning. In short, the learning narrative does not sup-
port student teachers in transforming disciplinary knowledge into something
that is teachable and relevant to pupils.
The problem with the learning narrative is that it presents learning as a tech-
nical, controllable capacity. Learning in teacher education practice can therefore
be presented as a technical problem. Since the problem is presented in a scien-
tific context, student teachers might be expected to be offered corresponding
solutions to the problem. But the conflation of object and method into one is
not sound epistemological practice, because it leads to the misconception that
if learning is the problem, then learning is the solution. Such an approach does
not support teachers’ autonomous decision-making as is required in situations
of unpredictability.
An obstacle to the learning narrative lies in the fact that it does not help to
contextualise pupil learning. Hence, it cannot explain what teaching method
is suited to what pupils. Another obstacle to the learning narrative is its focus
on the individual’s learning. This obscures that learning happens only when
teachers teach school classes. The perspective that learning in school is a col-
lective activity is absent.
As for the professionalisation of teachers, learning is presented as the ultima
ratio. Making pupils learn is described as the aim of teaching (regardless of
what is to be learned, how, or why). The learning narrative, as expressed in
the PPK curriculum, therefore has the potential to distract from the actual
task of teacher education: that is, learning to develop teaching and learning to
teach. To assume that learning is something that pupils do may reflect the naive
everyday learning experiences of stakeholders in teacher education, but those
beliefs do not provide viable concepts for how to teach other people’s children.
Outlook
Narratives are powerful stories that help people to coordinate other people’s
mindsets, knowledge, beliefs, and convictions. Narratives trigger the imagina-
tion and have the power to create future realities. In so doing, they create a
virtual reality that can both address problems and simulate ideal solutions.
Regarding the new subject of Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge, it can be
stated that its curriculum addresses the political demand for the minimisation
60 Tobias Werler
of ontological uncertainty for the teaching profession. But the implementation

of the new narrative has placed knowledge domains stemming from brain sci-
ence or incompletely developed learning sciences in a position where they can
impact the core of teacher education.
From the outset, the learning narrative merged several quite antagonistic
narratives. It is reasonable to argue that this course was chosen in order to pre-
vent teacher education from running into a dysfunctional situation in which
a new narrative was to take over from a narrative disparaged as ‘pre-scientific’.
Be that as it may, teacher education in Norway seems to have ended up with
a curriculum that is a palimpsest of broken narratives. Despite all the changes,
the question of what knowledge of pedagogy future teachers need to have in
order to develop and deliver good teaching remains unresolved. It is highly
probable that the fact that the reform was conceived by actors outside teacher
education who do not recognise national knowledge traditions as valid is a
central reason for this.
As a final note: if learning is the answer, what was the problem in the first
place?
Note
1 Especially in central and northern European teacher education, Didaktik (as subject mat-
ter and research field) has addressed the ill-defined problem of education (Hopmann,
2003; Werler, 2015). For a more elaborate discussion of the differences between Dida-
ktik and Anglo-American research on teaching and learning/curriculum research, see
Gundem and Hopmann (1998), Hamilton (1999), Kansanen (1995), Nordkvelle (2003).
Krogh, Qvortrup, and Graf (this volume) have elaborated on translation issues and the
difference between the English word ‘didactic’ and German ‘Didaktik’. Their argument is
followed in the present chapter.
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Chapter 3
Content in American
educational discourse
The missing link(s)
Norm Friesen
Introduction: contemporary discourses on

learning, curriculum, and knowledge
In American educational discourses ranging from instructional planning to
educational psychology, education, teaching, and pedagogy are all understood
predominantly in terms of learning. Learning, in turn, is seen as “a process . . .
that takes place in the mind” (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 3), one occurring via
“the functions of the human brain” (Eyler, 2018, p. 12). (Note that here and
later, I am citing popular summaries of the learning process because they bring
into relatively sharp relief points that are often implicit or only partially articu-
lated in more formal scholarship, e.g. Bransford et al., 2006; Sawyer, 2014.) It
is regarded as a natural process determined by evolution – one that instructors
today “can maximize . . . by employing evidence-based strategies in the class-
room” (Eyler, 2018, p. 4). The principles of the mind’s or brain’s operation are
further characterised as “experience-independent” and “cross-culturally rel-
evant”. They are seen as applicable to all “educational levels and pedagogical
situations” as well as to various cultures and cultural environments. They are
further described as “domain-independent”, working the same “across all sub-
ject areas” – meaning that particular differences in content types and structures
are effectively rendered moot (Ambrose et al., 2010, pp. 7–8; see also Eyler,
2018, pp. 5–9). Learning is seen as independent of all of these factors because it
is said to be based on a common ‘cognitive architecture’ of the mind or a com-
mon set of biological characteristics of the brain. Learning, by further implica-
tion, is configured in a way that is monolithic, of one kind, and unchanging.
It is not seen to occur on various levels, as Bateson (1987) has proposed, nor
is it viewed as changing historically or biographically with the development
of literacy and similar skills (e.g. Olson, 2016). Moreover, the learning of an
infant in the crib is regarded as not fundamentally different from that of a
graduate student in the science lab, and the learning of both does not differ in
essence from the learning of a Neolithic hunter-gatherer (Eyler, 2018, p. 9).
This emphasis on learning as a universal human process leaves little room for
consideration (outside of historico-political examinations; see e.g. Popkewitz,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-4
66 Norm Friesen
1987; Rudolph, 2002; Gustafson, 2009) of particularities of content that might

be developed specially for teaching or educational purposes and of the varied
pre-existing or potential connections that this content might (or might not)
have with teachers and students.
The neglect of questions of content from the more specialised area of Amer-
ican curriculum theory and research, on the other hand, is rather different in
kind but equal in degree. Early in the twentieth century, conceptions of cur-
riculum content were influenced by both Edward Thorndike’s behaviourism
and John Dewey’s philosophy of experience. Each of these emphasised pos-
sible connections between curricular content and life outside of the classroom
(Dewey, 1897; Thorndike, 1912; Tyler, 1981) – although neither went into
depth regarding what this might mean for the nature of pedagogical content
per se. Ralph Tyler’s famous 1949 rationale for curriculum development can
be seen to combine a Deweyan stress on educational experience (Hlebowitsh,
2010, p. 203) together with the then-emerging paradigm of systems theory. As
readers likely know, Tyler’s rationale
begins with identifying four fundamental questions which must be

answered in developing any curriculum and plan of instruction[:] What
educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What educational
experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? How
can these educational experiences be effectively organized? How can we
determine whether these purposes are being attained?
(Tyler, 1949)
Through its emphasis on educational purposes and their attainment, Tyler’s ratio-
nale already anticipates systems conceptions of instruction as a closed process
or feedback-loop. This is a process that begins with the definition of purposes
or objectives, proceeding through questions of efective means or organisation,
and ending with the feedback represented by measures of the attainment of
these purposes or objectives (see Figure 3.1). Of course, to conceive of curricu-
lum and instruction primarily as a systematic process – “as a series of actions or
operations conducing to an end” (Merriam-Webster) – means to focus precisely
on this purpose or end and on the most efcient way to reach it. This means
that curriculum is placed in an instrumentalist or ‘technicist’ frame, often to
the neglect of its stakeholders – including student, teacher, and community –
and to the practices and material that can be seen to constitute it. In addition,
content in this context is seen neither as being diferentiated in its types nor as
having a specifically pedagogical form or nature. It serves simply as one of so
many ‘inputs’ into a system to be optimised for the production of outcomes or
outputs.
Starting in the 1970s, this technicist reduction of education was critiqued
within curriculum studies itself, most prominently by William Pinar (1975),
to form a movement known as reconceptualist curriculum studies (e.g. Pinar,
Content in American educational discourse 67
Figure 3.1 The component phases of an instructional system. Represents a conception of

the development of instruction reflecting the influence of systems theory.
Source:Adapted from Glaser (1962)
2014). By concentrating on experience as ‘lived’ (a notion somewhat different

from Dewey’s ‘experience’),1 the reconceptualists have sought above all to res-
cue the subjectivity of the individual – of both the student and teacher – from
the machinery of curricular efficiency. Unsurprisingly, the role and characteris-
tics of curricular content are overlooked in this critical approach. Such content
is dismissed simply as representing so much ‘busy work’ (e.g. Pinar, 2014) or
as yet another part of a larger regime of indoctrination, testing, and control
imposed by political interests.
In the face of this broad and consistent avoidance of questions of curricular
content in American approaches to instruction – whether in theories of learn-
ing or those of curriculum – this chapter develops an account of curricular
content as material that is inherently pedagogical. It sees such content as having
intrinsic and distinctly pedagogical or didactical qualities and as also presenting
multiple potential connections with both student and teacher. This chapter
does this first by examining a few contemporary exceptions to the rule of the
general avoidance of this topic – namely, Lee Shulman’s concept of “content
knowledge” and Michael Young’s “powerful knowledge”. It argues, however,
that both of these approaches pay insufficient attention to students as active
recipients of such knowledge and content. After offering Wolfgang Klafki’s
understanding of didactic preparation as a possible solution to this problem, this
chapter concludes by suggesting a general “hermeneutic” theory of knowledge
transmission as broadly commensurate with this understanding.2
Lee Shulman – as the first exception to the rule of the neglect of content –
understands pedagogical content knowledge as “that special amalgam of content
and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, [forming] their own
special form of professional understanding” (Shulman, 1986, p. 8). Schulman
further characterises this “content knowledge” as including “the most regularly
taught topics in one’s subject area” – and as centring on “the most powerful
analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations” (p. 8). “In
a word”, Schulman continues, this type of knowledge consists of “ways of rep-
resenting and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others”
68 Norm Friesen
(p. 9). Schulman’s original conception has since served as the basis for a rela-
tively small body of research into teacher content knowledge, particularly in
the natural sciences and mathematics. As one survey of this research shows, this
type of knowledge is thus far rather underconceptualised (Depape, Verschaffel
and Kelchtermans, 2013). The question of ‘content knowledge’, it appears, has
been defined largely in terms of a range of empirically accessible particularities
of teacher knowledge and practice. Specifically, it has been understood either
as ‘situated’ directly in this practice, or as more ‘cognitive’ propositional knowl-
edge that can be retrieved by the teacher and then put to pedagogical use.
Depape, Verschaffel, and Kelchtermans conclude their research synthesis by
asking for greater clarity and specificity in researchers’ “conceptualization and
operationalization” of pedagogical content knowledge, recommending that
they “conscientiously align them with their intended research goals” (p. 23).
Although obviously helping to clarify current conceptions of content in rela-
tion to teacher knowledge and action, this work cannot truly be said to articu-
late a ‘theory’ or ‘account’ of content that focuses on its relation to pedagogy,
to practices of teaching. It also cannot be said to unambiguously identify any
potentially pedagogical characteristics of such content. In addition, although
it might help clarify teachers’ relation to the knowledge they teach – and the
way it is embodied in pedagogical content – it does little to shed light on the
connection of such knowledge to the student or learner.
A second recent attempt to bring questions of content or more specifically, of
content knowledge, back to the centre of concern is represented by UK scholar
Michael Young. Young’s conception of knowledge in education was champi-
oned by Michael Gove of the ill-fated David Cameron government (Wilby,
2018), and Young himself has garnered attention internationally. He advocates
for a “knowledge-based approach to the curriculum”, saying that above all,
what “curriculum theory needs” is “a theory of knowledge” (2013, p. 107).
He then takes it upon himself to provide the outlines of such a theory. The
key question for education for Young is specifically about its content – namely,
“what do students have an entitlement to learn?” (p. 101; emphasis added).
Much of Young’s theory of educational content is consistent with this ques-
tion, and in particular with the word “entitlement”: education, he believes, is
undergirded by knowledge, above all, by what he calls “powerful knowledge” –
“knowledge [that] is worthwhile in itself”, (2013, p. 117; emphasis added). And
it is this that makes exposure to it as a matter of entitlement. Students need to
be told, Young says, that they should “never apologize that they need to learn”
such intrinsically valuable knowledge (p. 117). Young also explains the gen-
eral character of this knowledge, saying that it is specialised and disciplinary in
nature: it is “specialized”, Young explains, “in how it is produced (in workshops,
seminars and labs) and in how it is transmitted (in schools, colleges and universi-
ties) and this specialization is expressed in the boundaries between disciplines
and subjects” (Young and Muller, 2015, p. 142; original emphasis). As a result,
Young continues, powerful knowledge is “not general knowledge”; it is thus to
be “differentiated from the experiences that pupils bring to school or older learn-
ers bring to college or university” (2013, p. 142; original emphasis).
Young brings his conception of the knowledge that underlies educational
content into positive relation to the student by implying that the point of such
powerful knowledge is not simply to “replace a pupil’s everyday experience”.
Instead (and despite its differentiation from everyday knowledge), Young says
that powerful knowledge builds on and “extends that experience”, giving the
student the possibility “to generalize about” what he or she experiences every
day. At the same time, though, Young sees powerful knowledge as ultimately
indifferent to students’ interests: “[A]lthough knowledge can be experienced
as oppressive and alienating”, Young admits, “this is not a property of knowl-
edge itself. An appropriate pedagogy”, he continues, “can have the opposite
consequences – it can free the learner to have new thoughts and even think the
‘not yet thought’” (2013, p. 107). But in the final analysis, what is important
for Young, it seems, is not how this knowledge is taught, but rather, “the com-
mitment” of the learner “to a relationship to” powerful knowledge (Young and
Muller, 2015, p. 141). The student has the entitlement to acquire knowledge
that has been deemed “powerful”; but it is ultimately up to the him or her to
realise this entitlement.
Young is right, I believe, in emphasising the need for new and differenti-
ated ways of understanding knowledge in the light of its centrality to curricular
questions. This knowledge is indeed to be differentiated from other forms of
knowledge, and (as I also argue later), from both everyday knowledge and from
strictly specialised, disciplinary knowledge. However, there remain a number of
apparent unresolved tensions or contradictions in Young’s account. For example,
Young asserts at once that powerful knowledge builds on and “extends [students’]
experience”, but he simultaneously claims that it is also “differentiated from the
experiences that pupils bring to school” (as quoted earlier). Young further insists
that this knowledge requires “an appropriate pedagogy” in order to not “be expe-
rienced as oppressive and alienating”; but at the same time, he insists that this
knowledge is valuable, powerful and worthwhile “in itself ” (2013, p. 117). These
rather different characteristics of educational content raise questions about the
precise nature of its relation to the student as well as the teacher.
Didactics: cultural content and its exemplarity

Both Young’s conception of powerful knowledge and Schulman’s notion
of “pedagogical content knowledge” challenge us to think about how such
knowledge is ‘situated’ – how it is embodied and enacted in the curriculum, in
acts of teaching – and in students’ relationships to it. Young, in particular, also
challenges us to think of this embodied and enacted knowledge not in isola-
tion but as something that has a potency that is realised specifically in relation.
However, he leaves us uncertain as to the precise nature of these relations. Such
relations are at the centre of a rather different approach to curricular forms of
70 Norm Friesen
knowledge, action, and situation. These are ones that have developed gradu-
ally in Europe over the course of the modern era (often seen as starting with
Comenius, 1657), and that, as John Dewey noted over a century ago, were
most “highly elaborated . . . in Germany” (1911, p. 327). This approach or
tradition lives on to this day, and is known in German as Didaktik, in French as
didactique, in Spanish as didáctica, and in Finnish as didaktiikka (to give just a few
examples). It refers, as Dewey notes, simply to “the science or art of teaching”
broadly understood (1911, p. 327). The primary representative of Didaktik in
Germany and perhaps in all of Europe from the post-war era to the present
is Wolfgang Klafki, whose “Didaktik Analysis as the Core of Preparation of
Instruction” serves as the key text in the discussion that follows. (A second is
Martin Wagenschein’s “On the Concept of Exemplarity in Teaching”. Both
Klafki’s and Wagenschein’s texts are available in English translation in Teaching
as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition (2000), edited by Westbury,
Hopmann and Riquarts.)
In general, didactics are based on a set of presuppositions that are in many
ways diametrically opposed to those underpinning contemporary discourses of
both curriculum studies and of ‘learning’ as a natural process happening in the
mind or brain. Klafki’s Didaktik can be seen, in effect, as an answer to the ques-
tions, “What it is to be human and what it is to educate?” As an aside, although
one might think that such broad, philosophical questions are not considered in
theories of learning or of curriculum, they actually are given very determinate
(albeit tacit) responses in these discourses. If learning is something that happens
in the mind or brain, something determined by eons of biological evolution,
then to be human – to know what we know and act as we do – is to be a crea-
ture largely determined by our biology or our cognitive architecture. It follows
that to educate then is indeed to use “evidence-based strategies” in order to
leverage this biology and architecture for the sake of more efficient learning. In
the case of reconceptualist curriculum studies, on the other hand, to be fully
human is to have “reconstructed” both oneself and one’s world politically and
psychologically – with education then taking the form of a “complicated con-
versation” among those engaged in such reconstruction (Pinar, 2014, pp. 1–11).
Unlike theories of learning – but similar to reconceptualist understandings –
Klafki and the European didactic tradition generally do not take nature as
their focus. Instead, they begin with culture. At the same time, they do not
ignore the reality of our natural biological conditions; rather, they see this
condition not as something to be affirmed and leveraged but as something
to be overcome. This overcoming, moreover, is not to occur through standard
or evidence-based strategies or techniques but through the induction of the
human individual into what is not natural – human history, society, and cul-
ture. Through education, according to this view, people are liberated from
their ‘natural’ habits, passions, and dispositions to eventually become autono-
mous and responsible, both in their everyday lives and in the exercise of the
knowledge and abilities gained through their education. The ultimate goal of
education, then, is not efficient learning but a kind of overall “maturation”;

the student’s attainment of “the state in which one can assume responsibility”
as Klafki puts it (2000, p. 147).
In keeping with its distinctive understandings of both what it is to be human
and what it is to educate, the didactic tradition also conceptualises the mean-
ing and development of curriculum and content in ways radically different
from those dominant in America today. Instead of emphasising sequences and
procedures to attain measured “instructional objectives” – or the critique of
such processes and sequences – didactical thinking occurs in relational terms.
These relations link the three elements just mentioned – teacher, student, and
content – to form a triangle, and this triangle, in turn, has come to be known
as the ‘Didaktik triangle’ (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). The didactic triangle links
student, teacher, and content in multiple senses and via multilayered affinities,
tensions, and their negotiation. Each of the three solid lines or connections
delimiting this triangle brings with it a different emphasis: student and teacher
are connected through the much-studied student-teacher relationship (e.g.
Pianta, 2001), or what is known in the German context as the ‘pedagogical
relation’ (e.g. Friesen, 2017a). Student and content, on the other hand, are
linked through learning, study, and work. Teacher and content, finally, are
linked both through preparation and instruction. A further, indirect linkage is
illustrated in the dotted vertical line and arrow in the middle of the triangle,
which indicates the focus of the teacher specifically on affecting the relation-
ship of student to content – to mediate, in a sense, the student’s relation to it. In
the pedagogical situation, the teacher intends to change the relation of stu-
dent to content from indifference to personal interest, and from unnecessary
uncertainty or confusion to clarity and confidence – without any of these
relations and tensions between them being minimised or resolved. In its most
elementary form, the didactic triangle can be readily identified in the widest
range of pedagogical situations, including in snapshots of everyday pedagogi-
cal interactions (Figure 3.3).
In keeping with its emphasis on cultural and social possibilities rather than
on biological determinations, didactics sees curriculum and content as above all
human and cultural. This content is seen not so much as exemplifying ideological-
charged busywork or as embodying indifferent but ultimately powerful knowl-
edge. It is also not seen primarily as something that needs to be arranged for
human cognitive architecture, for easy assimilation by the brain. Curriculum
is instead understood as historical and cultural ‘human content’, which is itself
multidimensional and dynamic, and which is handed down and transformed
from one generation to another. It is precisely because this material is human
and cultural (with natural science being included in the latter) that it possesses
qualities which can be said to be intrinsically educational. It has, in other words
a “formative power”, as Klafki puts it (eine bildende Kraft – with Bildung refer-
ring to the formation of oneself through the world and in relation to oneself).
Quoting Willmann, Klafki further describes this as “an organic power contained
72 Norm Friesen
Figure 3.2 The didactic triangle

Source: From Friesen and Osguthorpe (2018)
Figure 3.3 The didactic triangle in a concrete teaching and learning situation, illustrating
all of its essential elements and relations.The teacher, by leaning in and literally
intervening between the student and the content with her hands, can be seen as
mediating the student’s relation to this content, or to be relating to the student
via the content.
Source: Photo courtesy of the US Department of Education
in the content itself, which has a determining influence on the conceptions and
thoughts during assimilation by the mind” (as quoted in Klafki, 2000, p. 147).
This does not mean that this content is necessarily viewed as fun or easy by the
student, but rather that it requires of the student a change – a change in per-
spective, in ways of thinking, in expressing themselves or relating to themselves.
Quoting Martin Wagenschein, Klafki explains that such content also reflects
“the existential concentration in which the human, historical world is given
to us in our life context, from the perspective of the tasks that arise in our specific
and individual situation” (Klafki, 2000, p. 147; emphasis in original). It “is not”
simply “an externally given matter”, Klafki emphasises (p. 147), but, rather, it is
the stuff of human culture and human being – not to be confused with ‘canon-
ized’ culture, reading lists, or scientific discoveries – but substance that mediates,
informs, and enriches our everyday life and work.
This dynamism of educational material, for Klafki and for the didactic tradi-
tion as a whole, is underpinned by two dimensions intrinsic to any content that
can be called ‘educational’: the first is its Bildungsinhalt, simply its educational
content, its own everyday meaning and function, or as Klafki says, its intrinsic
“inner meaning” (p. 153). The second its Bildungsgehalt, or educational substance.
Anything taken from culture for the curriculum – whether it is a famous sci-
entific experiment or a short story – represents an object which can be given a
specifically educational purpose. A scientific experiment can exemplify the force
of gravity, the nature of the scientific method, or the formation of a historical
scientific paradigm, just as a short story can exemplify elements of the author’s life
and times, or aspects of character or narrative. “The same item of content can” as
Klafki explains, “exemplify a variety of general subjects”. All of these possibilities
reflect the educational substance, or Bildungsgehalt, of that resource (p. 146).
The dynamism of educational material is further underscored by the unifying
principle of Klafki’s Didaktik. This is Klafki’s notion of the example, of exem-
plarity or Exemplarität. Whatever the object or content selected for a class or les-
son, Klafki emphasises, it is always something in particular, it always “represent[s]
a larger set of cultural contents” (p. 150; original emphasis). The example connects
the particular and the universal. It is also the example that leads the student
inductively from what is concrete and specific in the world around them to the
general and theoretical. Finally, it is also the “logic” of the example, through
which a particular perception or experience can be named and connected to a
broader social reality. The red fire truck or stop sign are examples of ‘redness’
for the young child learning about colours. Indeed, one might go so far as to
say that the logic of instruction, the logic of Didaktik, is the logic of the example.
The ideal example, Wagenschein emphasises, is not simply an illustration of a
single concept or principle. It is not simply a part of a whole, but instead pro-
vides “a mirror of the whole” (2000, p. 165). “The individual [object] is a focal
point, admittedly only one, but one in which the whole is borne”, Wagenschein
continues. “In this sense, the individual does not accumulate, but bears and
illuminates the whole; it does not lead away from the whole but enlightens it.
Through resonance it excites further, related knowledge” (p. 165). “Words that
are repeatedly used” to describe examples of this kind, Wagenschein goes on to
say, “include illustrative, representative, pregnant, model case, ideal, exemplary, para-
digmatic” (p. 165; original emphasis). Klafki and Wagenschein thus see the ques-
tion of content from a hermeneutical, ontological, and, in some senses, even
74 Norm Friesen
an aesthetic or literary way. The exemplary possesses an aesthetic, poetic reality

and depth; the best examples have the appearance of a rich literary or aesthetic
symbol, such as the whale in Moby Dick or the German Romantics’ blaue Blume
(blue flower). It also certainly has both metaphorical and metonymic functions:
the example resembles many aspects of the things it exemplifies, in the same way
that we can say “my love is a rose”. But at the same time, Wagenschein has made
clear, it is a part that stands in for the whole (i.e. a synecdoche), as in references
to ‘the crown’ or the ‘White House’. And it is symbolic, finally, also in that it
ultimately points to something transcendent, to the structure and unity of a rich
idea or even an entire discipline.
Klafki: four questions of exemplarity

Klafki explores the pedagogical significance of any given example of educa-
tional content for his Didaktik through four questions. These are questions
that help teachers differentiate between content generally and its educational
potential or educational substance. These questions constitute Klafki’s ‘didactic
analysis’, with the first question or, rather, set of questions, asking:
What wider or general sense or reality does this content exemplify and
open up to the learner? What basic phenomenon or fundamental prin-
ciple, what law, criterion, problem, method, technique, or attitude can be
grasped by dealing with this content as an ‘example’?
(2000, p. 151)
What Klafki is asking here is about what the Bildungsgehalt, the educational
substance or significance that is present in the material will manifest. Klafki
is also emphasising that this significance can be found in the widest range of
things – from an attitude or skill to a phenomenon or physical object.
Klafki’s second question asks about the significance of the material or topic
not for what is to be taught or learned but for students in their current situation:
“What significance does the content in question, or the experience, knowl-
edge, ability, or skill to be acquired through this topic already possess in the
minds of the children in my class?” (p. 151). Klafki understands this question
as being practical, empirical, and normative in nature. He is asking about
what might already be significant for the child, what knowledge might be
accessible to the child, as well as what should be significant and accessible for
the student.
[It] is a matter of whether the content in question, that is, the substance to
be investigated in it, can and should be an element in the present education
of the young people, that is, in their lives, in their conception of them-
selves and the world, in their areas of competence.
(p. 152; emphasis added)
An obvious example would be a lesson in safe adult sexual activity, which

would certainly neither be accessible to nor desirable for grade one students,
but which would meet all three of Klafki’s criteria in the case of those who
are older. Then there is the descriptive or practical sense of Klafki’s question,
which has to do with the way that the example can be approached in instruc-
tion. Klafki characterises this through the following questions:
From which angles do the students already have access to the topic? Which
angles are still unfamiliar? . . . Must the children first be acquainted with
the questions from which this topic is to develop – perhaps by shatter-
ing certain conceptions they take for granted – or can the familiarity be
presupposed?
(p. 152)
Thus, in the familiar example of teaching younger students about the earth
rotating on its axis and circling the sun, it is likely first useful to ask them about
their experiences of night and day, of the sun rising and setting, of seasons and
their gradual progression. It would then be important to have something like a
globe and flashlight on hand to provide concrete illustration for a scientifically
accurate explanation.
Klafki’s third main question asks: “What constitutes the topic’s significance
for the children’s future?” Klafki again clarifies this through further questions:
“Does this content play a vital role in the intellectual life of the adolescents and
adults the children will become, or is there justification to assume that it will,
or should, play such a role?” (p. 152). Klafki here is echoing a theme familiar
from German pedagogy – one that goes as far back as the hermeneutician
Friedrich Schleiermacher. This is the dual focus of pedagogy on the children’s
well-being in the present and on their future, and the tension that often exists
between the two (Friesen, 2017a). It is captured in Schleiermacher’s discus-
sion of education’s need to often “sacrifice” of “the present for the sake of the
future” of the child (Schleiermacher, 1826/forthcoming).
Given that the present, according to Schleiermacher, should not be unneces-
sarily sacrificed for the sake of the future, it is not the knowledge of the expert
that is necessarily seen as the ideal for the curriculum by Didaktik. The student
is not to approximate an expert, as some contemporary theories of learning
insist (e.g. Bransford et al., 2006; Sawyer, 2014). That would require a rather
complete sacrifice of the present for the future. Instead, the student, as Klafki
says, is to become an “educated layperson” (gebildeter Laie). By this, he means a
democratic citizen who is to be aware of his or her responsibility for our

society and our state [. . . a] ‘consumer’ who should be able to choose
critically and with taste from among the wide range of opportunities for
experiencing and forming culture.
(2000, p. 145)
76 Norm Friesen
Klafki’s fourth question is based on the answers provided to the previous three.
It reads: “How is the content structured (which has been placed in a specifically
pedagogical perspective by Questions I, II, and III)?” (p. 153). Its sub-questions
are about “the individual elements of the content [when seen] as a meaningful
whole”, about “the relationship of the individual elements” of the content, and
about “layers of meaning and significance” that might inhere in the content as a
whole (p. 152). The relevance of these last few questions is related to the kind of
subject matter in question. A text or an image in a class on arts and literature will
often be the object of an ever-deeper exploration of significance, starting with
surface meanings going on to more profound themes and patterns. “Relation-
ships of individual elements”, on the other hand, are particularly important in
subjects like mathematics, engineering, and other sciences. Finally, the relations
of parts and wholes are of particular importance when considering systems or
cases: politics and organisations, the environment, and biological systems. Such
typologies of knowledge explication have been outlined in greater detail, for
example, by Chambliss and Calfee in their 1998 book, Textbooks for Learning – a
rare recent treatment in the English language that touches on what makes con-
tent specifically educational or pedagogical in nature.
Klafki’s many questions about the exemplarity of a given resource or piece
of content suggest that such content is not simply neutral when it comes to
its relation to the student. They instead suggest that knowledge brings inher-
ent pedagogical value and meaning in some situations but not in others –
and that such value and meaning is inseparable from its multifarious relations
both to student and teacher. His questions show us that any given piece of
content (or any example) has a range of aspects that need to be considered and
mediated by the teacher – that require “an appropriate pedagogy” as Young
rather elusively noted earlier. Educational materials must be evaluated from
the perspective of the teacher’s instructional intentions, of the student’s pres-
ent and future, and in terms of what these materials afford in terms of instruc-
tional pragmatics.
Conclusion: moving beyond what comes naturally

By examining the way it both conceptualises and analyses educational content,
I have shown how Didaktik invokes a picture of education and of the human
being that takes culture, society, and history – rather than nature, biology, and
neurology – as its starting point. Didaktik sees education as a process always neces-
sarily involving all three components of the didactic triangle, as an induction into
powerful cultural or historical understandings, and as ‘elevating’ the human from
the physical, emotional, and mental limitations of biology to the freedom and
responsibility that is possible in a democratic culture and society. Now, in my con-
clusion, I consider some of the further implications of Didaktik for understand-
ing content by considering one further linkage within continental theorising.
I consider the connection of the didactic conception of content to a particular

way of understanding knowledge and its generation and reproduction over time.
Scientific and scholarly work, whether in medicine or gender studies, is
generally expected to take the form and appearance of dispassionate inquiry. It
answers to criteria that are, of course, very different from simplified knowledge
that is highlighted in a health brochure or an advocacy pamphlet. This makes
the results of scientific and scholarly work something that children on their own
are rather unlikely to be drawn to or find intrinsically powerful. Take the very
simple examples of the inequalities found in gender histories or the knowledge
of how seasons arise through the earth’s rotation on its axis. Such knowledge
is complex and likely counter-intuitive to those not yet exposed to it. And it
certainly does not provide the kind of comfort derived from believing, say, that
the earth is the centre of the universe, or that history is the march of universal
progress. As a result, I believe that Michael Young’s assertion that powerful or
curricular knowledge is not “oppressive or alienating [. . . in] itself ” needs to
be rethought. Disciplinary knowledge – from histories of genocide and exploi-
tation through physics to modern astronomy – tends not to be comforting or
already familiar. “The truth”, as the saying goes, “sometimes hurts”. This is
recognised, for example, in understandings of Bildung that underpin Klafki’s
Didaktik.
Alienation and self-alienation are seen as indispensible components of Bil-
dung as the process or experience of formation and self-formation. Wilhelm
von Humboldt famously emphasised that alienation is inherent in human
striving to “reach beyond [one]self to the external objects” that through Bil-
dung are “integrated” into the self (von Humboldt, 2000, p. 59). Others have
more recently characterised the moment-by-moment experience of learning
as occurring at the uncertain threshold between “no longer and not yet” –
between moments in which the familiar is lost, but in which it is not yet
replaced by anything clearly known (Meyer Drawe, as quoted in Friesen,
2017b). Also, as adult educator Jack Mezirow has shown, periods of significant
adult learning often have as their antecedent a major life crisis or “disorient-
ing dilemma” that leads an individual to change his or her way of life (e.g.
Mezirow, 2009). Finally, even John Dewey spoke of the “self-alienation” that
is a part of “the mind giv[ing] up its immediate interests and go[ing] on [a] far
journey” of higher learning (1890/1962, p. 52).
The alienation involved both in education and in one’s personal development
brings this concluding discussion to a second point: namely, the undeniable
reality of the (sometimes uncomfortable) subjective experience of the student in
educational contexts. It is worth noting that in the more recent accounts of edu-
cational content from both Schulman and Young, the backgrounds and experi-
ences of the generations of students who are to acquire knowledge or develop
intellectually and morally are given little attention. In Young’s case, student sub-
jectivity appears important only insofar as it might contribute to or detract
78 Norm Friesen
from the student’s “commitment . . . to a relationship to” powerful knowledge

(Young and Muller, 2015, p. 141). Contemporary accounts of ‘learning’, more-
over, can be seen as underpinned by the impersonality of learning (and thus
also of teaching) as an individually, culturally, and domain-independent process.
In fact, it is only in the politically charged reconceptualist curriculum theory
where issues of experience and subjectivity arise – but unfortunately, they are
conceptualised in a way that is very distinct from questions of content, teach-
ing, and the curriculum itself. In this light, it seems important to reference an
approach to knowledge and content that sees the learner and learning itself as
having an active, dynamic relation to this educational material or its ‘substance’.
What would be valuable, I suggest, is a conception of knowledge, of its develop-
ment, circulation, and potential ‘power’ that would grant a significant place for
the active involvement of students and their subjectivity.
One possible example of such an approach to knowledge and its intergen-
erational dynamism, I believe, can be found in a source that, strictly speaking,
lies outside of the bounds of educational discourse. This is the ‘theory’ of
knowledge represented by hermeneutics. It was familiar to Wolfgang Klafki
and has been articulated in various ways by thinkers including Friedrich Schlei-
ermacher (referenced earlier), Wilhelm Dilthey, and Paul Ricoeur. But for
the purposes of illustration, I focus on H. G. Gadamer’s Truth and Method,
particularly the section titled “Language as the Medium of Hermeneutic Expe-
rience”. Here, Gadamer underscores the “detachment” specifically of written
language – its detachment “both from the writer or author and from a specifi-
cally addressed recipient or reader” (2004, p. 394). Adding that this situation
gives writing “a life of its own” that is of particular importance for hermeneu-
tics, Gadamer continues:
In writing . . . the meaning . . . exists purely for itself, completely detached
from all emotional elements of expression and communication. . . . Hence
the meaning of something written is fundamentally identifiable and repeat-
able. What is identical in the repetition is only what was actually deposited
in the written record.
(2004, p. 394; original emphasis)
Something written, elements of knowledge or content – for example, those

included in the day’s lesson plan – are on their own self-identical and self-
sufcient. They are in this sense alien to us and even to possibilities for their
own interpretation. The content of my copy of the periodic table or of Shake-
speare’s Hamlet is identical to yours. Somewhat like Klafki’s manifest content
(Bildungsinhalt), this content can be said to exist in some senses independently
of questions of its potential pedagogical value or application. However, in being
performed, enacted, and situated – in being read (ideally aloud) – the status of
these texts, this content, according to Gadamer, is utterly transformed. What
was earlier self-sufcient and self-contained is brought into greater proximity
and familiarity. Gadamer explains this by referring to the written tradition as

a whole:
Writing is self-alienation. Overcoming it, reading the text, is thus the high-
est task of Understanding [sic]. . . . Through it[,] tradition becomes part of
our own world, and thus what it communicates can be stated immediately.
Where we have a written tradition, we are not just told a particular thing;
a past humanity itself becomes present to us in its general relation to the
world. . . . It does not present us with only a stock of memorials and signs.
Rather, literature has acquired its own contemporaneity with every pres-
ent. To understand it does not mean primarily to reason one’s way back
into the past, but to have a present involvement in what is said.
(2004, pp. 392, 393)
Gadamer adds to this the following sententious claim:
The understanding of something written is not a repetition of something

past but the sharing of a present meaning.
(p. 394)
When something is read aloud, when it is understood, it loses at least some of

its (sometimes alienating) self-sufciency and self-identity. Instead, it becomes
part of “our own world” – “our” world, both in the sense of individual and
shared experience. It acquires “its own contemporaneity” with the present, as
Gadamer says. To learn, for example, how a bean seed can be caused to sprout,
or to ‘understand’ the periodic table, is to connect it with what is relevant in
one’s present, to have “a present involvement” with content or knowledge that
might otherwise remain self-sufcient. Teachers, of course, play a key role in
influencing what this involvement might be like – for example, by highlight-
ing particular aspects of its educational substance (Bildungsgehalt), or its rele-
vance to students’ present and future. However, a significant part of this present
involvement depends on the subjectivity of the students, the contingencies
of their “contemporaneity”, their historically conditioned sense of themselves
and their future. Simply speaking and discussing aloud words like ‘democracy’
or ‘totalitarianism’ after Brexit and Trump, for example, invoke a notably dif-
ferent significance and resonance – whether for students or teachers – than
they possessed beforehand. ‘Social media’, ‘deadly virus’, or ‘climate change’,
as further examples, may possess a rather diferent ‘contemporaneity’ for young
students than they might for their teachers or parents. In grappling with these
and other perhaps more mundane topics, students and children bring their own
value to the sharing of a present meaning and can be said to understand such
meanings in their own way.
By bringing content back into discussion of education, teaching, and learning –
and by considering its manifold and intimate interconnections with student
80 Norm Friesen
and teacher – can help, I believe, to bring back some balance into discussions of
student subjectivity, teacher agency, and of the knowledge that is encountered
in classrooms. It can help us to see education, moreover, not merely as a task
of “maximizing learning happening in the classroom” (as it is so often seen in
America) or as realising students’ “entitlement to powerful knowledge” (as it
has been recently rationalised in the UK). In place of such views, it offers an
opportunity to see education as empowering the student to the exercise of his
or her own autonomy and responsibility. Finally, teaching itself – particularly in
its relationship to content – needs no longer be seen as something to be directed
by scientific prescriptions. Instead, it can be regarded as something that unfolds
in the vital interrelationship between the student and teacher, and through the
dynamic interpretative connections of both to educational content.
Notes
1 It is different in that it critically opposes lived curriculum with traditional curriculum and
sees the former as constituted by personal biography and political categories, including
race, gender, and ethnicity.
2 This chapter adapts some content published in Friesen (2018), “Continuing the Dialogue:
Curriculum, Didaktik and Theories of Knowledge”.
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Chapter 4
Outline of a taxonomy for

general Bildung
Deep learning in the anglophone
tradition of curriculum studies and
the Didaktik of north-west Europe
Stefan Ting Graf
Since 2001, when the accountability discourse in the field of education in Den-
mark took off, culminating in 2015 with the introduction of a goal-oriented
curriculum for the Danish Folkeskole (primary and lower secondary education,
henceforth K-10), there has been a new and remarkable interest in taxonomies
of learning in this country. A range of publications were targeted at the educa-
tional research community as well as practitioners in education (Albrechtsen,
2019; Andersen, 2008; Brønd et al., 2015; Caeli and Andersen, 2015; Duch
and Wacher Kjærgaard, 2015; Hansen, 2015; Hook, 2016; Jensen, 2015; B.
Nielsen, 2013, 2015; B. L. Nielsen, 2009). These publications present, and
make applicable by examples, all the well-known taxonomies, starting with
Benjamin Bloom’s six cognitive levels (Bloom, 1956) and the revised version of
2001 (Anderson et al., 2001), as well as the taxonomy of affective learning by
David Krathwohl (Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia, 1970), John Biggs and Kevin
Collis’s SOLO taxonomy (1982), Robert Marzano’s taxonomy for educational
objectives 2001), and Elizabeth Simpson’s taxonomy for psychomotor learn-
ing (1966). These taxonomies – understood as classification systems that frame
the way in which learning goals or objectives are evaluated and subsequently
measured as learning outcomes – were justified on the grounds that “they can
make it visible to both students and teachers, exactly what needs to be learned”
(Brønd et al., 2015, p. 6; my translation, original emphasis). They have fur-
thermore been praised as especially helpful in conceptualising the progression
of learning, and hence of teaching (Andersen, 2008; B. Nielsen, 2015), and
the differentiation of teaching and learning as well as designing and evaluating
learning tasks (B. Nielsen, 2013).
A search through the Danish research database reveals that in the last 20
years there has also been an increase in publications with the word Bildung
(in Danish, dannelse) in the title. With few exceptions (e.g. Løvlie, Mortensen
and Nordenbo, 2003), most of these are in Danish. In Denmark, there is not
only a long tradition of inspiration from German educational theory but a
Bildung discourse in its own right. The term, used broadly and in several dif-
ferent senses, constitutes a shared point of reference for different educational
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-5
84 Stefan Ting Graf
schools, conceptions, and practices. For my purposes, it is not necessary to give

a specific account of this discourse; I will just give a general characterisation
that is also recognised outside the field. In her comparative conceptual analyses,
Rebekka Horlacher states that in the Nordic countries, the concept of Bildung
often serves as a catchphrase, and that its renewed use can be seen as a counter-
movement to the accountability discourse (Horlacher, 2016, p. 1).
While all taxonomies stem from the anglophone educational context and
thus enshrine a particular concept of teaching and learning, the idea of Bil-
dung has its origin in German philosophy and educational theory and is
committed to a different idea of teaching and learning. In the Danish con-
text, however, a renewed interest in and application of taxonomies and a
renewed interest in Bildung seem somehow to be coexisting in educational
practice and theory. Is this an example of what Bjørg Brandtzæg Gundem
meant when he stated that the “Nordic countries have perhaps been better
able than others to live with and exploit both traditions”, “harnessing the
potential that each of the traditions represents”, so that “the two radically
different ways of thinking” could perhaps “complement each other” (Gun-
dem, 2011, p. 91, my translation)? Or are there differences that cannot be
neglected, complemented, or harmonised?
There are, in fact, both clear differences and much in common between
the two approaches. On the one hand, taxonomies have mostly been devel-
oped and applied for the purpose of evaluating learning, while didactical
models in Bildung-centred Didaktik, on the other hand, are focused on
preparation for teaching relevant cultural content. Nevertheless, there seems
to be a shared interest: taxonomies as well as models of Didaktik deal with
the ‘content’ of teaching and learning. Bildung-centred Didaktik, on the
one hand, aims directly and concretely at the preparation of content, identi-
fying the educational substance (Bildungsgehalt), including the why of the
content; it is little interested in evaluating the learning, as Bildung appears
to be unmeasurable. Taxonomies, on the other hand, deal indirectly and
abstractly with content by defining a specific set of forms of knowledge to
be acquired. While the first approach refers mainly to the intended cur-
riculum, the latter refers to the curriculum as evaluated/tested (Schubert,
2008). Does it make sense, we may ask, to prepare teaching content within
the Bildung tradition, then evaluate learning outcomes by taxonomies from
the other paradigm?
One thing is clear: learning taxonomies have not been influenced by the
German idea of Bildung, and the theory of teaching and learning in Bildung-
centred Didaktik has not applied these taxonomies. In this chapter, I will scru-
tinise Bloom’s cognitive levels and the SOLO taxonomy to pinpoint a few
general issues in this kind of taxonomic thinking, then compare aspects of
these with the forgotten content levels of Bildung-centred Didaktik, with the
objective of investigating whether it may be possible to outline a different
kind of taxonomy. On the way, I will touch on ‘deep learning’, an idea which
Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung 85
seems to have been conceived of in different ways. A taxonomy as the back-

drop to a phenomenological foundation of learning, in the sense of categorical
learning, may include other forms of knowledge besides those applied by the
aforementioned taxonomies. Furthermore, a taxonomy assembled on the basis
of Bildung-centred Didaktik, here in the sense of general education (Allgemein-
bildung) in schools, would have to address levels for goal-content-complexes, as
developed by Wolfgang Klafki and Martin Wagenschein in relation to exem-
plary teaching.
The reappearance of taxonomies in Denmark

In the light of the mutual influences between Didaktik and curriculum in the
last 20 years (Terhart, 2012), the recent curriculum reform in Denmark is a
complicated matter. In a country like Denmark, where the Bildung discourse is
still predominant, the K–10 curriculum reform of 2015 looked like an impor-
tation of anglophone curriculum thinking. The focus on outcomes began in
the mid-1990s; it was realised in the new curricula of 2001, “Klare Mål” (in
English: Clear goals), reinforced and turned into binding goals in 2003–2006
in “Fælles Mål” (Common goals), revised in 2009 as “Fælles Mål 2009” (Com-
mon goals 2009), then further sharpened in 2015 in “Forenklede Fælles Mål”
(Simplified common learning goals).1 The framework for the 2015 curriculum
introduced for the first time into Danish K–10 school the notion of a mea-
surable competence goal, defined by a combination of knowledge goals and
skills goals. Central for this chapter is that the framework contained curricu-
lum guidelines that juxtaposed Bloom’s, Marzano’s, and the SOLO taxonomy,
aligning them without explanation or comments. Furthermore, the guidelines
advised the curriculum developers in each subject just to be consistent in their
use of a taxonomy.
In a wider sense, the curriculum reform was explicitly intended to keep up
with international tendencies, declaring a shift in paradigm. Content-oriented
Didaktik was declared to be dead, and measurable learning goals to be the most
important factor in improving teaching (Holm, 2014). Rather than learn-
ing something specific, students should learn to learn (Rasmussen, 2014). Con-
sequently, the reform suggested a new but unexplained didactical model
without the content category (Dorf, 2018, p. 125). Furthermore, the guidelines
advised curriculum developers not to use the term ‘understanding’, because
it was said to be too difficult to measure. Skovmand’s systematic analysis of the
written curriculum has showed that terms like subject matter (stof), enlightening
knowledge (kundskab),2 content, understanding, school, teaching, subject (fag),
and purpose as well as Bildung, democracy, and citizenship had almost disap-
peared from 2009 to 2015. They were replaced by a terminology of ‘learning’
(Skovmand, 2016, p. 216ff.).
The curriculum reform of 2015 is said to have been inspired by the works of
John Hattie, Andreas Helmke, and the so-called Ontario model (Rasmussen,
86 Stefan Ting Graf
2015). Skovmand’s study documents in detail how these sources were imported,
translated, and twisted so as to fit with the educational policy and support the
reform. However, none of these anglophone sources argued for a one-sided
view of the interdependency of the teaching–learning complex in favour of
‘learning’ alone. None of them argued against content or understanding as
highly relevant categories. On the contrary, referring to the SOLO taxonomy,
Hattie and also Michael Fullan highlight deep understanding. Helmke stresses
content, referring to Kurt Reusser and Franz Weinert (the latter three belong
to the German-speaking community of empirical researchers). Neither Hat-
tie nor Marzano argues for teaching predominantly steered by narrow goals
(Skovmand, 2016, p. 179ff.).
Thus the 2015 curriculum reform cannot be primarily linked to the anglo-
phone curriculum study tradition but rather to what Gert Biesta called “lear-
nification” (Biesta, 2010) and additionally to an international trend towards
accountability on economic and neoliberal grounds (Sivesind, 2013). It is against
this backdrop that taxonomies have become revitalised in Denmark. In the fol-
lowing, I will briefly sum up some of the main critique exemplified by Bloom’s
taxonomy in order to recall the difficulties in applying such taxonomies.
Bloom’s taxonomy and its use

It is astonishing how much Bloom’s taxonomy has been discussed and is still put
into practice despite the shortcomings that have been highlighted several times.
First of all, and despite Bloom’s intention to develop three taxonomies, a cog-
nitive, an affective, and a psychomotor, only the cognitive version was widely
used in practice. The cognitive version of the taxonomy distinguishes between
knowledge and the five cognitive abilities: comprehension, application, analy-
sis, synthesis, and evaluation (Bloom, 1956). Even though the original version
has subsequently been revised (Anderson et al., 2001), it is still necessary to
recall the critique.3
The first argument takes aim at the metaphor of knowledge as container.
As criticised by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia, this metaphor makes
rational knowledge appear to be factual and descriptive knowledge, something
to be remembered for school tasks (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1998). Further-
more, critical theory will not accept such a concept of ‘neutral’ knowledge as
something just to be learned and remembered (Paul, 1985). More importantly
in the educational context, learning does not begin with knowledge as infor-
mation. On the contrary, learning begins with the learner’s preconceptions
and involves several forms of knowledge has been especially underlined by
phenomenological positions (e.g. Buck, 1989).
The second argument criticises Bloom’s subordination of knowledge to
“a panoply of intellectual abilities and skills of doubtful teachability” (Bere-
iter and Scardamalia, 1998, p. 677). We see this kind of underestimation and
trivialisation of knowledge once again in conceptions such as “21st century

skills”. According to Bereiter and Scardamalia, Bloom himself observed the
problem at the time:
[S]tudents in higher-level test items could understand gravity, acceleration

and friction . . . and yet be unable to explain the logic of Galileo’s experi-
ment or to identify its unstated assumption”, rather than achieving the
intended higher skill of “recognizing unstated assumptions.
(Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1998, p. 680)
The learning of such domain-independent skills is highly contested. Bereiter

and Scardamalia, by contrast, build on the pattern-recognition concept of cog-
nitive science and highlight a study by Lesgold and LaJoie in 1991 showing that
experts difer from novices neither in intellectual abilities (such as problem-
solving), nor in basic knowledge in the field, but in “their knowledge of the
actual devices they worked with and on” (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1998, p. 680).
Generally speaking, pragmatic language theory and phenomenology would not
separate knowledge from its actual use.
Third, there are a range of problems associated with using Bloom’s tax-
onomy as a framework for progression in curriculum thinking and for teaching
and learning. For example, the detailed account of Bloom’s taxonomical terms
in the Danish K–10 curriculum of 2015 shows severe inconsistencies, both for
long-term progression within subjects and for cognitive levels between subjects
(Skovmand, 2016, p. 87), so that it cannot easily form the basis for progression
(Dorf, 2018, p. 125). Not even within a single teaching unit does it make sense
to apply the taxonomic term ‘understanding’ and the fourth cognitive abilities
as ascending levels. Bereiter and Scardamalia suggest that a better conception
of such cognitive processes is that they “go on in concert at all levels” (Bereiter
and Scardamalia, 1998, p. 684).
An interesting and recent example of the Bloom approach in use, and of the
overestimation of high generic skills, is presented in a recent PhD thesis on
history teaching. The dominant understanding of teaching history in Denmark
aims at “historical thinking” and “historical consciousness”, specified by abili-
ties such as “source criticism, contemporarisation and empathy”, in this way
leading to a “chronocentristic” view of history (Bjerre, 2019, p. 10). The study
shows that students are forced by typical school tasks to contemporise and make
judgements about historical events without having met “the historical foreign
in itself ” (p. 11). Inspired by the concept of epoché from phenomenology, the
study suggests placing temporary brackets around the inevitable contemporari-
sation of historical events and letting students meet the historical foreign world
on its own premises. Such an approach not only facilitates another world view,
and consequently empathy, but represents a concrete urge to bring content and
historical knowledge back together again (see Deng in this volume). In the
88 Stefan Ting Graf
context of history teaching, Sam Wineburg went so far as to argue for “Turn-
ing Bloom’s taxonomy on its head” on the grounds that knowledge is not just
the starting point but the purpose of teaching (2018, p. 81).
Using the example of Bloom’s original cognitive taxonomy, I have recalled a
few critical issues with broader relevance – a narrow notion of knowledge, the
overestimation of domain-independent cognitive abilities, and the constraints
inherent in their use for progression of learning. In the next section I will
briefly touch on other taxonomies that feature the term ‘deep understanding’.
Deep understanding
While Bloom and others have developed taxonomies that pursue higher levels
of cognitive abilities, there is an increasing interest in deep learning. Influen-
tial programmes like the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, the William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning
programme initiated by Michael Fullan present deep learning as generic skills
or competencies, including analytic reasoning, critical thinking, learning to
learn, ability to collaborate, and so forth. Such conceptions are typically based
on a contestable assumption that knowledge changes rapidly and hence is less
important, and on an overestimated belief in the transferability of generic skills.
Both the SOLO taxonomy and the taxonomy by Marzano use the notion
of deep learning. The SOLO taxonomy,4 for example, is designed to move
from the concrete to the abstract and to achieve higher complexity in reason-
ing. Students are to be brought to use deep-learning approaches rather than
remaining with surface activities. The taxonomy builds a constructivist version
of learning and seeks to differentiate levels of understanding from the point of
view of learner activities (Biggs and Tang, 2007, p. 79). Biggs and Tang define
surface-learning as not seeing the wood for the trees, that is, as (a lot of) uncon-
nected information, but they underline that this is not to be confounded with
remembering. Rather, surface-learning denotes students’ omitting strategies
(sweeping things under the carpet, cutting corners, or doing ‘as if ’) (p. 22).
On the other hand, Biggs and Tang describe deep learning as an activity where
students are joyfully engaged and focusing on “underlying meanings, of main
ideas, themes, principles, or successful applications” – that is, understanding the
big picture – while they “naturally try to learn the details” (p. 24).
This notion of deep learning shows interesting similarities with the con-
ceptions of exemplary teaching and learning in German Didaktik since the
1950s (Graf, 2013). Facing an overloaded curriculum that leads to knowing
a little about everything, a German curriculum movement claimed prior-
ity for the basic and relevant issues of the cultural heritage acquired through
student activities on one exemplary matter (free and condensed paraphrase
of the Tübinger Resolution in 1951). Martin Wagenschein’s conception of
exemplary teaching and learning, in particular, pinpoints the epistemic pas-
sage, by way of the many-faceted example containing detailed information,
to the powerful underlying categorical concept that explains a wider range of

phenomena. Wagenschein also uses the term ‘in depth-understanding’ – deep
drilling and deepening, moving from the concrete to the abstract – in contrast
to an overload of undigested knowledge in a step-by-step teaching manner
(surface-learning) (cf. Wagenschein, 2000b, p. 165).
It is surprising that Bloom’s “higher” ability of “analysing” appears as “ana-
lytical reasoning” in the sense of a “deep” learning skill in the newer con-
ceptions. There are other differences between the metaphors high/low and
surface/deep. One may argue that ‘higher’ connotes achievement and the mea-
surability of outcomes, while ‘deep’ learning may be thought together with
time and with serious and persistent learning (Albrechtsen, 2019). But another
argument may be that both metaphorical expressions are framed in the verti-
cal dimension and hence in principle denote the same concept, just switching
the perspective. The use of ‘high’ or ‘deep’ may just be a question of rhetorical
context. Instead, the systematic issue as Wagenschein and others have framed
it in relation to exemplary learning is rather vertical and horizontal learning
as two forms of necessary learning: a deep exemplary learning and orientative
learning, in mutual dependency.
There are several other differences between the SOLO taxonomy and the
conception of exemplary teaching. From the perspective of well-roundedness,
for example, the SOLO taxonomy is predominantly cognitive, while Wagen-
schein involves other forms of knowledge, such as animistic reasoning or folk
theory, in the learning process and requires the development of a personal rela-
tion to the content. Furthermore, while the SOLO taxonomy seems to focus
on the eloquence with which a student moves within a cognitive landscape
with many interrelated concepts, Wagenschein strongly underlines the connec-
tion between disciplinary methods and teaching/learning methods in order to
make students understand the why of the understanding.
Another issue is that the SOLO taxonomy, in common with some other tax-
onomies, is preoccupied with construing, carrying out, and evaluating school
tasks or school test tasks. The difference between surface and deep learning is
thus a question of whether the students are doing “the task properly” (Biggs
and Tang, 2007, p. 22). Such a focus on school tasks inherits a tendency to
limit knowledge to school knowledge, in the sense of knowledge that is mainly,
sometimes only, valued in school. Such school knowledge may well improve
the chances of school advancement but has little relevance in everyday life.
Andreas Gruschka has raised a similar critique of the Didaktik encounter in
Germany. Didactical models tend to perceive content as school knowledge
that has little to do with understanding the world, which is the purpose of
general Bildung (Gruschka, 2002). By contrast, in Wagenschein’s conception,
the phenomenon as the object of understanding is at the beginning and centre
of teaching and learning (Wagenschein, 1988). Uljens and Kullenberg in this
volume deal with this question of how we may conceptualise the transition
from a shared life-world as different individuals at the beginning of schooling
90 Stefan Ting Graf
to a shared, common life-world, while yet becoming unique by the end of the
educational process.
Finally, and against the backdrop of the preceding, the main reason why
one should be cautious about applying the SOLO taxonomy in primary and
secondary schools, where the main purpose is general Bildung, is because the
taxonomy was developed in the context of the tertiary level, where eloquence
in cognitive landscapes is more likely at stake. In times of generic educational
conceptions, there is too little focus on the differences between the educational
purposes of the three levels of education.
All in all, I have dealt with a range of critical issues attached to anglophone
taxonomies: a narrow and predominantly cognitive notion of knowledge
and learning restricted to school knowledge and tasks, the overestimation of
generic abilities and their hierarchical progression, and a decoupling of content
and educational purpose. Such taxonomies may be applied for purposes of
evaluation but do not consider the human process of learning, beginning with
pre-knowledge and with all the in-between steps. Hence, they are not suitable
for the preparation of teaching and learning processes. Let me turn now to a
further approach to deep understanding and forms of knowledge.
Understanding deep things

It occurs to me that we need another kind of taxonomy: one dealing with
other forms of knowledge than those taxonomies that are preoccupied with
evaluating school tasks and knowledge that only schools appreciate. Bereiter
and Scardamalia represent a quite different approach. They define deep under-
standing of something as “understanding deep things about it” (Bereiter and
Scardamalia, 1998, p. 684). Their broader approach to the notion of knowledge
follows a connectionist approach and seeks to describe a well-rounded set of
forms of knowledge leading towards a well-rounded person. Bereiter identi-
fies six kinds of personal knowledge, without claiming a taxonomy of strictly
separated forms of knowledge or an ascending logic:
1 Statable knowledge comprises all kinds of propositional knowledge (e.g.

also playing a piece of music in a certain manner).
2 Implicit understanding represents experience-based, tacit knowledge in
order to make predictions or react intuitively in everyday life.
3 Episodic knowledge is characterised by recalling experiences and episodes
and adopting analogous reasoning.
4 Impressionistic knowledge is based on feelings and influences our actions in
a tacit way within a particular field. In so far as this knowledge can be seen
as including wisdom, moral sensibility, and connoisseurship, it can support
creativities by taking risky choices, but can also contain strong prejudices.
5 According to Bereiter, skills have a cognitive (I know that I am able to anal-
yse literacy) and a subcognitive dimension (doing the analysis).
6 Regulative or self-regulative knowledge is a kind of domain-independent

metacognition that balances various considerations by means of regulative
ideas such as truth, equity, the good, and so forth.
(Bereiter, 2002)
Bereiter did not himself do so, but these forms of knowledge seem to me an
interesting point of departure for developing a taxonomy for teaching and learn-
ing. While the taxonomies discussed previously focus on the end result of the
student’s acquisition, they do not take into account the forms of knowledge that
play a role before and during the process of acquisition. Implicit, episodic, and
impressionistic knowledge not only play a role as the student’s pre-knowledge
(Vorwissen) or basis for preconceptions (Vorverständnis) but may during the learn-
ing process itself contribute to new impressionistic knowledge as a basis for new
feelings applying to issues in the world. At this point there is once again a con-
nection to exemplary teaching and the tradition of Interessenbildung, dating back
to Herbart. Knowledge is not solely a school object that is has to be acquired
as something external in a high/low, deep/surface metaphor; the knowledge-
building process has to take its departure in and connect to a personal and life-
world dimension on the part of the learner (see Uljens and Kullenberg, this
volume). The task of teaching is not only to motivate students in a psychologi-
cal way, but to reinvent the balance between the subjective and the objective
each time. It seems to me that Bereiter’s forms of knowledge are compatible
with Wolfgang Klafki’s theory of categorical Bildung, understood as a phenom-
enological conception of the learning process and his theory of the elemental
(Elementartheorie).
Levels of categorical understanding

Categorical learning is a holistic epistemic act through categorical intuition
(Anschauung) in which the subjective and the objective, the procedural and prop-
ositional, as well as past, present, and future, merge together and thus change the
learner’s world. In this Bildung-centred Didaktik, the purpose of a well-rounded
education is not divided into parallel taxonomies. Categories are not exclusively
cognitive or scientific concepts but can also be of an emotional, moral, or aes-
thetic, volatile, and practical kind (Klafki, 1964, p. 293f., 2000, 2007a).
Categorical learning also contains an understanding of deep learning: it is
based on the notions of the elemental and the fundamental (see also Deng in
this volume). Klafki reveals, “While scrutinizing the question of general educa-
tion it has been a surprising experience to me to discover a layering of content
and goals” (Klafki, 2007b, p. 75, my translation). In influential textbooks in
Didaktik, unfortunately, the elemental, the fundamental, and the exemplary
are placed on the same level (e.g. Jank and Meyer, 2002, p. 219; Meyer and
Meyer, 2007, p. 31). That is why I call attention at this point to Klafki’s explicit
presentation in his dissertation of three levels (Stufen, Schichten, or Ebenen),
92 Stefan Ting Graf
inspired by both Erich Weniger and Theodor Litt: the historical-elemental, the
categorical-elemental, and the fundamental-elemental (Graf, 2013, p. 155ff.;
Klafki, 1964, p. 327). Each of these levels is then a level of categorical Bildung.
The “historical-elemental” is a level of categorical insight related to content
that is subject to some degree of historical change. It covers matters (Gegenstand)
of relevance, including actual phenomena, situations, and tasks in the present
time that will persist for some time and affect both the young and the adult
world (Klafki, 1964, p. 388). Klafki mentions as examples historical-political
issues such as the East–West confrontation in the Cold War period of his time,
changing social forms in society, and issues of economy and technology, as well
as such issues as hygiene, nutrition, forms of living, and basic oral and writ-
ten forms in society. It is evident that forms of communication are changing
quite rapidly under the new technological circumstances, and that teaching ICT
today is very different from just a few years ago.
Even though all the levels must be conceived as categorical learning, Klafki
calls the second level “the categorical-elemental”. At first sight this is a little mis-
leading, but it makes sense when insights on this level are defined as categorical
preconditions for the further epistemic encounter of concrete phenomena on the
historical-elemental level. Klafki himself mentions here basic conceptual knowl-
edge (the concept of number, state, and civilised development); the concept of
cause/effect; values such as truth, freedom, justice, and altruism; and ideas, struc-
tures, types, and basic human motives. While the historical-elemental can change
more rapidly, these kinds of knowledge are more stable concepts, methods,
experiences, capabilities, values, and so forth, yet not ahistorical. Furthermore,
categorical insights on this level inherit a domain-specific or discipline-specific
validity, though not without the possibility of a more generic value.
The third and ‘deepest’ level is the “fundamental-elemental”, or just “the
fundamental”. Here, Klafki identifies a category of experience which, like the
other levels, merges an objective and a subjective dimension during the epis-
temic act (Klafki, 1964, p. 332). In Klafki’s early writings, the objective dimen-
sion refers to a well-rounded range of cultural-societal “forces” (Lebensmächte
als Bildungsmächte), including the state, the Church, working and civil life, sci-
ence/truth, art/aesthetics, and social/moral codes. The reference to Schleier-
macher indicates that these could be understood as praxeological domains of
general practice, as in Dietrich Benner’s theory of education (Benner, 2010,
p. 19ff.). The subjective epistemic dimension in these intergenerational forms
of practice is the spirit, ethos, or attitude of the respective domain or discipline.
The acquaintance with such fundamental categories of experience forms and
pre-structures new experiences within and across the domains. Finally, it is
important to underline that, from a phenomenological perspective, the funda-
mental has to be understood in terms of bodily grounded experiences. ‘Deep’
therefore means something beyond abstract, multi-leveled, relational, concep-
tual clusters like in the SOLO taxonomy or, simply, cognition and metacogni-
tion as the core of Marzano’s approach.
I think these three levels of deep understanding from Klafki’s theory of the
elemental still deserve to be a point of departure in establishing a taxonomy for
Bildung-oriented teaching and learning. Furthermore, Klafki developed a draft
of how the different school subjects can be differentiated through this level-
content-matrix (Graf, 2013, p. 152; Klafki, 1964). Here ends the contribution
of general didactics, and subject didactics may take over.
Unfortunately, Klafki, in his later work, did not explicitly relate the following
issues to the levels of his theory of the elemental. But in my opinion, they can.
First, the East–West problem, the epoch-typical key issue (epochaltypisches Schlüs-
selproblem) in his later work, Klafki already mentions as part of the historical-
elemental in his earlier work. His catalogue of epoch-typical key issues may be
understood on the historical-elemental level (Klafki, 2007b, p. 56ff.). This does
not exclude that teaching key issues involves learning instrumental knowledge
and skills, and may also lead to categorical-elemental insights (e.g. the concep-
tual roots or basic structures of an issue) and to fundamental experiences (e.g.
the experience of being shaped by history and history-making).
Second, Klafki’s catalogue of dimensions of meaning (Sinndimensionen) as a
basic framework for a well-rounded educational approach in his late work is
nothing else than a general framework for the level of the fundamental. The
most recent of these comprises six central dimensions of experience: pragmatic
everyday life, democratic action, productive/receptive aesthetics, understand-
ing basic concepts of culture and science, ethics, and broad bodily experience
(Klafki, 2007a, p. 22).
And third, Klafki considers the question and status of basic instrumental
knowledge and skills, also called secondary ‘virtues’, such as reading, writing,
accurate observation, self-discipline, and technical skills. These, he argues, should
not be presented as neutral learning for its own sake, but functionally integrated
into example-based teaching. In that sense, the secondary virtues appear to be an
implicit fourth level of the elemental in his theory. This kind of knowledge and
skills is usually the lowest level in the taxonomies discussed earlier.
Other than in these taxonomies, the content sensitivity of Klafki’s levels
supports a different approach to curriculum development and to teaching and
learning. The levels differentiate between lasting knowledge and areas of more
changeable content. This somehow forgotten issue is important, because there
is pressure on schools either to overrate generic skills or to constantly take up
newly arising content (for a critique of this in natural science, see e.g. Sjøberg,
2005). The introduction of ICT in the name of the (economic) future is one
example of the pressure on changing content in schools. Students are supposed
to learn all kinds of specific software as if this was the most important thing
in the world, even though these rapidly disappear again. This overestimation
of the future over the past – which, paradoxically, also shows an inordinate
belief in the transfer of learning – Bereiter calls a futuristic education (Bereiter,
2002, p. 220). The move from very simple and ephemeral ICT knowledge
and skills some decades ago to the present call for more basic technological
94 Stefan Ting Graf
understanding (e.g. computational thinking) would be an interesting analytical

case in the light of Klafki’s theory of the elemental. Much of this content would
be on the level of secondary virtues and the historical-elemental, while for a
long period the teaching of ICT failed to reach the levels of the categorical-
elemental and fundamental insight.
Deep learning as exemplary learning is part of Klafki’s theory; but it is most
fully elaborated in Wagenschein’s approach.
Wagenschein’s forms of knowledge

Wagenschein, who was working with the didactics of physics and mathematics,
is a well-known exponent of the idea of exemplary teaching (Wagenschein,
2000a, 2000b). Exemplary teaching can be characterised as a slow, Socratic
enterprise dealing with tricky phenomena (examples) in a manner which
makes all basic (methodological) steps of understanding visible to all. It could
be described as a kind of problem- and inquiry-based teaching. Wagenschein
bases his educational reasoning on the notion of becoming (das Werden, see also
Uljens and Kullenberg in this volume) and the principle of genetics (genetisches
Prinzip): the becoming of the student as a disciplinary thinker, and the becom-
ing of the subject within the student. Wagenschein’s research approach is to
theorise concrete teaching, rather than develop a theory. The development of
his taxonomy of knowledge is based on the teaching of Galileo’s law of free fall
and the Pythagorean theorem. He suggests six levels, divided into two blocks
and an additional level (Table 4.1): local knowledge (A), that is, example-based
knowledge with restricted general validity; and exemplary knowledge (B), that
is, knowledge with general validity within a domain divided into disciplinary
methods. The sixth level is systematic knowledge. Like Klafki, Wagenschein
labels this last level ‘the fundamental’. In this case it means to experience and
Table 4.1 Forms of knowledge
Wagenschein’s levels of knowledge Law of free fall
A: I: Solely propositional ‘S (length) equals t2 (time squared)’

Local (remembering)
knowledge II: Solely technical (applying) Calculate length
III: Insight (understanding) Understanding Galileo’s experiment
B: IV: Subject specific methods Learning to experiment
Exemplary V: New neighbouring subject Developing the theory of mechanics
knowledge matters
(transfer to
the subject)
Transfer to VI: (Categorical) considerations What is a scientific experiment?
the whole on the basis of philosophy of Physics as a partial understanding of
world science the world
Source: Wagenschein (1970, p. 414), my adapted translation
understand the epistemic approach that made natural science possible as an

aspect of understanding the world.
Concerning the previous issue – the relation between school knowledge and
understanding of the world – Wagenschein construes his ‘taxonomy’ as a path
from the students’ pre-disciplinary knowledge to the becoming of disciplinary
understanding and ability (levels III to V) and finally, on level VI, a kind of
distancing from the discipline by seeing it in relation to other disciplines and to
the life-world. In this respect, Wagenschein refers to Simone Weil’s concept of
enracinement (Weil, 1949): rooting in the sense of deep learning.
When we look at the first two levels, there are obvious similarities between
Wagenschein and Bloom. But the phrasing ‘solely’ indicates that Wagenschein
aspired to conceive of these only as secondary and less important levels. His
entry into teaching would be the students’ actual preconception of the phe-
nomenon at hand, not what should have been learned in the previous lesson.
More important are the similarities with Klafki: level III would be the category
of the historical-elemental, because the teaching and experience of Galileo’s
historical experiment of 1604 would not be the most up-to-date version of the
free fall. It was an insight of the time, based not on free fall but on an inclined
plane and without the knowledge of gravity on earth. One might claim that
we should teach the most updated scientific version right away. Reconstructing
the experiment in teaching with its old-fashioned measuring of time by a pen-
dulum and other low-tech means would involve learning ephemeral insights
and skills, but would form the basis of secondary virtues (measuring time and
length, accuracy, approximation, and so forth) and the historical insight of s=t2
(level III). This experienced insight given in the experiment, and the relation
between the route of the bullet and time, are a pre-stage of the categorical-
elemental (a natural law). In exemplary teaching, this Galileo example repre-
sents an educational opportunity to learn the basics of a scientific method (level
IV) as a methodological categorical insight and as the basis of the systematics of
physics (free fall and gravity at level V). These categorical abilities and insights,
once again, are epistemic preconditions for new exemplary teaching, for exam-
ple, Newton’s classical mechanics, in order to widen the systematic basis of the
discipline. In this way, Wagenschein tries to capture the process of becoming,
that is, how physics evolves in the student from the concrete experience of the
phenomenon of free fall. And finally, the same Galileo example is the oppor-
tunity to acquire fundamental insight (level VI) in a double sense. On the one
hand, for Wagenschein, teaching should make it possible to experience what
physics is about (questioning nature); and, on the other, it should make it clear,
through the previously mentioned distancing, what the limits of physics are.
Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung

Finally, by aggregating Bereiter’s broad notion of knowledge with Klafki and
Wagenschein’s levels, I present here a kind of condensed ‘taxonomy’ for general
96 Stefan Ting Graf
Bildung (see Table 4.2). General Bildung here means the contribution of basic
schooling to the possibility of Self-Bildung towards a shared world.
From Wagenschein, and from Gruschka’s critique, we learned that general
education consists of a path from phenomena in the world that have not yet
been unfolded by subject knowledge (in SOLO’s terms, prestructural and unis-
tructural) to local and historically bound categories connected to the example at
hand (in SOLO, multistructural). This is what I call example knowledge, which is
rich, confusing, and requires investigating action involving information process-
ing and other secondary skills. Phenomena in the world are complicated, and it
is not yet clear what the most important information and approaches are. The
didactical enterprise, then, is to help the student to see – for Sünkel, to articulate
(Sünkel, 1996) – both the trees and the forest: that is, to gain conceptual and
methodological insights tied to the phenomenon. From here, that path may lead
to other examples to test or deepen the provisory insights, or it may deepen the
original example or phenomenon in order to gain exemplary methodological or
systematic insights (that is, categories on Klafki’s level of categorical-elemental).
Such categories have, as I have shown, a certain historical stability without being
ahistorical, and they are therefore powerful preconditions for new learning,
besides being a vehicle for cultural mediation between generations. In other
words, either within the same example or in connection with new examples,
local categories may be lifted onto a higher level of generalizability, as expressed
by the term ‘exemplary’. These levels of methodological and systematic cat-
egories expand the learner’s experience with and of the subject (for SOLO, the
relational and extended abstract). To fulfil the purpose of general education,
Wagenschein suggests deepening one’s experience with the subject on the fun-
damental level, yet at the same time distancing oneself from the subject once
again in order to move towards a well-rounded world view. Here we are talking
about fundamental exemplarity. Once you have experiences and have reflected
on the power of agreeing or not agreeing on the agenda of a meeting, you have
a bit of tacit, impressionistic, statable, and regulative knowledge of ‘the political’.
In line with this, I suggest a taxonomy of knowledge consisting of six levels:
four main levels with two bifurcations into sub-levels:
The levels are an attempt to identify different categorical levels, combined
with some kind of a teaching and learning progression connected to the learn-
ing experience of the content by example. Most of Bereiter’s forms of knowl-
edge are in play in the first and last levels, in the beginning (level 1) and on
the fundamental level, while there is a more explicit focus on specific forms in
levels 2 to 5.
Although it is difficult to separate the subject methods from the subjects’
conceptual elements, and although they belong together, I differentiate in line
with Wagenschein between the methodological-elemental and the conceptual-
elemental. In order to understand this approach, it is important to recognise
the subject/method/object triad (Litt, 1954, p. 60). The same distinction is
repeated on the next level, and there is also a pragmatic reason for this. While
Table 4.2 Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung
Progression by Wagenschein New taxonomic levels Bereiter’s forms of knowledge Exemplary teaching
Phenomena before subject 1) Example knowledge All forms of knowledge Wealth of information and secondary
knowledge virtues connected to the example
Associating from example to example
Into the subject 2) Methodological-elemental All, but focus on skills including a Categories connected to the example
subcognitive dimension Analogising from example to example
3) Conceptual-elemental All, but focus on statable knowledge
Deeper into the subject 4) Methodological-exemplary Skills and regulative knowledge Generalised categories (explainable by
5) Systematic-exemplary Statable knowledge in a broad sense examples)
and regulative knowledge
Deeper into the subject 6) Fundamental-exemplary All, but focus on regulative and self- Metacognitive categories bound to
and out again regulative as well as impressionistic experiences
and implicit/tacit knowledge
Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung
97
98 Stefan Ting Graf
the subject methodological issues are well known in the teaching of natural
science, in teaching humanities, cultural or social sciences there is too little
attention to the subject specific methods that lead to new understanding so that
students will be able to follow their own experience of the epistemic enterprise
of the phenomenon at hand.
In the light of the widespread use of anglophone taxonomies, I seek to call
attention to the potential of Bildung-centred Didaktik to offer an outline of
levels for (deep) understanding, and thus of a wider conception of forms of
knowledge. I have tried in this chapter to sketch out some of the possibili-
ties for developing these levels and connecting them with Bereiter’s forms of
knowledge. Whether it will be possible on these grounds to establish a tax-
onomy for general Bildung that is also suited to the evaluation and eventually
the assessment of learning in the categorical sense is something that will require
further investigation and argumentation within general didactics, as well as
concretisation and testing by the various subject didactics.
Notes
1 Since the national breakthrough in the critique of this curricula rationale (e.g. Skovmand,
2016), there have been revisions (2018) moderating the K–10 curriculum and turning the
mandatory goals once again into guiding goals.
2 A specific term in the Danish school tradition connoting general knowledge, insight,
responsibility. More than information and facts: a kind of enlightening knowledge.
3 The revised version of the taxonomy of 2001 differentiates between a dimension of
knowledge and a dimension of cognitive process. The notion of knowledge is much
broader, and consists of remembering factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacogni-
tive knowledge (Anderson et al., 2001). The cognitive processes are now expressed in
verbs instead of nouns, but still form an ascending hierarchy. The new sequence goes:
remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating. There are
still reasons for readdressing the critique of Bloom’s original version. First, it is still one
of the most frequently presented and emphasised taxonomies, overshadowing the revised
version. Second, the original taxonomy is still in use, at least in Denmark. Here, it is not
only foundational in the 2015 curriculum but common in everyday didactical practice.
Third and most important, the narrow understanding of knowledge as basic knowing-by-
heart knowledge is being re-actualised by several educational forces. In Denmark, these
are back-to-basic movements and a certain version of canon thinking (cf. Graf, 2006).
4 John Hattie estimates this taxonomy because of its satisfying inter-rater validity in evalua-
tions of learning. Furthermore, he suggests that surface learning is connected to the uni-
structural and multistructural level, and that deep learning occurs when students achieve
the relational and extended abstract level (Hattie and Brown, 2004, p. 17).
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Chapter 5
Curriculum development as
a complex policy process in
Denmark and Germany
Two cases of competence-oriented
curricula in social science education
Anders Stig Christensen
Introduction
This chapter is a contribution to research on the analysis of curricula, and more
specifically analysis of the decision-making processes leading to the formula-
tion of curricula in a specific context. I take a comparative view in two cases:
(1) the processes leading up to the formulation of curricula for social science
education in lower secondary school in Denmark in 2014, and (2) the discus-
sion of national standards for ‘politische Bildung’ (political education or civic
education) in Germany in 2004 and its effect on state-level curricula.
In both countries, these processes were directly tied to developments and
initiatives originating from international organisations, in particular the OECD
and its PISA programme and the EU with its European Qualifications Frame-
work (EQF) (EC, 2008). In the German case, the Academic Society for Civic
Education, the GPJE (Society for Civic Education Didactics and Civic Youth
and Adult Education, http://gpje.de/) proposed a framework for national stan-
dards for ‘politische Bildung’ in 2004 that made direct reference to the PISA
results (Detjen et al., 2004). This proposal had a direct influence on curricula
in some states in Germany. In the Danish case, the EQF adopted by the Euro-
pean Commission (EC, 2008) served as a framework guiding the formulation
of curricula for the Danish Folkeskole (primary and lower secondary school)
(UVM, 2015).
In both cases, the concept of competence was central; and both cases can
be seen as instances of the general shift from content-based to outcome- or
competence-based curricula (Young and Allais, 2011). But, as I will show, the
process is not uniform, and the interpretations of the concept of competence
are different.
The question is how to best analyse this process. From one perspective – which
I will describe as a top-down perspective – this is, as Krejsler et al. describe it, a
development that “Scandinavian education finds itself increasingly compelled to
follow” (Krejsler, Olsson and Petersson, 2014, p. 174), thus reducing the scope
for action by state-level actors to mere compliance with international standards.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-6
104 Anders Stig Christensen
This view is similar to the perspective of Michael Young and Stephanie Allais,
who also see the shift to outcomes-based qualifications as linked to the “mar-
ketization of education” (Young and Allais, 2011, p. 3).
A different perspective sees the decision-making processes in the European
states as a complex multi-level decision process, or ‘soft governance’. I discuss
later in the chapter whether using the concept of demoi-cracy can clarify and at
the same time bring nuances to the discussion (Borrás and Conzelmann, 2007;
Borrás and Radaelli, 2014; Cheneval, Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2014).
This proposed perspective is comparable to the “discursive institutionalism”
proposed by Wahlström and Sundberg, which also takes a multi-level view of
the decision process, distinguishing between four levels: the classroom, the
local (municipality) level, the programmatic (transnational and national) level,
and the institutional/societal level (transnational and national policy arenas)
(2018, p. 171). In this chapter, I focus on the institutional level (the deci-
sion process) and the programmatic level (the formal curriculum), and I use
a normative theoretical framework, discussing the process in light of theories
of democracy.
In the following sections, I will first give an overview of the international
background to educational policy, including the central actors, the OECD
and the EU, followed by a brief discussion of theoretical approaches to policy-
making. After that I will discuss the two cases: first, that of civic education in
Germany and, afterwards, that of the development of the social science cur-
riculum in Denmark. Following that, I will give a comparative view of what
is common and what is distinct in the two cases. Finally, I will discuss how we
may analyse policy developments in curricula from an international point of
view, taking into account questions of democracy as well as the curriculum and
Didaktik traditions.
The international background in educational policy

Educational policy is traditionally regarded as a matter for national govern-
ments. Education has been considered important for nation-building, both in
terms of creating a feeling (sentiment) of allegiance to the state and ofcreating
the foundation for economic development through education.
Globalisation, on the other hand, influences educational policies – but
in which ways? In the 1990s, with the opening up of Europe and the east-
ern enlargement of the EU following the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was
a widespread expectation that globalisation would lead to a dissemination of
democracy and a stabilisation of liberal democracy as a widely accepted form
of government (Fukuyama, 1992). More recently, education and educational
policy have been seen as a vehicle for developing state competiveness in an
international economy in which globalisation means international compe-
tition. This was the motivating force behind the OECD and the European
Union becoming more active in education.
Curriculum development Denmark and Germany 105
When evaluating globalisation and the influence of international organisa-

tions on educational policies, it is important to take into account that organisa-
tions such as the OECD and the EU differ both in the aims of their work and
in the capabilities they have for exercising influence on national policies. The
OECD is the organisation for economic cooperation and development, and
as an international organisation of sovereign members, it does not exert direct
influence on the educational policies of its members. But indirectly it has had
an important influence, in particular through international comparisons such
as the PISA tests, but also by way of more theoretical publications, such as
the DeSeCo project (Definition and Selection of Competencies) (Fratczak-
Runicka and Torney-Purta, 2003; OECD, 2005). The European Union, on
the other hand, given that it has law-making capability through regulations and
directives that are legally binding on member states, has different possibilities
for influencing policies. Therefore, it is also relevant to discuss the law-making
process and the way the EU influences the law-making process in member
states in the light of a theory of democracy.
Theoretical approaches to international influences

on policymaking in education
The analysis of developments in the curriculum – and here I am focusing on
the formal curriculum, that is, the legally binding guidelines for teaching in
schools – can investigate both content and the decision-making process. In the
following, I will do both. In the first place, I will be looking at how the concept
of competence enters the curriculum debate and how it becomes a part of the
curriculum. This is probably the most interesting aspect from a pedagogical/
educational point of view, as it deals with the content of education. Second, I
will focus on the process of decision-making in order to give a description of
this and also to discuss how we may evaluate the degree of democracy in the
process. This is particularly interesting when working with educational policies
in an international perspective. Are the international processes undermining
the (national) democracies, or is an international organisation like the EU pro-
viding a new forum for an international approach to way of democracy?
In the analysis of the international decision-making process, I distinguish
between two perspectives. One of these sees the international influence on
curriculum-making as a top-down process in which local decision-makers
are subject to international hegemony. This is the perspective presented, for
instance, by Krejsler and colleagues in their description of an ‘international
grip’ on Scandinavian educational reform (Krejsler, Olsson and Petersson,
2014). A different perspective sees the European decision-making process pos-
sibly as a new form of democracy, a democracy of more than one people or
demos, as expressed in the term demoi-cracy (demoi being the plural of demos),
using a term originally coined by Joseph Weiler (1999). In this view, interna-
tional institutions such as the EU can be a democratic possibility in a globalised
world, creating institutions that can match the global structures that influence
local circumstances.
The case of ‘politische Bildung’ in Germany

In the following I will discuss the development in the curricula for ‘politische
Bildung’ in Germany. This is complicated, among other reasons because Ger-
many is divided into 16 federal states, each of which has its own educational
policy.
On a national level, the conference of the ministers of culture (Kultusminis-
terkonferenz) plays a role in, for instance, taking common decisions on national
standards, but generally the responsibility for the educational system is at the
state level, and that is where decisions are made. It also means that the struc-
ture of the school system (to some extent) and the curriculum, as well as the
content of the curriculum, are decided at the state level. Some subjects differ
in the curriculum, and relevant in this case is that the subject that entails what
in Germany is known as ‘politische Bildung’ has different names, and content,
such as politics (Politik) or social science (Socialkunde), or politics and economy
(Politik und Wirtschaft) (Töpper, 2017).
In my investigation I have looked at curricula in the various different states
in the subjects of social studies (Socialkunde); politics/economics (Politik/
Wirtschaft); political education (politische Bildung); and politics, society, and
economy (Politik-Gesellschaft-Wirtschaft) (Christensen, 2017, p. 263). All these
curricula have some description of competence relevant to political education,
and this has been the focus of my investigation. The fact that the subjects are
not the same is an example of how the study of the curriculum must not only
be comparative between countries but also within a country. And it must be
noted that this investigation takes only the formal curriculum into account, not
the perceived or taught curriculum (Goodlad, Klein and Nye, 1979; Glatthorn
et al., 2015).
The development of curricula in political

education in Germany
The German tradition of Didaktik means that the teacher has (at least in the-
ory) a degree of freedom and responsibility regarding the content and method
in teaching. This, again, means that the formal curriculum (Lehrpläne) is less
detailed regarding content (Westbury, 2000, p. 17). In practice, however, the
formal curricula are at least detailed enough to be relevant in an investigation
of the content.
In this section, I focus on how formal curricula with content within civic
education have developed in Germany since 2004 in some states. In that year,
the GPJE published a proposal for national standards in political and civic edu-
cation that had a direct influence on the curricula in some states and an indirect
influence in others (Detjen et al., 2004). The initiative for the proposal was
taken for two reasons: first, because of the PISA reports and the mediocre
performance of German schoolchildren in these tests, and second, because the
conference of the ministers of culture was working on proposals for general
standards in the school subjects, and because the members of the GPJE had an
interest in influencing that process.
In this light, the GPJE proposal can be seen as a reaction to an international
political situation in which actions by international actors (in this case the
OECD as an intergovernmental organisation) and national institutional actors
(the conference of the ministers of culture) had had an effect on local actors
(in this case, the GPJE). It should be noted that the GPJE’s action actually
anticipated the decision by the formal institution. From one point of view they
can be seen to have been acting proactively; from a different point of view,
this is a case of what Foucault calls governmentality, which can have the effect
that there is no need to change the legislation because the actors already have
anticipated the political agenda.
I will not go into detail with the proposal but call attention to two points
that can be seen as elemental parts of the international trend: the focus on com-
petence, and the focus on output and measurability. The focus on competence
in the proposal is very clear, and it centres around a model of competence
areas for ‘politische Bildung’. These areas are described as (1) political power
of judgement, (2) political ability to act, and (3) methodological abilities. All
are fitted into a frame of “conceptual interpretation knowledge” (Detjen et al.,
2004, p. 13). As regards the focus on output, this shows in that this is a pro-
posal for standards, and that its third chapter is dedicated to giving examples
of standards, expressed in the form of what students should be able to do at
the various different levels of their education (Detjen et al., 2004, pp. 19–29).
Competence in the German pedagogical discourse

The focus on competence has been an international trend in education, with
the OECD acting and exercising an influence through its publications, includ-
ing the DeSeCo project (OECD, 2005) and the PISA reports. In Germany, a
report from the conference of ministers of culture published in 2003 gave a
proposal on how to formulate standards for education at all levels (Klieme
et al., 2007). In this report, competencies are understood (in my translation) as
cognitive skills for the solution of specific problems as well as the motivational
and volitional disposition to use these with success and responsibility (Klieme
et al., 2007, p. 71).
A different approach to competence that has had a huge influence in Ger-
many dates back to 1971, when Heinrich Roth published a definition of com-
petence including self-competence, subject competence, method competence,
and social competence (Roth, 1971). This was later further developed with the
concept of action competence (Handlungskompetenz), which has been included
in several curricula, for instance Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Detjen et al.,

2012, p. 19; Bois et al., 2002).
In the GPJE proposal, as mentioned, the competence areas in political edu-
cation are described as consisting of three areas (or domains): political power of
judgement, ability to act politically, and methodological competence (Detjen
et al., 2004). This model has been further developed, used, and also criticised
in several publications. While some authors seek to broaden the model and
formulate a more comprehensive model for civic education (AF, 2016), others
have worked on developing a model of political competence (Detjen et al.,
2012; Weißeno et al., 2010).
The proposal from the GPJE did not lead to the formulation of national
standards for civic education, as the conference of the ministers of culture
decided not to formulate standards for all subjects, but it did have an impact on
curricula in several states, most notably in Berlin-Brandenburg, where it was
implemented directly (even though it was subsequently changed once again).
In other states, a combination of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern model and
the GPJE model was implemented (Christensen, 2017, p. 263).
To sum up, development in the curricula for ‘politische Bildung’ in Ger-
many was influenced by international developments and by international actors
such as the OECD; but the political structure in the country, both on a national
level and at the level of the federal states, was also important. Furthermore, the
existence of a community of scholars in the field has also influenced the way
curricula are formulated.
The social science curriculum in Denmark

In Denmark, schools are the responsibility of the municipality, but the general
guidelines, including the overarching curriculum, are set by the government.
According to the format established in 1995, the published curricula include
the definition of a set of areas of knowledge and skills and a guiding reading
plan (vejledende læreplan). The municipality can either accept these definitions
(which happens in almost all cases) or they can decide on a local reading plan.
It has also been regarded as important in Denmark that teachers have freedom
of method (Thejsen, 1997). This principle can perhaps be seen as an expression
of the ideal of Didaktik: that the teacher has both the professional responsibility
and the freedom to decide on what will go on in the classroom. Nevertheless,
freedom of method has not been described formally in the legal documents
and guidelines for the Danish Folkeskole, and it has been widely discussed and
contested in the debate following the reform of 2014.
With the reform of 2014, the curriculum for both primary and lower
secondary school in Denmark changed. The reform of the curricula, it was
decided, should follow a set of guidelines intended to follow standards for
competences set out in the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). In the
EQF, competence is defined as:
the proven ability to use knowledge, skills and personal, social and/or
methodological abilities, in work or study situations and in professional
and personal development. In the context of the European Qualifica-
tions Framework, competence is described in terms of responsibility and
autonomy.
(EC, 2008, p. 11)
In the guidelines for the developers, the curriculum is described using com-
petence goals that are on a higher level, and the goals for knowledge and skills
form part of the competence. For instance, in social studies one of the compe-
tence areas is politics, and here the competence goal is that the student should
be able to “take a stand on political issues, local and global, and give suggestions
for actions” (UVM, 2019c, p. 8).
It was a feature of the accompanying material provided by the ministry for
teachers that the goals of knowledge and skills should be interpreted by the
teacher as concrete learning goals for the students. It is this feature of the
reform that has perhaps been the most debated, partly because it can be seen as
a movement away from the Didaktik tradition – if we interpret this as meaning
a situation of broad freedom for the teacher to choose method and content in
the teaching. In this light, this alteration is seen as a move towards a more cen-
trally defined curriculum, and towards a situation where how the teacher is to
work is decided centrally, using what was described as goal-oriented teaching
(læringsmålstyret undervisning) (Skovmand, 2016; Rasmussen, 2015; Rasmussen
and Rasch-Christensen, 2015). On the other hand, proponents of the reform
goals argue (or could argue) that the goals in question are not more detailed
in their content than in the curricula of 2009, and that the teacher still has the
freedom to choose the adequate method in the teaching (Rasmussen, 2015;
Rasmussen and Rasch-Christensen, 2015).
This example of a curriculum can be seen as an example of how the frame-
work from the EQF has been used and transformed in the making of the cur-
riculum of the Danish Folkeskole.
One of the questions I wished to address is how the concept of competence
is expressed in the curriculum. Again, I will use social studies as a case. The
subject is divided into four competence areas: politics, economics, social and
cultural issues, and social scientific methods. Each has its own competence
goal – for instance, the competence goal for politics is that “the student can
take a stand on local and global political issues and give suggestions for actions”
(UVM, 2019c, p. 8). For the other areas (except for the social scientific meth-
ods), the competence goal is expressed similarly: that the student can take a
stand and give suggestions for actions or can act (in the case of social and cul-
tural issues).
Compared with other subjects in the 2014 curriculum, there is no consen-
sus on how the concept of competence is to be interpreted. For some sub-
jects, the competence areas are more like areas of knowledge. For example,
the subject of religious education (kristendomskundskab) has four competence

areas: the philosophy of life and ethics (livsfilosofi og etik), stories from the Bible
(bibelske fortællinger), Christianity (kristendom), and non-Christian religions and
other life-views (ikke kristne religioner og andre livsopfattelser). An example of
a competence goal from the Christianity area is that “the student is able to
interpret foundational values from biblical tales” (UVM, 2019b p. 8). Other
subjects describe the competence areas by means of verbs rather than nouns,
thus signalling a more active understanding of ‘competence’. For instance, the
subject of history has competence areas such as the use of history (historiebrug)
and work with sources (kildearbejde) (UVM, 2019a, p. 8). In the natural sciences
subjects (biology, physics/chemistry, geography), a different approach has been
taken, with four competence areas: investigation, modelling, communication,
and perspective (putting into perspective). In this respect the natural sciences
have implemented a common and more general concept of competences across
the subjects (Daugbjerg and Negendahl, 2015).
These examples serve to underscore that there is no common understanding
of the concept of competence in the Danish curriculum. Here, once again, is
another example of the complexities involved in analysing the process of cur-
riculum-making. Even if the Danish curriculum has been expressed in certain
terms as a consequence of the implementation of a European framework – the
EQF – the interpretations on the level of the subjects are distinct and depend
on the actors around each respective subject. For instance, the natural sciences
were able to choose a common framework for the competence areas, while social
studies, history, and religion express very different understandings of what are
regarded as competence areas.
Compared with the way the concept of competence is used in the German
context of ‘politische Bildung’, it is clear that even when concepts are used
internationally the use and interpretation vary depending on the local context.
This is also in line with findings from Sweden by Nordin and Sundberg (Nor-
din and Sundberg, 2016).
Democracy and the international decision process

In the European Union, educational policy has been, and still is, the respon-
sibility of the member states. On the other hand, there has been an interest in
developing a common system and common standards. The EQF is an example
of this. The so-called open method of coordination (OMC) is a way of making
decisions that does not require the legal and institutional framework of direc-
tives. If the countries can agree on standards but leave it up to each state to
decide on how they implement these standards, the entire legal framework is
shaped within the purview of the member states. The decision-making process
by which the member states together agree on the EQF but can then decide
how to use the framework in local law-making is similar to the open method
of coordination.
One question from the perspective of democracy is whether these processes

are democratic, or in what sense they are democratic. The scholars Borrás and
Radaelli have developed a framework for this analysis and suggest, follow-
ing Weiler, the use of the term demoi-cracy to describe a form of democracy
involving more than one people, or demos. When working with a multinational
cooperation such as the EU, it is not enough to talk about one demos: it is nec-
essary to work for a democracy of more demoi. Borrás and Radaelli use three
normative models to discuss the legitimacy of the decision process, as shown
in Table 5.1.
The models they use are liberal, communitarian, and deliberative, and they
compare these with their own demoi-cratic criteria. In their view, the decision-
making process (in this case the open method of coordination, OMC) can be
evaluated from a democratic point of view using these criteria, which opens
the possibility of a more complex understanding of European democracy – or
demoi-cracy.
If we look at the process of the formulation of the Danish curriculum in this
light, it seems that the parliamentary involvement is pronounced high. Even
though the framework of the EQF is used, the interpretation is very much
based on a national interpretation. On the other hand, this is exactly what was
Table 5.1 Normative principles of democracy and demoi-cratic criteria in OMC governance
Principles Link with democratic Demoi-cratic criteria

theories
Parliamentary Liberal, • Participation of national parliaments in

involvement communitarian, OMC processes
deliberative • Parliamentary control of OMC results
(national parliaments)
Societal input Liberal, • Equal access and participation of interested
communitarian, stakeholders and civil society organisations
deliberative at national level
• OMC processes’ responsiveness to societal
demands
• Possibility of public debate on the OMC
processes overall and specific goals
Transparency and Liberal, deliberative • Publicity of decision-making progress and
accountability results of OMC
• Monitoring, reporting, and verification of
OMC results
Deliberative Deliberative • Arguing vs bargaining as interaction mode
quality in OMC process
• Substantial openness of deliberation in
OMC processes
• ‘Democratisation’ of expert input in OMC
processes
Source: Reproduced from Borrás and Radaelli (2014, p. 135)
criticised in the process: that the government is taking too much power over
the content of the curriculum. Regarding the societal input, while numerous
actors were invited to participate in the process of formulating the curricula,
the process in itself was on the other hand rather closed, as the members of the
working groups were instructed not to discuss the results before the work was
completed. In one case – the curriculum for the Danish language – a discussion
ensued when some members of the expert group found that the ministry of
education had changed their input. As for whether transparency and account-
ability were achieved, the curriculum of 2014 has been widely discussed, and
the process that followed when changes were made can be interpreted either
as an example of deliberative qualities or as political bargaining following a
change in government. Thus, it is not possible to give a clear-cut evaluation of
the democratic qualities of the process as such, just to give an example of the
factors involved.
Conclusion
Is the decision-making process a top-down process in which national govern-
ments fall in line and follow directives from transnational actors? Or is it a com-
plex form of democracy which can be described by the concept demoi-cracy?
As I have shown in this chapter, the process is indeed complex and involves a
number of actors. In Denmark, the development of the curriculum has been
directly influenced by international decisions, in particular the EQF; but the
effect of that influence and the way it has in itself been interpreted has also been
influenced to a large extent by local actors. This can be seen in the differing uses
of the concept of competence between the various school subjects.
In Germany, looking at the development of the curricula in civic education,
it is clear that international developments have also played a part, but local
interpretation has an important influence. The existence of an academic com-
munity, for instance, plays an important role.
The conclusion is that the development of curricula in a comparative view
must be seen as a complex process involving different actors on different levels.
This is sometimes described as “multi-level governance” (Chou et al., 2017).
The impact of international actors such as the OECD and the EU is to a large
extent dependent on local factors such as academic traditions and the existence
of organised groups.
To sum up, concepts that on the surface appear to be uniform, such as
competence, can end up having different meanings across countries and across
school subjects within countries. This calls for an ongoing international
research effort to shed light on how concepts travel and change across countries
and traditions – as has also been pointed out by Nordin and Sundberg (Nordin
and Sundberg, 2016).
This conclusion emphasises that research in comparative curriculum devel-
opment can give a new perspective on the development of the curriculum. It
can also be used to enhance understanding of the issues at stake in the dialogue
between the Didaktik and curriculum traditions.
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Part II
Directions of educational
scholarship within the
field of didactics

Chapter 6
Towards laboratories for

meta-reflective didactics
On dialogues between general and
disciplinary didactics
Ellen Krogh and Ane Qvortrup
In continental Europe, didactics is a core concept of educational theory and prac-

tice within which two specialisations have evolved: domain-specific didactics –
here termed disciplinary didactics1 – and general didactics. In Denmark, as in the
wider Scandinavian context, the scholarly field of didactics is traditionally con-
ceived as a subdiscipline of the overall scientific field of pedagogy, with the range
of individual disciplinary didactics (in the plural) viewed as subdisciplines of
general didactics. This conceptualisation has been contested since the 1980s. In
the wake of globalisation and following the importation of anglophone educa-
tional paradigms, the position of didactics as well as the relation between general
and disciplinary didactics have increasingly become issues of controversy, both
within the world of academia and that of teacher education. The present chapter
delves into these issues. Building on the Danish case, we develop a conceptu-
alisation of didactics in which it is viewed as an independent education science
rather than a mere subdiscipline of pedagogy. We suggest that both general and
disciplinary didactics are meta-reflective scholarly fields, but that they constitute
different yet complementary perspectives on educational matters. This meta-
reflectivity supports reflection on and prioritisation of various educational goals.
It further paves the way for scholarly self-reflection on didactics as a field rooted
in specific cultural and political historical circumstances that have shaped ideas
of education and educational goals.2
Didactics: a general introduction

The international dialogue on didactics unfortunately encompasses a problem of
translation, as key terms in the discipline are not directly translatable into English.
The narrow and somewhat derogatory meaning of the English word ‘didactics’
as the method of direct instruction in no way covers the meaning of the term in
the north-west European educational context, where didactics involves theoreti-
cal, descriptive, and exploratory as well as normative, prescriptive work with the
basic questions of teaching and learning – the what, the how, and the why. As
such, it is involved or embedded in almost all professional activities dealing with
teaching and schooling (Gundem, 2000). More specifically, didactics can be seen
as operating at three concurrent levels: a theoretical or research level, where
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-7
120 Ellen Krogh and Ane Qvortrup
didactics denotes a field of study; a practical, exercised level, where didactics

mainly comprises the fields of teaching, curriculum-making, and schooling; and
a discursive level, where didactics denotes the frame of reference for professional
dialogues among teachers discussing school matters or other issues of teaching
and learning (Hopmann and Gundem, 1998, p. 334).
Historically, there has been a wide variety within the field both in foci and
in ranges of scope, but most of these share basic commonplaces: the autonomy
of teaching, the distinction between content and the educative meaning, and,
tightly connected to these, a commitment to the concept of Bildung:
The purpose of teaching and schooling is . . . neither to transport knowl-

edge from society to a learner (curriculum), nor a transpositioning of
knowledge from science or other domains to the classroom, but rather the
use of knowledge as a transformative tool of unfolding the learner’s indi-
viduality and sociability, in short: the Bildung of the learners by teaching.
(Hopmann, 2007, p. 115)
Hence Bildung relates to the transformative potential of education: the assump-

tion that individuals can shape themselves and, in the process, contribute to
wider social progress (Hamilton, 1998, p. 80).
The division of labour between general and disciplinary didactics originates
in German didactics and teacher education (Gundem, 1998). Here, general
didactics represents the overarching theory of pedagogic decision-making, as
well as general theories of teaching, learning, and Bildung, while disciplin-
ary didactics concerns the didactic issues of school subjects and disciplinary
knowledge: that is, the relations among the content of disciplines (the ‘what’),
approaches and methods (the ‘how’), and reasons and justifications for choosing
content and approaches (the ‘why’) (Gundem, 1998; Ongstad, 2002). In the
1980s, the emergence of disciplinary didactics created a new wave within the
field of didactics in the Nordic countries (Gundem, 2000, p. 254f.). In France,
a similar ascendancy in disciplinary didactics had begun a decade earlier, related
to the development of disciplinary didactics as an academic field (Schneuwly,
2011). But whereas French didactics is first and foremost to be understood
as disciplinary didactics, focusing on transmitting and conveying disciplinarily
organised content, in the Nordic countries, according to Gundem (2000), the
growth of disciplinary didactics in the 1990s did not minimise the influence of
general didactics. As we shall see next, however, other trends did work to reduce
the influence of general didactics in the Danish context.
General and disciplinary didactics

in the Danish context
In parallel with the wider international trend in the closing decades of the twen-
tieth century, both interest and knowledge development accelerated within
Laboratories for meta-reflective didactics 121
disciplinary didactics in Denmark (Krogh, 2017; Holmberg et al., 2019). As in

France, this development was related to the rise of didactics as an academic field.
In the 1960s, the Danish Teachers High School or Lærerhøjskole3 had been
established to offer primary and lower secondary school teachers an academic
education and to conduct a programme of pedagogical and didactic research.4
With some delay, in the late 1990s, a university department for “upper secondary
pedagogy”5 was established, developing the Pædagogikum as well as advanced
didactic courses for upper secondary teachers. Both institutions, dedicated to
disciplinary didactics as a general research field, contributed to the rise of Danish
disciplinary didactics (cf. Holmberg et al., 2019, p. 10ff.). At the present time,
research within disciplinary didactic fields such as L1 didactics, natural science
didactics, math didactics, and foreign-language didactics has become institu-
tionalised in higher education positions and has organised itself in networks and
around journals. In addition, researchers meet at regular Danish symposia on
comparative disciplinary didactics as well as at biennial NoFa conferences (i.e.
Nordic disciplinary didactics). Publication channels are the Danish Cursiv as well
as the Norwegian Acta Didactica Norden.
As academic disciplinary didactics grew in influence, general didactics lost
pre-eminence in the Danish context for several decades. Research environ-
ments oriented towards general didactic issues would often refer to pedagogy
or learning theories rather than using the term ‘didactics’ (Qvortrup and Krogh,
2016). These changes originated in broader educational trends in which students’
learning and learning theories were coming increasingly into focus. Within the
so-called learning paradigm, teaching – and thus also teaching research – was
oriented towards activities where the “learning environments and activities are
learner-centred and learner-controlled. They might even be ‘teacherless’” (Barr
and Tagg, 1995, p. 21f.). The paradigm manifested itself in mantras such as
“from teaching to learning” (Barr and Tagg, 1995), “responsibility for one’s
own learning” (Ansvar for egen læring, Bjørgen, 1991), and also in the Aus-
tralian PEEL project (Baird and Mitchell, 1986), with its focus on students’
learning processes, activities, and skills. At present, notions of learning have
penetrated Danish education and schooling, and under the mantra of lifelong
learning, serve to conceptualise activities across the span from day care to the
‘third age’. The preoccupation with learning led to a reduced interest in, even
a devaluation of the concept of teaching, because teaching was constructed as
a phenomenon associated with conservative, authoritarian ideals of education
(Qvortrup and Keiding, 2016). From the perspective of the learning paradigm,
didactics was a blind spot.
Related to the learning paradigm, competence goals, overlapping with content
categories and knowledge goals, were introduced into Danish curricula at all levels
after the turn of the millennium. This, together with societal shifts in emphasis
towards individualisation, has created uncertainty about the objectives and content
of educational programmes that traditionally were oriented towards integrated
aims of socialisation and individuation as incarnated in the notion of Bildung.
As both general didactics and disciplinary didactics are challenged by the

learning paradigm and by the importation of the notion of competence, it may
be surprising that disciplinary didactics grew stronger and more visible during
this period, even as general didactics lost influence. According to Gundem
(1998, p. 41), one reason for this is the close association of disciplinary didactics
with both academic content and classroom practice, in contrast to the more
abstract and overall issues raised within general didactics. Applying a sociol-
ogy of knowledge perspective, Ongstad (2006) suggests that the flourishing
of disciplinary didactics should be viewed as a response to the permanently
changing contexts of school subjects and disciplines in the present age. When
disciplinary knowledge is subject to pressure for change, there is a constant
need to justify, reflect on, investigate, and further develop the knowledge field
in question within the changing contexts, a motivating force for research and
development. A parallel analysis is found in Schneuwly (2011).
Getting closer to our own time makes it harder to maintain a clear picture
of movements within the Danish didactic field, and we find contradictory ten-
dencies. On the one hand, the developments just described are confirmed,
particularly within the field of teacher education, where disciplinary didactics
has now been allocated a stronger position in curricula (Qvortrup and Krogh,
2016). On the other hand, as elaborated later, general didactic knowledge and
knowledge development have also become increasingly influential, both at the
academic level and at the level of teaching practice.
New actualisations of general didactics

The increasing interest in general didactic knowledge development may be
viewed in the context of two trends, both of which draw on broader interna-
tional inspirations than the traditional orientation towards German and Nordic
contexts and hence indicate that the Danish and Nordic education system has
moved in the direction of a more international perspective (Telhaug, Mediås,
and Aasen, 2006). One trend targets the content of education, while the other
targets a more structural dimension. Regarding the content of education, the
increasing interest in general didactic knowledge can be related to shifts in and
negotiations of educational and disciplinary standards. A stronger focus on com-
petences and on knowledge defined not from within the disciplines but by
reference to societal demands and the time we live in has resulted in a shift in
the balance of knowledge and meta-knowledge such that “more disciplinary
didactics [in the plural] are approaching general didactics or general disciplinary
didactics” (Ongstad, 2006, p. 12). Thus, general didactic aspects have become
accentuated through and in dialogue with disciplinary didactics. Regarding
the structural dimension, we refer to the political interest in evidence-based
knowledge spurred by international comparative studies, particularly the OECD
PISA studies, and the growth of influential empirical meta-studies such as Hattie
(2009), Helmke (2009), and Meyer (2004). These meta-studies actualise general
didactic issues because they focus attention on the more general aspects of teach-
ing: what general criteria for good teaching can be identified, independent of
the specific subject and specific context? According to Hattie, the knowledge
we get from empirical meta-studies “does not supply us with rules for action
but only with hypotheses for intelligent problem solving, and for making inqui-
ries about our ends in education” (2009, p. 247). The very fact that empirical
education research does not provide instructions to be enacted points to the
importance of didactics, with its theorising, its modelling, and its normative
focusing on teaching and teaching processes. Helmke points out that “[w]e
must wish and hope that, in common interest, we will succeed in diminishing
the gap between on one hand empirical research in teaching and learning and
on the other hand general didactics” (2009, p. 54). Quoting Arnold, he contin-
ues: “What is fascinating in this constellation is that one research area contains
precisely the supplementary components that the other area is lacking” (p. 54).
Thus, the emergence of empirical meta-studies and political demands for
evidence-based teaching have created a renewed awareness of the need for
didactic theories and research. One result is the call for investigations and dis-
cussion of the implications of meta-data for the understanding of teaching and
learning (cf. for instance Biesta, 2012), as well as for transforming the meta-
study indicators of what characterises good instruction into didactically reflec-
tive and applicable categories (Qvortrup and Keiding, 2014).
The revitalised dialogue between general

and disciplinary didactics
This development only served to make renewed dialogue between general
didactics and disciplinary didactics more important than ever. In the 1980s and
1990s the two fields were seen in the Danish context as hierarchically related.
General didactics was described as “a more fundamental discipline than disci-
plinary didactics” (Nordenbo, 1983, p. 10), and a decade later, Schnack (1993)
deplored the rise of strong individual disciplinary didactics (in the plural) with
differing notions of learning and views of the human and society, claiming that
this development poses an obstacle to shared didactic work towards general Bil-
dung aims. In the other direction, from the perspective of disciplinary didactics,
the field was constructed in reverse hierarchical fashion, positioning the scien-
tific discipline as the overriding reference for disciplinary didactics, while general
didactic issues concerning students and the social circumstances of teaching were
conceived of as problems to be addressed at lower levels (Niss, 1997).
Since the turn of the millennium, however, we find Nordic endeavours
to construct the relation between the two fields differently. Gundem (1998)
argues that a wide understanding of didactics capable of including social and
organisational structures and processes that influence the conditions of students
and teachers is at the centre of pedagogy and in fact integrates its other subdis-
ciplines. She further claims that within the field of didactics, it is disciplinary
didactics that has most explanatory force in relation to concrete decisions and
choices, since disciplinary didactic reflections take place “in the intersection
between pedagogical theory and disciplinary science, between general didactic
theory and educational practice” (Gundem, 1998, p. 41f.). Further, Gundem
documents that disciplinary didactic theory was developed within this intersec-
tion before becoming generalised into general didactic theories and models.
Ongstad (2006) argues for a similar understanding of the potentials of dis-
ciplinary didactics, without, however, adopting Gundem’s placing of the field
within the disciplines of pedagogy. He regards disciplinary didactics as an inde-
pendent, communicative knowledge field that develops reflection on specific
subjects and their significance for our knowledge about the world, about soci-
ety, and about the forming of identities. Within this conception, rather than
leading to narrow specialisation, researching specific subjects can offer a way of
achieving overriding Bildung aims. Ongstad regards this development in disci-
plinary didactics as an invitation to engage in dialogue with general didactics:
Carefully generalised disciplinary didactics [in the plural], along with an

open-minded general didactics that follows the development of disciplin-
ary didactics, may contribute to a new platform for both the theory of
science, research, and education within the field.
(Ongstad, 2006, p. 31)
Within the wider European context, the relation between general and disci-
plinary didactics has been thematised within the EERA 27 research network,
Didactics: Learning and Teaching. In the introduction to a special issue of the
European Educational Research Journal on the occasion of the tenth anniversary
of the network, Ligozat and Almqvist discuss the “fiercely debated” structura-
tion of didactics within diferent traditions: “The tendency to keep the sub-
ject specificity as a core principle is often opposed to the conceptualisation of
the teacher–learner–content relation as a more general unit of analysis” (2018,
p. 4). In line with the preceding Nordic reflections, Ligozat and Almqvist find
that the research field as it stood in the year 2017 – as represented in the papers
of the special issue – has the potential to go beyond the divide between general
and disciplinary didactics. They extend this argument further to cover disci-
plinary didactic fragmentation and divides between specific subjects, as well
as divides between curriculum theories and classroom studies in anglophone
countries (Ligozat and Almqvist, 2018, p. 12). Ligozat and Almqvist point to
comparison as the key tool for this venture (see the concluding section).
Didactics as a doubly reflective science

Concurring with these possibilities for dialogue and suggestions of a shared
platform for knowledge development and practice, we call attention to meta-
reflection as a didactic answer to contemporary challenges. The observed
development can be described as a response to uncertainty concerning funda-

mental issues of knowledge, schooling, and education – uncertainty that chal-
lenges teachers’ didactic analyses and calls for research and renewed theoretical
reflection on the knowledge field of didactics.
An important backdrop to contemporary challenges is the global knowl-
edge economic competition which puts pressure on educational knowledge
and expertise to promote competitive innovation and directs political attention
towards efficiency and quality in education. Neoliberal management approaches
call for decentralising government through market regulation of public school-
ing, but at the same time serve to secure centralised control through quality
measures of ‘outcome’ that are based on standardised goals of student per-
formance. As a result, accountability demands for the justification of choices
of content and teaching practices have changed, and teachers are currently
experiencing pressures for new kinds of reflection related to didactic analyses
and choices. We could say that insofar as it represents a doubt that undermines
their very foundation, uncertainty imperils didactic choices. How do we know
what is better for the students in the concrete classroom – to prioritise training
for tests and exams, so that their individual options of further education and
jobs are increased? To prioritise other goals relevant for the workforce, such as
innovative competences? Or to prioritise disciplinary knowledge goals, which
are directed at developing and qualifying new perspectives on the world? There
are no absolute and general answers to these questions. Yet teachers have to
judge, decide, and act accordingly every day.
This analysis naturally implies no disregard either for the daily didactic analy-
ses in which teachers engage or for the rich knowledge field of didactic and
disciplinary didactic theories that serves to inform didactic analyses. It does,
however, imply an enhanced complexity of the conditions of didactic analysis,
as well as a need for recognition among teachers that theories and models offer
possible answers and possible choices that might have turned out differently
had other perspectives been adopted. Teachers need to be capable of adopting
a second-order perspective on their didactic choices, that is, to observe these
as choices.
At the theoretical level, we suggest capturing these developments by char-
acterising didactics as a doubly reflective science. Even though developments
within general and disciplinary didactics have been theorised differently, we
also find shared features.
The analyses that follow of the meta-reflective positions within, respec-
tively, general and disciplinary didactics draw on perspective – not only as a key
concept but also as a focal point for understanding didactics as a humanistic
science and didactic analysis as the form of knowledge of didactics. Draw-
ing on the work of anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup (1999), we regard the
interpretation of something that gives meaning as being at the core of human-
istic sciences. The hermeneutic project is foundational in humanistic science
for the very reason that it sustains the Renaissance discovery of the human
perspective, and this argument gives hermeneutics as a scientific practice a

scope of higher order that transcends the literary and philosophical herme-
neutic positions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Adding to this
line of thought, the historian of ideas Lars-Henrik Schmidt (1999) discusses
humanistic science as a practical philosophy or as an analytical practice, yet
with interpretation tied to a perspective being the basic condition common
to both. Schmidt defines this practice as a form of knowledge, a ritualised dis-
ciplinary strategy tied to a specific knowledge area (Schmidt, 1999, vol. I,
p. 36ff.). Within this frame of reference, we regard didactic analysis as the
form of knowledge of didactics, tied to the knowledge area of education,
content, teaching, and learning.
At the sociology of knowledge level, this development can be registered as
shifts in the conceptualisation of the didactic fields towards independent knowl-
edge areas, while in institutionalised contexts they still retain the status of dis-
ciplines. An illustrative case is Krogh’s (2009) comparative study of Gundem’s
and Ongstad’s conceptions of disciplinary didactics. Whereas Gundem (cf. ear-
lier in the chapter) conceptualises disciplinary didactics as a subdiscipline of
pedagogy that is exclusively related to education, Ongstad conceptualises the
field as a late modern social phenomenon related to changes in disciplinarity
and knowledge (see further later in the chapter). As a scientific subdiscipline,
disciplinary didactics has established structures in the field along binarities such
as abstract/concrete and whole/part, with the constitutive forms of knowledge
being theory and practice. When, in contrast, disciplinary didactics is regarded
as a late modern social phenomenon related to changes in disciplinarities and
areas of knowledge, the field generates more processual and context-reflective
analytical practices and reflection comes to be regarded as the constitutive form
of knowledge. As emphasised by Krogh, these two conceptualisations of disci-
plinary didactics currently supplement each other, and this analysis illustrates a
double reflectiveness at the scholarly level. It further demonstrates that teachers’
uncertainty regarding educational goals and choices has its parallel in scholars’
uncertainty regarding culturally constructed forms of knowledge and educa-
tional ideals.
In what follows, we take our departure in the preceding theoretical frame of
reference and proceed to explore general and disciplinary knowledge as paral-
lel, equally important, but different perspectives on the increasingly complex
didactic area of knowledge. In Danish didactic research communities, the new
conditions of double reflectiveness have been theorised within two different
frames. The general didactic perspective has been theorised within the frame
of sociological systems theory and the disciplinary didactic perspective within
semiotic communications theory. Both didactic perspectives, however, point
towards what may be termed laboratories for comparative didactics – whether
these are to serve as ‘contingency management’ at the general didactic level or
‘didactisation’ at the level of disciplinary didactics.
General didactics as contingency management

Within Danish general didactics, the double reflectiveness of didactics has
been theorised in the systems-theoretical didactics developed by Keiding and
Qvortrup (2014). Since the mid-1990s, Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory has
been the source of inspiration for a community of Danish education research-
ers within educational sociology (e.g. L. Qvortrup, 2004; Rasmussen, 2004),
pedagogy (von Oettingen, 2010), and didactics (Hansen, 2006; Qvortrup
and Keiding, 2014). The systems-theoretical didactics proposed by Keiding and
Qvortrup (2014) builds on their previous analytical and theoretical work and
draws on a range of further German didactic research in addition to Luhmann
and Hopmann.
According to systems-theoretical didactics (Keiding and Qvortrup, 2014),
teaching is characterised by a boundary or distinction between intentional-
ity (e.g. teaching) and uncertainty (e.g. learning). The distinction cannot be
removed, and teachers need to maintain and reproduce their sensitivity towards
it by insisting on both sides of the distinction. While it is probably not desirable
to give in to uncertainty and unpredictability, even given intensive planning
and controlling it will rarely be possible – and not desirable either – to maintain
a strict steering towards the intended goal.
Systems-theoretical didactics describes the didactic knowledge field as an
important resource for handling the distinction between intentionality and
uncertainty. Thus, the didactic field holds theories that position themselves on
either side of the distinction. We find theories that regard the unpredictability
of teaching as an inconvenience and consequently focus on trivialising teach-
ing, and we also find theories that regard unpredictability as an ideal quality
that contributes to the emergent nature of teaching or advances teaching that
is governed by the students’ unpredictability and dynamics of self. These dif-
fering conceptualisations of teaching become resources that teachers can use
to maintain the awareness of “what is possible if this is not possible” (Luhmann
and Schorr, 1982, p. 16): that is, the permanent awareness of doing something,
acting, but also always doubting the act; the need to trivialise teaching, but
at the same time focus on its emergent nature. In this respect, didactic theo-
ries constitute an important knowledge domain of ‘reflection programmes’ for
teachers’ continual movement back and forth across the boundaries of teaching.
The separate theories do not solve the ‘problem’ of teaching, since that is a basic
condition, but they constitute a ‘script’ that provides solutions within its own
context. “If this script is made the basis of teaching (and that applies to other
scripts as well), it merely means that the teaching will be observed and assessed
from this viewpoint” (Luhmann, 2006, p. 171). Hence it is essential that no the-
ory should stand alone but needs to be doubted and supplemented with other
didactic theories so as to maintain sensitivity to the boundaries of teaching. Any
didactic theory implies blindness to something and therefore necessarily calls
for reflection on the choice of what to see. For this reason, systems-theoretical
didactics is described as a both/and didactics. Didactic analysis based on repeated
both/and focusing is described as an essential didactic competence that includes
meta-reflection – which is conceptualised as a second-order position that makes
it possible to catch sight of the blind spots of concrete choices (Keiding and
Qvortrup, 2014, p. 260f.).
Künzli (2002) and Hopmann (2007) have identified three distinct phases
in the history of didactics: didactics as (1) order, (2) sequence, and (3) selec-
tion. With the systems-theoretical analysis of didactics as a doubly reflection
science, we may add a fourth phase, identified as contingency6 management.
While didactics as selection captures the situation in which a surplus of avail-
able knowledge creates the need for didactic reflection on what to include
or exclude (Hopmann, 2007, p. 113), didactics as contingency management
deals not only with selection but also with awareness of this as a selection and
of the risk that follows from this. Teachers who maintain and reproduce their
sensitivity towards the complexity of teaching will continually observe and
thematise their didactic choices as choices; they will be driven by permanent
critical reflection, searching for perspectives and opportunities for action
that provide concrete answers in specific situations. But despite the demand
for ongoing questioning arising from uncertainty about choices, systems-
theoretical didactics does not paralyse action; on the contrary, it directs atten-
tion to the testing of both old and new roads. Hence, a crucial aspect of the
theory is the advance of knowledge about these possible roads: about didactic
research, theories, and models that create the basis for reflection not just
about concrete choices, but about a wider set of approaches and possibilities
for action.
This position involves a change to the academic field of general didactics.
Historically, didactics was a humanistic (geisteswissenschaftliche) Bildung philoso-
phy and also, in teacher education and educational practice, a practical methods
discipline. It was regarded, in other words, as by definition normative or pre-
scriptive. After the 1970s, however, a descriptive tradition became established
that applied scientific methods to the empirical study of the circumstances in
which teaching and didactics take place (Imsen, 2006). The theory of didac-
tics as contingency management challenges the boundaries between didactics
as, respectively, a normative prescriptive and a descriptive analytical discipline.
Instead, an analytical normativity has been developed, which caters for the
need to reflect on teaching in the light of different normativities. These differ-
ent normativities form a central domain for reflection on teaching, and one
that complements and must engage in dialogue with two additional domains –
teachers’ experiential knowledge and empirical educational research (Qvortrup
and Keiding, 2014). The diverse range of didactic theories and models offers
different thematisations of teaching that may be considered in a given situa-
tion in order to provide resources for acting according to the complexity and
unpredictability of teaching.
Disciplinary didactics as didactisation

Within Danish disciplinary didactics, the double reflectiveness has been the-
orised within the communicative conceptualisation of disciplinary didactics,
developed by the disciplinary didactician Sigmund Ongstad. Ongstad (2002,
2006) points out that a research-based disciplinary didactics rests on relations
between the content of the subject (the what), the methods (the how), and
the reasons for choosing content and approaches (the why). These interrelated
aspects provide the point of departure for disciplinary didactic practice and
research. There is, however, also a need for meta-didactic reflection and com-
munication. For Ongstad, this constitutes the primary task for contemporary
disciplinary didactics, but it is also the background against which increased
attention can be paid to disciplinary didactics within academic disciplines and
professions.
In knowledge economies, where there is demand for global competitiveness
and adaptability, specialised knowledge is under pressure. Hence, there is a need
for subjects and disciplines to discuss and justify their special contribution to edu-
cation in answer to fast-changing conditions and contexts. Disciplinary didac-
tics occurs through and as communication, which as a meta-dimension involves
reflection on subjects and disciplines (cf. Ongstad, this volume). Ongstad intro-
duces didactisation as the key concept for the communicative processes of reflection
that propel contemporary disciplinary didactics (Ongstad, 2006). He states, as a
purely descriptive observation, that contemporary disciplinary didactics, realised
as didactisation, must take on a strategic responsibility to preserve, continue, and
develop specialised knowledge that is under pressure from permanent change.
Didactisation, then, is both a descriptive and a neutral concept. Reflecting
on processes of didactisation within Norwegian teacher education, Ongstad
(2004) emphasises that there will be potential traps with both weak and strong
didactisation of subjects and disciplines. With weak didactisation comes the
danger of losing sight of the complexity of learning and the diversity of learn-
ers, and thus losing relevance in the teacher education context. With strong
didactisation comes the danger that subject-specific content will be down-
played to the advantage of general educational aims and policies. Strategic
responsibility in the context of current disciplinary didactics therefore involves
a balancing act to avoid both these pitfalls.
Didactisation takes many shapes. It can take place at both practical, theo-
retical, and research levels. Importantly, it can also take place outside the edu-
cational field, wherever disciplinary knowledge and expertise is put to work
in new contexts, or when the benefit of specialised knowledge is called into
question. Ongstad’s triadic semiotic communication concept draws on work
by Bakhtin (1986) and Bühler (1934/1965). Rejecting the understanding of
communication as a mere translation device between discipline and didactics,
he conceptualises communication as an independent third aspect that actualises
basic life-world aspects. In the communicative utterance, an ‘I’ addresses a ‘you’
about the ‘world’. The utterer expresses himself and gives form to a knowledge
content through a communicative act. Thus, understanding disciplinary didactics
as both communication and reflection actualises existential and Bildung issues
that derive from the communication itself. Rather than directly combining
disciplinary knowledge and general didactics, therefore, Ongstad regards dis-
ciplinary didactics as a post-industrial knowledge phenomenon connected to
communication which constitutes an independent position for the observation
of knowledge, subjects, teaching, and learning.
This theory makes meta-reflection part of the definition of disciplinary
didactics – but as a both/and position. The classical didactic questions – what,
how, why – are still of basic importance for disciplinary didactic knowledge
production. Didactic analysis concerning the selection of content and the
structuring of classroom practices constitutes disciplinary didactic practice, but
didactic analytical practice has been expanded to include the role of commu-
nicative reflection. As core agents of schooling, teachers face various different
challenges of didactisation. They may be challenged to didactise outwards so
as to justify and argue for the relevance and usefulness of their subject in rela-
tion to for instance a fluent job market. They may need to direct didactisa-
tion towards their colleagues, in circumstances when interdisciplinary work
requires the elaboration of subject knowledge and forms of knowledge pro-
duction. But they may also face inwards challenges of didactisation in class-
room discussions with students about the relevance of the subject and about
what they need to learn, how, and why.
For teachers, therefore, the need for double reflection is a daily condition.
To be able to face the challenges, they need access to a repertoire of research-
based disciplinary didactic knowledge. They need access to theory and models
of action that make it possible to respond reflectively and dynamically to uncer-
tainty about the knowledge foundation of their teaching practice, where new
discourses are offered at ever-increasing speed both by reform policies and by
the textbook market.
Drawing on Michel Foucault, talk about the need to develop a disciplin-
ary didactic ethos. Foucault described the philosophical ethos of modernity as
a double attitude marking itself at one and the same time both as a state of
belonging and as an obligation to think about what is outside: that is, with
an inseparable duality between acting and reflection (1984, p. 568; cf. Krogh,
2006).
Laboratories for comparative didactics

As we have seen, contingency management and didactisation conceptualise
parallel practices of double reflection. In both cases, meta-reflection is regarded
as the contemporary condition for didactic analysis. No single theory, model,
or concept can handle the contemporary challenges encountered in the pre-
viously protected space of schooling and education. Under challenge from
empiricist evidence orientation, politicisation, and economisation, school sub-

jects are forced to develop a “pronounced and permanent readiness for change”
(Ongstad, 2006, p. 28). The same applies to the concept of Bildung, and to
discussions of the relationship between subjectivity and sociality in which “the
self, the subjectivity, is not simply integrated into the social. In modernity, the
balance between subjectivity and the world appears as a task” (Krogh, 2006,
p. 127, transl. by chapter authors).
But the differing perspectives and theoretical groundworks from which the
two concepts derive mean that the didactic analysis is construed somewhat
differently within the two settings. Within the theory of systems-theoretical
didactics, contingency management is described as a norm for a specific ana-
lytical practice that makes it possible to cope with paradoxical distinctions and
fundamental doubt. Through its second-order conceptualisation of didactic
analysis, this analytical practice provides both explanatory power and recom-
mendations for how teachers are to handle contemporary educational chal-
lenges. In advancing ‘analytic normativity’, the theory challenges the traditional
boundaries between normative practice and descriptive theory. Thus, although
the theory of contingency management does not claim a fundamental dif-
ference in status for its repertoire compared with other didactic theories and
models, it does claim to offer an unprecedented and highly relevant answer to
contemporary challenges.
Within the theory of communicative disciplinary didactics, on the other hand,
didactisation is conceived as an empirically observable condition of contempo-
rary disciplinary didactics, and one that is propelled by permanently changing
contexts for disciplinary knowledge and expertise. The analysis of this condition
offers no recommendations but, on the contrary, points to the risks inherent in
both weak and strong didactisation. Still, the theory of semiotic communication
as a constituent of disciplinary didactics provides a framework for didactic analy-
sis that actualises a Bildung aim through the access that students gain to different
disciplinary knowledge areas. Since didactisation connects knowledge, teach-
ing, and learning with fundamental life-world dimensions, this practice holds
the expectation that processes of didactisation within school subjects will actu-
alise affective/aesthetic as well as cognitive/epistemological and social/ethical
life-world aspects. Hence, while systems-theoretical didactics is normative at
the level of teachers’ realisation of didactic analysis, communicative disciplinary
didactics is normative at the level of the Bildung concepts and aims that inform
didactic analysis.
An interesting further convergence between the two positions, in addition
to the double reflectiveness approach, is connected to the pivotal status of com-
munication in both theoretical frameworks. Communication, however, is not
easily established as a theoretical commonplace. Within systems theory, social
systems such as teaching are conceptualised as operationally closed networks
of communication. Hence, communication is closed to psychic systems such
as human agents, operating rather as socially manifested, observable processes.
The concept of communication proposed by Sigmund Ongstad is theorised

within a social semiotic framework in which human agents are presupposed as
sign makers, ‘utterers’, and addressees, and where the meaning of utterances is
dependent on socially established genres and discourses.
The two frameworks – and the didactic perspectives framed by them – may,
however, complement each other, both at the level of teachers’ practical didac-
tic analyses and at the academic level of research and theory development. At
the practical level, teachers will need access to both general didactic and disci-
plinary didactic knowledge resources, and they will most often combine these
in personalised didactic approaches. Still, “Didaktik and Bildung require nor-
mativeness, but they do not force submission to just one set of norms or beliefs”
(Hopmann, 2007, p. 117). In the face of changing contexts that challenge
their established didactic knowledge construction, teachers depend not just on
the accessibility of knowledge resources but also on meta-reflective knowledge
about the potentials and limitations of different perspectives. Hence, the need
develops for communication within teacher education as well as in-service
training that support meta-reflection in the form of contingency management
or didactisation, while at the same time acknowledging the existence and qual-
ities of the alternative perspective and additionally suggesting complementary
approaches.
At the academic level of research and theoretical development, the distinc-
tions between the two perspectives are much more clearly drawn, even “fiercely
debated” (cf. Ligozat and Almqvist as quoted previously). At a theoretical level,
the difficulties of finding common ground were illustrated in the preceding
comparison of sociological and semiotic conceptions of communication. At
the same time, however, these sporadic observations also illustrate the potential
offered by comparative studies for reaching new insight by acknowledging and
further exploring differences of disciplinary and theoretical positions.
As already indicated, the realisation of these potentials within the Danish and
Nordic disciplinary didactic community led to the establishment of ‘laboratories
of disciplinary didactics’. These were institutionalised in research programmes,
symposia, and conferences and are documented in a range of Nordic-language
publications. More recently, we can extend the scope of developments even
further. Contemporary laboratories for comparative didactics include comparative
work across the perspectives of general and disciplinary didactics, as well as
renewed dialogues between the international educational traditions of didactics
and curriculum (Qvortrup and Krogh, 2016; Christensen et al., 2018; this vol-
ume). Within the wider European context, there are parallel endeavours within
Network 27 on Didactics, Learning and Teaching of the European Educational
Research Association (EERA), as documented in special editions of the Euro-
pean Educational Research Journal in 2007 and 2017 as well as in Hudson and
Meyer (2011). Ligozat and Almqvist (2018) suggest that the divides between
general and disciplinary didactics, as well as those between didactics and curric-
ulum, can be bridged by two strands of comparative research, both of which are
exemplified in the special issue. One of these strands addresses the relationships
between the theoretical constructions developed within the research traditions
and the epistemologies in which they are embedded. This requires the double
process of examining the historical and philosophical roots of their emergence
and examining empirically how they operate. The second strand concerns com-
parisons between educational contexts, school subjects, curricula, and classroom
practices.
Within the present laboratory of comparative didactics, Ane Qvortrup
(2018) has explored the capacity of the “art of eclectic approaches” (Gundem,
2011) to address theoretical and cultural differences. According to Gundem,
the art of eclectic approaches is a matter of “contributing to clarification and
understanding, not least through providing concepts that help describing and
explaining problems, situations, and associations” (2011, p. 65); further, the
“next step . . . is also important: to explore, explain, articulate possible alterna-
tive solutions with different consequences” (p. 98). Or, as thematised in Schwab:
“The eclectic art is art by which . . . we discover and take practical account
of the distortions and limited perspectives that a theory imposes on its object”
(1978, p. 323).
Eclecticism in this sense further advances the potential of double reflec-
tiveness approaches for both cross-cultural and cross-theoretical exploration of
educational constructions, as well as the scholarly self-constructions that they
involve (Tröhler, 2014; Introduction, this volume). Thus, double reflectiveness
calls for a didactic or philosophical ethos that involves the obligation to engage
wholeheartedly in teaching, developmental work, or research, while always
keeping in mind that other perspectives might have been taken which would
probably have led to different decisions, solutions, or results.
Notes
1 In the didactic literature, the common English language term is ‘subject didactics’ or
‘subject matter didactics’, relating the field to the school subject. The reference terms,
French ‘discipline’, German ‘Fach’, Danish and Norwegian ‘fag’, are, however, used for
both academic and school disciplines as well as for other institutionalised knowledge
fields. Since contemporary conceptions of the field are wider than the reference to school
subjects would indicate, we consider disciplinary didactics to be a more relevant term. Cf.
also Schneuwly, this volume.
2 This chapter is a revised and updated version of a Danish language article published in
a Nordic journal (Qvortrup and Krogh, 2016) and further draws on a Danish language
study book on general and disciplinary didactics (Krogh, Christensen and Qvortrup,
2016). All Danish, Norwegian, and German quotations are translated by the authors.
3 Currently, the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University.
4 In Denmark, the four-year education of primary and lower secondary teachers takes place
at university colleges. The Danish School of Education at Aarhus University offers further
and higher education of teacher educators. To teach at the upper secondary level, a five-year
university education is needed, supplemented by a didactic in-service course, Pædagogi-
kum, which for many years has been managed by the University of Southern Denmark.
5 Presently, the Educational Sciences unit at the Department for the Study of Culture.
6 According to Luhmann, ‘contingency’ concerns the condition that something is neither

necessary nor impossible, but that something else may always be possible. There is, further,
always the risk that the most favourable selection is not made: “Complexity [. . .] means
compulsion to select, compulsion to select means contingency, and contingency means
risk” (Luhmann, 2002, p. 62).
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Chapter 7
Bildung as the central category

of education?
Didactics, subject didactics, and
general subject didactics in Germany
Helmut Johannes Vollmer
Introduction
The following chapter deals with the unresolved issue of the explanatory power
and the impact of didactics or the didactics approach on school education which
is prevalent in many European countries, especially in northern and western
Europe.1 Taking Germany as an example, the analysis shows that the Bildung-
centred Didaktik2 in the traditional form is in a crisis, it is rather powerless as
to its orienting function for teacher education and for the professionalisation of
teachers. It does not seem to be capable anymore of solving some of the overt
problems in preparing teachers successfully and efficiently for the challenges
of their future jobs. There are at least three weaknesses (one could even speak
of ‘deficiencies’) which will be analysed in this context, namely (1) losing the
content dimension out of sight, (2) lacking empirical orientation, and (3) defin-
ing the notion of (Allgemein)Bildung too narrowly as a more or less personal
dimension of education and not enough in material or functional terms. In this
chapter, I will argue that these serious weaknesses can only be overcome if the
content-/subject-specificity of didactics is appropriately taken into account and
if the concept of education as Bildung is extended and redefined on more than
one level, namely on a personal AND on a functional level, thus preparing teach-
ers and students alike for the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Didactics as a respected and academically acknowledged scientific field can
only survive, the central role of didactics for educational theory and practice
can only continue to exist, if this identified ‘gap’ is overcome. General didac-
tics clearly needs to be revised or rather complemented by another scientific
approach which is already partly in the process of replacing it in the quest for
a cohesive understanding of powerful knowledge and Bildung at a time of
global change and of preparing for an unknown future. My claim is that subject
didactics is the missing link between the content-oriented academic disciplines
at university on the one hand and the educational sciences at large (including
general didactics) on the other hand.
Subject didactics in diverse forms and types have evolved over the last 30
to 50 years, from providing teaching recommendations at first into areas of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-8
138 Helmut Johannes Vollmer
scientific inquiry in relation to specific but limited domains of reality and of

analysing the world. Significant features of all subject didactics are (1) focus
on content-based education within the system of historically and culturally
marked subjects in school, (2) empirical orientation in their research and pro-
cedures (at least in principle), and (3) development of an overall theory of
subject-specific education as Bildung in the double sense (based on personal and
functional dimensions).
In the following I will illustrate this dynamic change away from Didaktik/
didactics as a general approach towards subject-specific didactics and their mul-
tiplicity of relevance for education of individuals, for acquiring basic insights
and powerful knowledge and at the same time the tools for continued learn-
ing, for critical self-reflection and relating to oneself as much as to the world.
The specific development in Germany stands for the massive incorporation of
subject didactics into teacher education and for the theoretical advancement
towards a common theory of all subject didactics (under the label of general
subject didactics).
In the long run, we need to compare the different varieties of subject didac-
tics within Germany with those in Scandinavia or in other German-speaking
countries, but also in France or in Switzerland. By making transparent their
commonalities as well as their specific differences and thus identifying their
relative contributions to a comprehensive understanding of education in a
formal and material sense (cf. Klafki, 1996), will we be able to strengthen
and renew the Didaktik/didactics tradition and offer an alternative to the
curriculum-based thinking and research as practised mainly in North America
and other parts of world outside of Europe. Whether both approaches could
be related to each other more productively and could jointly design elements
for an extended, strengthened conceptualisation of teacher education and of
teacher professionalisation remains to be seen (cf. Hordern, Muller and Deng,
2021). To find out about the potentials and possibilities of such an encounter
is exactly the purpose of this project and the book devoted to it. A prerequi-
site for finding common ground would be an in-depth mutual understanding
of each other, of both approaches in their traditional forms as well as in their
renewed, modernised theoretical perspectives (based on appropriate conceptual
translations or paraphrases; cf. Vollmer, forthcoming). In that way, this chapter
could help to outline some points of departure – at least for one of the two
strands – and offer links for a future discourse.
Structure of the chapter

The chapter is subdivided into three major parts. General didactics will be
outlined first, describing its achievements and the didactic models which it
produced. The fact that these models exist next to each other and that they
are not empirically validated led to a crisis in the field which has continued
for some time and even increased. Others contradict this evaluation and take
Bildung as central category of education? 139
different counteractive measures so that the future of general didactics is some-

what open today.
Contrary to that, the status of subject didactics has evolved positively over
the years, which will be dealt with in the second part. Generally speaking, it
is more secure than ever before (for some areas better than for others). The
individual branches of subject didactics fulfil an important function in studying
education from a subject-based point of view: given the existence of school
subjects within the curriculum, they reflect this subject-specific structure of
teaching and learning on the scientific level. They have a clearly defined object
of study and an array of appropriate research methodologies at hand so that
they are beginning to become well established, equal partners as scientific dis-
ciplines, acknowledged in the academic world. As such, they have become very
influential for teacher education.
In the third part, I will report about the emergence of general subject didac-
tics as a meta-theory. In recent years, it has become clear that the individual
subject didactics have much in common, yet that they are also very specific
and different in nature. Under the roof of a joint professional organisation (the
German Association for Fachdidaktik) the contacts became more intense and
systematic, as will be demonstrated. It was only natural that the goals and out-
comes of different subjects and that of education as a whole were compared and
put into relation with one another: the approaches, procedures, experiences,
and results from different subjects and subject didactics were linked across cur-
ricular borderlines, so as to identify their specific contribution to a meaningful
personal development of the learners and to the construction of powerful,
sustainable knowledge, tools, and capabilities as part of a comprehensive edu-
cation. In this context, the German discourse on Bildung will be introduced,
lately defined in a wider sense: distinguishing a more traditional variety (relating
to self-formation and self-cultivation) and a more functional understanding of
Bildung (relating to the knowledge of the world, preparing for life and work,
for participation in society, for socio-cultural and political activities). This rein-
terpretation of education as Bildung in the double sense implies an active role
of the subject as well as that of the teacher; both are considered central and will
guide the rest of the chapter.
Didactics in general – general didactics

Didactics in general deals with the question of what constitutes ‘good’ teaching,
how to plan a lesson well, and how to produce satisfying results among students.
Within that frame of reference, the ‘what’ of teaching (the content) sometimes
plays an ambivalent role, whereas the ‘how’ of institutionalised teaching (the
methods and means) is predominantly present in all didactic models. However,
decisions about content and methods of teaching are fundamentally dependent
on the goals of teaching (and of learning), as defined, set, or strived for by
the school, by the state, or by teachers and learners themselves. Those three
dimensions are central, but in an extended view, didactics also deals with the
‘who’ (with ‘whom’), the ‘when’ and ‘where’, and the ‘why’ or ‘what for’ (in
the long run); traditionally, it deals less with the question of ‘How do we know?’
(striving for empirical evidence).
Focusing on the case of Germany specifically, the educational sciences cover
a large area of topics and research questions all related to education, its condi-
tions and effects in the widest sense, on the formal and informal level, on the
personal and institutional level. Many of its subdisciplines want to understand
and describe what education is, how it functions under diverse circumstances
and how development/progress takes place, also wanting to improve the prac-
tice. Didactics is the theory and practice of teaching and learning in school
(Jank and Meyer, 2011, p. 16) and beyond (in the space outside, before and
after schooling). Others like Coriand (2017) define it more explicitly as a the-
ory about the relationship between teaching and learning, acknowledging the
dialectics between instruction (German: Erziehung) and Bildung. Didactics will
have to integrate these different facets into its scope of educational thinking all
the way down to good lesson planning. In particular, it has to mediate con-
tent and pedagogy, individual development with the empowerment of students
through meaningful educational experiences and relevant knowledge building.
It does so largely independent of content or subject area.
General didactics as a mode of thinking and reflecting about institutional teach-
ing and learning has a long-standing history, starting in ancient times through
the influential work of Johann Amos Comenius, with his major work entitled
“Didactica Magna”, all the way down until today. As a ‘science’, however, it is
struggling for acceptance within the academic world, mainly because of its lack
of empirical data (generation) and its normative orientation. Nevertheless, gen-
eral didactics is still reasonably well established in many universities of Germany
today, mainly because of its claimed importance for teacher education. At the
same time, it is more and more under attack and in a self-declared crisis.
Didactic modelling
In general didactics, there are many models offered for characterising good
teaching, and many theoreticians working in that field. Yet, didactic modelling
is hardly based on empirical research – rather it is predominantly normative and
value oriented. Little is known about what really goes on in the classroom or in
a particular lesson dealing with a specific topic and taught in a specific way. So
we receive little or no new information about educational reality over the years.
Nevertheless, many ideas about alternatives in teaching or learning are offered
in more or less abstract terms which are only partly helpful for understanding
or mastering a concrete teaching/learning situation. General didactics some-
times turns to a particular content item, but only for illustrative reasons, it is
not really embedded in subject-matter structures or knowledgeable about them
(except when a scholar is a go-between), common issues for all learning and
structural conditions for all teaching are addressed like general processes or gen-
eral assumptions about teaching and learning, perceived obstacles or injustices,
potential contradictions, etc. General didactics helps to reflect those structures
and conditions and to relate them to basic goals and educational values, specula-
tive at times, but that is its strength as well: it can offer a critical corrective to the
actual teaching and learning practice. And this critique is normally not turned
prescriptive. Meaningful modelling, however, or lesson planning requires more.
It is perhaps surprising, but understandable, that general didactics is being
replaced to some extent by approaches of educational psychology with their
highly sophisticated models of teaching, interaction with other variables, and
outcomes orientation. Yet it is exactly the philosophical dimensions of education
(goals, norms, values, social conflicts) that keep didactics in business.3 As to the
growing crisis, some influential representatives like Hilbert Meyer (forthcoming)
saw it already develop over the last years; he lists the following four indicators:
1 professorial posts formerly dedicated to general didactics are more and

more redefined for empirical classroom research; alternatively, the posts are
cancelled altogether. This shows that general didactics has not succeeded
to give itself an empirical basis, in spite of recent efforts (cf. Rothgangel,
2017, pp. 151–152).
2 The time allotted to general didactics within teacher education curricula is
also shrinking. Whereas it was self-understood for years that all teacher stu-
dents had to take a course in that field and had to participate in one or two
seminars on that topic, this is not the case anymore. In many universities, there
are no didactics lectures offered at all; rather, students turn to subject didactics
right away. And where general didactics is still being offered as an introductory
course, subject didactic topics and programmes are quickly taking over.
3 Many representatives of subject didactic disciplines do not relate to the
discourse in general didactics anymore;4 instead, they rely on their own
extensive research results and their own models of teaching, which are
quite differentiated by now, though content-bound.
4 Educational psychology is gradually taking over the core domains of gen-
eral didactics. What used to be a unique object of didactics for more than
200 years turned into a topic of psychology, almost unnoticed and without
protest or public debate. Another candidate to threaten general didactics
could be what is called ‘empirical teaching-learning-research’ or indeed
subject-matter didactics itself, with its new extension of general subject
didactics (discussed later in this chapter).
The future of general didactics

Other representatives in the field of general didactics strongly contradict and
oppose this critical view – e.g. Meinert Meyer (2016) or Ewald Terhart (2019).
The first one, co-founder of a newer variety of didactics (Bildungsgangdidaktik,
Meyer and Reinartz, 1998), has rejected this perspective for a long time (Meyer
and Meyer, 2009). The second one, the author of many influential publica-
tions, also sees no need to question the status of didactics within the German
academic landscape (e.g. Terhart, 2018). Others, like K. Zierer, editor of the
Yearbook on General Didactics, or N. M. Seel, even claim that ‘general pedagogy’
(their translation of Allgemeine Didaktik) is indispensable in view of the unsettled
issues of ‘good’ teaching or ‘instruction’, as they prefer to label it (Seel and
Zierer, 2018).5 They quote G. Heursen (2005) who pointed out that (general)
didactics will only survive (“experience a new springtime”), if the integration
of empirical teaching-learning research into the discipline would be success-
ful. This seems exactly what, according to Seel and Zierer, is starting to hap-
pen: overcoming eclecticism, studying general educational models empirically
(Wernke, Werner and Zierer, 2015). It should be noted, however, that the
empirical methods applied here are mainly qualitative and ‘judgemental’ (cf.
Zierer and Wernke, 2013). The authors also mention Hattie’s meta-analyses
(2008) as a proof for this development, plus closer links between general didac-
tics and instructional design. All of these processes indicate to them that general
pedagogy is “capable of handling the developments in the scientific field and of
staying the central discipline for the education of teachers in the future” (Seel
and Zierer, 2018, p. 388; my translation).6 And indeed, basic didactic models
will continue to be of relevance and helpful in the first phase of teacher educa-
tion, at least for beginners.
Interestingly enough, there is another new approach of comparing the dif-
ferent “didactic models” in a meta-theoretical perspective. Scholl (2018) iden-
tified almost 100 competing designs within Germany over the last 100 years.
According to him, the pending crisis was also caused by general didactics
itself, namely through the fact that the models hardly make explicit reference
to one another, nor do they build on preceding suggestions. Additionally,
none of the models reflects classroom reality completely and thus cannot claim
to represent the discipline as a whole. Scholl takes resort to a fundamental the-
ory of communication (as part of a comprehensive systems theory of society)
formulated by Niklas Luhman (1992), in order to develop a common frame of
reference against which he then re-analyses and classifies the different models,
focusing on the most powerful and influential ones (such as Heimann, Otto
and Schulz, 1979; Schulz, 1991, or Klafki, 1996) as prototypes for particular
aspects within the overall framework. He comes up with a meta-structure of
ordering the field, subdivided by components like content, time sequence,
and socio-communicative order (Scholl, 2018).7 It remains to be seen whether
Scholl’s study will cause new debates and disciplinary self-inquiry; certainly
it has the potential to do so.8 In this context, we can look forward to a new
edition of the book on Didactic Modelling by Jank and Meyer, announced
for 2021. It cannot be denied that some basic models about lesson planning
and good teaching as well as recent introductions into general didactics (e.g.
Coriand, 2017; Terhart, 2019, or Jank and Meyer, 2011, 2021) have a clearly
orienting function and will be important also for future generations of teacher
students and teachers.
Curricular perspectives
There is good reason to believe that general didactics will continue to exist,
though in a different form. Its relevance might reduce, since its educational
tasks and goals are (partly) incorporated by other disciplines, as shown previ-
ously. What is the general within general didactics? It all depends on whether
the discipline can contribute to defining the general goals and dimensions of
education, the common core of institutionalised teaching and learning on the
conceptual, the content, and the communicative level. And this is more than
describing the tasks and purpose of educational practice: it requires to mediate
explicitly between the individual and society, without “sacrificing” the needs or
demands of the individual to those of society or vice versa (cf. Benner, 1987,
p. 123), without losing one or the other out of sight or stressing one dimension
of education more than the other. This is an issue that general subject didactics
(see later in the chapter) also faces in a similar way, as rightly observed by Terhart
(2018, p. 89): if we re-discover Bildung and its relevance in both directions “as
the core principle for determining which tasks a school should undertake and
which ones it should reject” (von Hentig, 1996, p. 13), it would give us the
power to judge what is important, valuable, and “good” (p. 13). Ideas like these
are still rather vague or even fuzzy, they would have to become more concrete or
even operationalised on the personal and on the content level, e.g. by defining
a shared system of values and a shared base of knowledge as key competences.
At this point, the work of Baumert (2002) becomes important. His edu-
cational theory is an important provider of new theoretical considerations for
general didactics (as much as for general subject didactics, by the way). Based
on the existence of school subjects, Baumert acknowledges them as historically
grown organisational units. But he also qualifies them as social and intellectual
organisers of reality, of providing access to the world, of encountering and
experiencing it. Baumert describes their potential for becoming restructured
into groups of related subjects with a similar underlying type of orientation or
logic: he distinguishes four types of ‘rationality’ or ways of relating to the world
(2002, p. 113), namely
1 Cognitive-instrumental modelling of the world (math, natural sciences . . .)

2 Aesthetic-expressive encounters with and shaping of the world (language/
literature, music/fine arts (painting/visual/graphic art), physical expression)
3 Normative-evaluative approaches towards economy and society (history,
economic education, politics/social/legal studies)
4 Tackling problems of constitutive rationality (religion, philosophy).
These rationality types have already been applied for subdividing areas of liter-
acy within the PISA approach of large-scale testing and of comparing achieve-
ment results internationally. According to Baumert, they represent something
like the “structure of an international core curriculum” (2002, p. 108). They
are amazingly close to the idea of a general education (Allgemeinbildung) based
on these structures (even with explicit reference to Humboldt; Baumert, 2002,
p. 107). In our context, sufce it to say that Baumert strongly criticised specific
didactic models like those of Klafki (e.g. 1996) or Blankertz (1973), because
they wanted to overcome the issue of a curricular canon in an unrealistic way
and to question the future of subject didactics (even as domain didactics, for
example) and were against changes in curriculum development accordingly.
Instead Baumert recommends an orientation along the lines of Wilhelm Flitner
(1961) who was the first to formulate the aforementioned types of ‘rationali-
ties’ as modes of world encounter (Modi der Weltbegegnung).
As a provisional result, the very idea that the general within general didactics
could be identified and named positively in terms of goals and content seems
to be problematic. Rather, we have to accept that there are alternative ways to
perceive, experience, and structure the world and thus to relate to it educa-
tionally, as persons, teachers, or learners. Similarly, it seems somewhat naive to
think that one can renounce a certain canon of subjects or subject-matter areas
altogether. This insight and conviction underline the need for subject-matter
didactics and support their theoretical and practical work.
Subject-matter didactics
Subject-matter didactics (or short: subject didactics)9 has many branches accord-
ing to the specific area of focus and expertise, developed over the last 50 years
and well established by now as academic disciplines. What helped to secure this
status was a clearly defined object of study and an increasing orientation towards
empirical research plus the insight into its importance for teacher training.
Whereas the curriculum movement of the 1960s and 1970s failed to fulfil its
own claims to model the world as a whole for learning purposes in school, sub-
ject didactics were more successful because they kept to school subjects as part
of the existing (state) curriculum. They created teaching materials, gave advice
and made recommendations, developed teaching models, and finally turned
to empirical studies (e.g. teacher and learner attitudes, motivation, teaching/
learning preferences, feedback practices, etc.). Later they dealt with questions
like transforming new academic insights into teachable content or restructur-
ing the subject-specific curricula altogether, in view of PISA and operational
definitions of educational success. Also the increasing diversity of the student
population became a major concern. We can identify the different individual
subject didactics like biology or history didactics as separate disciplines, dealing
with the teaching and learning of a specific, more or less defined area of social
reality, in school and beyond. But at the same time, they all share a large number
of similar, comparable, unresolved issues which are waiting to be tackled and

solved. The assortment of research methods to be applied for scientific inquiry
and practical studies is somewhat limited. Yet, there was little cohesion among
the different subject didactics; as a matter of fact they are only beginning to find
out about their differences and commonalities under certain comparative per-
spectives, stimulated by the existence of a newly developed scientific approach
under the name of general subject didactics (GSD, see later on in the chapter).
Subject didactics as scientific disciplines

According to self-definitions of representatives from different subject didactics,
there are three major tasks identifiable for all of them:
1 Reflection and analysis of the school subject with all its dimensions (from
institutional matters via content issues to new goals, experimentation with
or theoretical justifications of teaching/learning methods).
2 Improvement (even “optimisation”) of subject-specific teaching, learning,
and education, including analysis and management of inequality problems
and enabling Bildung as a process and product for all through dealing in-
depth with subject-based issues.
3 Mediation between academic knowledge, subject-didactic knowledge and
the fields of application on the personal and public level (including subject
didactics for the media, for industry, museums etc.) – areas often neglected,
but also not well defined. These dimensions are left aside in this chapter.
Thus, the individual subject didactics describe, analyse, and theorise subject-
specific teaching and learning in all its forms, including the relevant societal as
well as anthropological conditions (cf. Schneuwly, 2011). Historically speak-
ing, subject didactics as disciplines developed from agencies of reflection and
counseling, based on issues of normativity and societal values, into empirically
oriented scientific fields, responsible for the selection and justification of goals,
for the preparation of teachable content (within the framework set by soci-
ety and politics), for the successful mediation of relevant knowledge and skills
(including support for special needs), and for studying the variables and condi-
tions that influence the teaching-learning process. Given the myriad of tasks,
it is assumed that up to 200 diferent subject didactics exist as academic fields
of study, including the ones for all the vocational subjects and special learning
areas (without necessarily being labelled as such). Each one has a clearly marked
object of study, equipped with appropriate methodologies and built-in forms of
self-reflection and self-evaluation. Some disciplines are better anchored within
universities or colleges of education than others. Some constituted themselves
later or developed slower, others set the pace, also in theoretical reflection and
research output, and in the numbers of young emergent researchers waiting
to become initiated into their specific subject area. The research balance is
impressive, though biased by qualitative approaches (given the number of pub-

lications and third-party funding from esteemed research agencies).
One could demonstrate how subject didactics is positioned between the
academic content disciplines (Fachwissenschaften) on the one hand and the edu-
cational sciences in their different forms on the other hand (Abraham and
Rothgangel, 2017). This last area relates particularly to general didactics as
opposed to subject didactics. Subject didactics participates in both areas of
research and discourse mentioned, but over the years it has become indepen-
dent and autonomous in its own self-definition and achievements. The differ-
ent subject didacticians are also actively involved in analysing and supporting
solutions for problems existing in their respective subject area; advising school
districts, teachers, or ministries and developing appropriate policy papers or
teaching material(s); also making suggestions for cross-curricular topics or proj-
ects (like data management, digitalisation, inclusion, or teacher education). All
of this is also influenced by the institutional context in which they operate and
which they serve, namely whether it is part of a comprehensive Faculty of Phi-
losophy, a Faculty of Education, a Teacher Training College or a University of
Applied Sciences or Arts. These different types of embedding will have some
effect on the self-definition of the subject didactic disciplines and their modes
of self-presentation and legitimisation.
The status of subject didactics in the academic field is largely secured within
Germany (although there are still some tendencies to occupy some posts con-
secrated for didactics with pure scientists or empirical educational researchers).
Each of them has developed its own self-concept, each one presents itself sci-
entifically at conferences (either separate or together with the teachers in the
field), all of them publish their own book series and collection of materials,
many of them edit a peer-reviewed journal, except where the development of
the discipline is less advanced. So, the need to exchange between them, to see
how a neighbouring subject discipline is operating, whether there is overlap
and common ground between them, and last but not least what the specific
challenges of the future are, has developed quite naturally for almost 25 to 30
years.
Relationship between different subject didactics

Within Germany, individual subject didactics have cooperated with one another
on the national level for a long time, formally so under a common roof of a
professional organisation named Association for Fachdidaktik (Gesellschaft für
Fachdidaktik, GFD, co-founded by the author in 1999, with forerunners to
that; cf. Vollmer, 2017). The GFD comprises almost 30 professional member-
ship associations by now which meet twice a year, hold regular bi-annual con-
ferences, try to influence research organisations and politics in their agendas,
and above all provide platforms for the internal discourse among all the differ-
ent subject didactics which profit enormously from this exchange. In addition
to a book series (Fachdidaktische Forschungen, with over 20 volumes by now),

the GFD also publishes a new international journal (online, peer-reviewed, in
English only) entitled Research in Subject-Matter Teaching and Learning (RISTAL.
org), which offers a global platform for discussing subject-didactic issues and
research findings worldwide.
Teacher education especially profits from this dynamic cooperative move-
ment. The ongoing discourse among the different subject didactics has already
led to discoveries of mutual interests, to joint scientific actions or theoretical
clarifications. With a spreading number of professorships for subject didactics
and their relatively secure institutional embedding, the status of subject didac-
tics and its role as an academic partner and a serious research co-operant is
more or less acknowledged. However, communication and exchange between
general and subject didactics as a whole is still underdeveloped and needs to be
better promoted within the next years.
Through all of these measures and interactions a high level of conceptual
and organisational exchange was reached, leading to an infrastructure among
the different individual subject didactics which is strong and productive, and
which respects the differences between them. Simultaneously, many common-
alities like research topics, research methods, goal settings, use of reference
systems, balance between theoretical and practical work, etc., are identified and
mutually acknowledged. The same is true for subject-didactic contributions
to teacher education (including offers for in-service training) and to teacher
professionalisation, which becomes more and more subject-specific (e.g. Predi-
ger, Leuders and Rösken-Winter, 2017). This is exactly the area where subject
didactics could cooperate extensively with the educational sciences and already
does so to some extent (cf. Cramer and Schreiber, 2018). What does a teacher
need as a knowledge and competence base for becoming and staying a good
professional in the twenty-first century? This is a question concerning many
disciplines and is discussed in many parts of the world. In dealing with this
question, the educational sciences and particularly general didactics plus sub-
ject didactics could contribute substantially: their different scientific approaches
and findings could interact productively (cf. Abraham and Rothgangel, 2017;
Rothgangel, 2017; Vollmer and Klette, forthcoming).
General subject didactics

Again, the central question has to be raised: what is the common good among
all the different school subjects and the subject didactics related to them? Can
one identify a general educational strategy or consensus and a common goal
among them? And how does each of them contribute to such a common edu-
cative purpose? Questions like these originate from the need to look beyond
one’s own disciplinary boundaries, comparing and generalising different subject
didactics as to their structures, procedures, practices, and insights, and finding
out what they share, but also what distinguishes them and how each contributes
to the overall education of an individual – because of or in spite of their distinc-

tive differences. To put it metaphorically: answers to these questions require us
to step onto a higher level of observation in order to see and compare the activities
and results of the different individual subject-matter didactics. This is exactly
what constitutes general subject didactics (GSD): it is based on several columns,
which can be defined as levels of ‘observation’ or research, related to the theory
of science by Niklas Luhmann (1992). Applied to the topic of subject didactics,
the three levels distinguished by Luhmann are as follows:
1 First order observations are, for example, observations of teachers and

pupils in subject-specific teaching and learning processes.
2 Second order observations are, for example, research within subject didac-
tics, in which the observations between teachers and pupils in subject-
specific teaching and learning processes are observed on their part.
3 Third order observations are, for example, research on the level of gen-
eral subject didactics, where the observation is now directed towards the
respective research and theory-building in subject didactics and how they
arrive at their findings through observing the subject-specific teaching and
learning processes taking place in the classroom.
This last level involves scientific re-analysis, namely comparison between dif-
ferent subject didactics and their theories (bottom-up movement) plus the
construction of theoretical insights based on comparison or related to subject-
based education as such (top-down movement). These processes lead to a The-
ory of Subject Didactics at the same time (Rothgangel, 2020; Rothgangel and
Vollmer, 2020). The term ‘GSD’ and the concept it denotes (in German: Allge-
meine Fachdidaktik) is not easy to translate into smooth and comprehensible
English. Yet, we have no other choice than to paraphrase and contextualise it, if
we want to try and make us understood by others and comprehend each other
in the mutual socio-cultural embeddedness of our thinking altogether.
The cooperation among the different subject didactics as academic disciplines
has already led to the establishment of many interdisciplinary research groups and
activities across subject borders, within universities or faculties and also within
the Association for Fachdidaktik (GFD) itself. One group has been working for
some time now on finding out about the self-concepts, the research foci, and the
state of theoretical reflection in the individual subject didactics. Parallel to that,
attempts at defining what a particular subject-specific view of school education
is or could be (as opposed to a general, philosophical view of education as such,
independent from subjects) have been advanced theoretically. Both movements
together led to the formation of this new scientific approach, general subject
didactics. The initiating research project was formed by six scholars belonging
to five different subject didactic backgrounds as their fields of expertise: namely,
German as a Mother-Tongue Didactics, Biology Didactics, Music Didactics,
Didactics of Religious Education, and English as a Foreign Language Didactics.
As they tried to look at the achievements and the deficits of the individual didac-
tic disciplines, it became clear that one cannot do this just from the outside: that
the project required cooperation from within the subject didactics themselves in
self-describing and presenting their view of their specific approaches and ways
of looking at the world, of modelling their insights and the findings of their
neighbouring disciplines and qualifying their own contributions. Accordingly,
these self-reports were then compared and analysed as to their commonalities and
differences. In spite of the fact that general subject didactics is a fairly young sci-
entific theory, there are already two major book publications out on the market
(Bayrhuber et al., 2017, and Rothgangel et al., 2020) plus a number of contribu-
tions in article form describing and explaining the approach as well as its results
so far (e.g. Bayrhuber et al., 2018; Bayrhuber and Frederking, 2019; Rothgangel
and Frederking, 2019), some in English (e.g. Vollmer, 2014; Rothgangel and
Vollmer, 2020) or in French (Vollmer, 2013). Extracts from the first two volumes
mentioned here are in the process of being translated into English by the authors
(cf. Vollmer and Rothgangel, forthcoming).
Foundations of general subject didactics

One of the reasons for the establishment of general subject didactics was the
observation that the bulk of more recent research within the various subject
didactics was no longer being processed or taken into account by scholars of
general didactics. In that sense, GSD fills a task that was insufficiently performed
by didactics as a branch of educational science (but cf. M. Meyer, 2016). The
word ‘general’ within the term ‘GSD’ refers to the results of ‘generalising’ the
subject-specific findings and theories of the many different subject didactics
themselves, while also taking their subject-related peculiarities into account
(Rothgangel, 2020). General subject didactics thus follows a logic that consists
of the interplay of bottom-up comparisons and analyses and independent top-
down reflections, focusing on teaching and learning within and beyond the
different school subjects and on the specific theories about subject teaching
and subject learning that one or another subject didactics had already developed
about it (cf. Rothgangel and Vollmer, 2017, 2020).
The agency for relating the different subject-oriented disciplines to one
another has created this new discipline, or rather meta-discipline, which does not
fully exist yet but which is under way (among other things through discussions
within and among the subject-didactic communities at large, nationally and
now internationally). Areas of comparison so far have been historical develop-
ments, goal settings, influences from the state and political agendas, curricular
expectations, research approaches applied, procedures for identifying teach-
able content, definition and evaluation of subject-specific teaching models and
of (measurable) outcomes, and cooperation with other subjects in school or
with neighbouring disciplines. Other areas like more teacher- and teaching-
related ones will follow. Through the different avenues of self-explanation and
self-presentation, one particular common goal turned out to be of utmost joint

interest and to become more substantial: in how far does each of the subjects
involved think they contribute to the overall education (in the emphatic sense
of the term) of the learners and how can we evidence this? More concretely:
how does the next generation of students become equipped with the appropri-
ate knowledge, tools, and intellectual plus moral strength for mastering their
own future? How do they learn to think, to think in relations, constitute men-
tal networks, become critical and autonomous through subject teaching and
learning; how do they learn to communicate across social and cultural dividing
lines and how does the official subject-based curriculum help them to do so?
Subject-based education as Bildung: the core

of all subject teaching and learning?
At this point, the notion of ‘subject-based education as Bildung’ came up within
the reports of individual subject didactics and thus the need for developing a
theory which acknowledges the contribution of content teaching and learning
for a comprehensive education of young learners. How could we bring the
subject-based contributions into play, re-examining the concept of Bildung as
a process and a product, redefining it in subject-specific terms, looking at both
sides of the educational process, the personal and the functional one and the
needs to go along with it, as mentioned earlier?
In her book The Educated Subject and the German Concept of Bildung (2016),
Horlacher has given an impressive overview of the manifold meanings and
uses of the term ‘Bildung’ at different times and in different socio-cultural
contexts in which it was activated accordingly and revitalised again and again,
not only in Germany or the German-speaking countries but also elsewhere
on the globe. She was able to demonstrate that this continues to happen till
this very day: the term seems to be flexible or fuzzy enough (on top of being
‘trendy’ again) to serve a number of functions for different philosophical tradi-
tions and lines of thinking over time, concerning education at large, by now
also obligatory, state-governed education, even when it is based on assump-
tions of teachability, learnification, and outcomes orientation (cf. Horlacher,
2016, ch. 9, pp. 118–129). And indeed, for many of the subject didactics in
Germany the notion of Bildung has become a synonym for the ultimate goal
of their education – yet in a much wider sense than was traditionally meant.
Accordingly, we developed an understanding of the notion which comprised
not only the tacit forms of shaping the individual mind and personality of each
learner in a purposeless manner (quasi as a side effect to content learning or as
an addition to it). What seemed equally important was the development and
unfolding of basic capacities or key competences and skills for personal devel-
opment as a social being and for solving problems of the twenty-first century
in a participatory, interactive way. In our revised and extended understanding
of Bildung this part would imply the mental and socio-cultural equipment of
individual learners for intercultural sensibility, for cooperation and democratic

citizenship.10 Each subject would still be self-responsible for such a develop-
ment towards autonomy and critical evaluation of knowledge and facts, but
the school’s (or society’s) responsibility would be to offer rich opportunities for
developing such critical and practical knowledge to be acquired by everyone.
So in the end, we distinguished between two aspects of Bildung: personal
versus functional Bildung, acknowledging that this notion can take on both
meanings (cf. Frederking and Bayrhuber, 2017, who identified early as well as
contemporary traces of both understandings). We are aware that this heuristic
distinction could trigger wrong connotations: personal aspects of Bildung also
rely on a sound knowledge base, whereas the acquisition of functional compe-
tencies and dispositions also require personal readiness and motivation and can
imply corresponding benefits for the learner as a person, for his or her own
personal development and cultivation. Possibly the different facets and dimen-
sions of both sides are more interwoven than perceived so far, there seems
to be no real contradiction between the two goals in this perspective. Many
more theoretical advances in formulating an appropriate and precise theory of
subject-based Bildung are still needed, of course.
As to the term ‘knowledge’, we can distinguish at least three different types:
‘factual’ knowledge (knowing that . . . which, however, involves always more
than one single notion alone, which connects to a whole network of con-
cepts), ‘epistemic knowledge’ (knowing how or how to, knowledge about the
origins and procedures of gaining new pieces of knowledge) and ‘applied
knowledge’ (knowing why or what for, including social use or misuse of knowl-
edge, knowledge of the powerful vs. powerful knowledge; cf. Young, 2008;
Muller and Young, 2019). This trifold division also reflects the structures of
content, as analysed and distinguished as early as 1964 by Schwab: he distin-
guishes ‘substantive’ structures (conceptually organised, e.g. research results)
from ‘syntactic’ ones (relating to the acquisition of knowledge). Both should be
complemented, however, by ‘applied’ structures as a third type (cf. Bayrhuber,
2017) where knowledge is used for a number of purposes, among them uncov-
ering problematic or false assumptions, finding out about wrong assertions or
fake news, experiencing degrees of reliability and trustworthiness or checking
its relevance. At least the last the two types of knowledge can be accounted for
as elements of functional education as Bildung, since the learner is empowered and
put into the position of acquiring and evaluating new knowledge or handling
given/factual elements critically. This second element is clearly needed as a
reflective mind with a firm critical attitude so to look through and overcome
the simple and easily superficial structures of knowing that and knowing how.
At the same time, this is a basic educational outfit for life, also against the mis-
use of knowledge by powerful others. It was the educational sociologist M. F.
D. Young (2008) who introduced the term ‘powerful knowledge’ in this con-
text in order to qualify the content basis as fundamental for learning for life.11
He triggered a whole debate about curriculum change and the reintroduction
of specialised knowledge as equipment with appropriate tools (cf. “What Is

Educationally Worthwhile Knowledge?” Derry, 2018; cf. also Vollmer, 2021).
In the course of our research, we became aware that in times of OECD and
PISA the second meaning of Bildung, the functional one, is becoming more
prominent in educational philosophy and practice: it is strongly connected
with an extended literacy concept, originating from North America itself or at
least from the anglophone world (Frederking and Bayrhuber, 2017) and more
indirectly with the notion of competence (as contextualised ability, yet as a
transferable disposition; cf. Vollmer, 2021). By focusing primarily on the many
subject-based literacies at school, these can easily become the dominant goal
or area of attention in modern, globalised education, while the original aspects
of Bildung (associated with the unfolding of the person, with self-formation
and self-cultivation) could become more easily overlooked, forgotten, or even
endangered in the everyday practice of teaching for useful skills, measurable
outcomes, and competences. On the other hand, mental procedures like infer-
encing, comparing, probability thinking, cultural-historical embedding, or
even learning to learn could exactly become part of the personal qualities of
Bildung. And, in the acquisition of functional literacies, in getting to know
the basic epistemological structures of a field, the basic procedures of acquiring
content knowledge, of using it and adding to it and thereby discovering even
more of it, there is actually a personal educative dimension already implied
in these activities.12 In that sense, personal aspects of Bildung partly happen
within or through functional acquisition processes, as an aside or as a side prod-
uct, so to speak – almost unintentionally at first, as a way of building up and
unfolding critical, powerful knowledge in the students, provided they actively
want, adopt, and support this in the longer run.
General subject didactics as a developmental project

General subject didactics, as illustrated, is a new approach, a new mode of think-
ing, comparing and generalising. It is a well-documented cross-disciplinary
project of scholars within the German Association for Fachdidaktik, offered
to subject-didactic communities worldwide. It has striking similarities with
the network Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education
(KOSS), which operates even internationally and brings together three cross-
disciplinary educational research groups rooted in several academic disciplines
from Sweden, Finland, and England. They seek “to understand how educa-
tors and education systems can ensure that school-based knowledge building
reaches its transformative potential” (cf. KOSS, 2020). In their work, they draw
upon the concepts ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘epistemic quality’ to help under-
stand the qualities that knowledge building has when it is effective and empow-
ering and how educational processes can build and develop these properties.13
As to general subject didactics in Germany, the methodological framework
of this research approach has been thought through and described with care
and precision, contrary to many projects of general didacticians where the

methodological framing is simply left out or forgotten. The main basis of this
qualitative research approach is that of the Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin,
1996, as one of several appropriate methodologies), by which the subject-based
observations about subject-specific teaching, made within subject didactics, are
once more observed on a higher level, compared, systematised, and generalised
(actually a meta-analysis).
GSD is a powerful frame of reference in which the central questions of
subject-based teaching and learning as well as the links beyond and across sub-
jects are adequately dealt with. This is particularly true under the perspec-
tive of Bildung in the double sense as the overriding educational purpose.
In this perspective, general didactics could become a relevant reference part-
ner again for subject didactics, all the more if a meta-theoretical justification
of general didactics is also winning ground and generalisable empirical results
would be offered, based on comparison between subjects, subject didactics,
and subject-specific modelling, similar to the self-understanding of GSD. Gen-
eral subject didactics is an abstract concept; it is not a new discipline, it is not
institutionalised within university structures and will probably never be nor
has it any equivalence in professorial posts. Rather, GSD represents a mode
of comprehension and thinking (in the sense of Popper, 2009) or a mode of
observing on three different levels, as outlined earlier according to Luhmann
(1992), by which peculiarities and differences among individual subject didac-
tics, their concrete theories and findings can be studied and made transparent
through comparison. In that sense, GSD can also be paraphrased as a Theory of
Subject-Matter Didactics (Rothgangel, 2020; Rothgangel and Vollmer, 2020).
The decisive point here is how general subject didactics will describe and
justify the general dimensions within its meta-theory, whether or not it will be
successful in identifying and characterising the different facets and aspects of
subject-specific education as Bildung on a general level and put it into a con-
vincing theory or theoretical frame of reference (fachliche Bildungstheorie). This
is the major task at the moment. There are several sources possible on which to
draw for such a theoretical construct:
1 Reported experiences from subject teachers (first order observations: a topic

lending itself for deeper educational processing, materials, or goals cutting
across subject-specific borderlines, cooperation with other subject teach-
ers, team teaching, cross-curricular projects, etc.).
2 Self-analysis and reports from the different subject didactics (second order
observations: concerning educational practices in the classroom, goals iden-
tified, research results, and above all theoretical modelling of the subject-
specific teaching-learning processes). This source is open to further find-
ings, discoveries and reports (cf. the 17 contributions in Rothgangel et al.,
2020, on the state-of-the-art and the research perspectives of the respective
subject didactics).
3 Selected results from general subject didactics (third order observations, accord-
ing to Luhmann, 1992), as presented selectively in Rothgangel et al. (2020),
Rothgangel and Vollmer (2020) – especially in view of personal or func-
tional education (Bildung). These illustrate the strength and productivity
of a bottom-up procedure through comparison and analysis (based on the
Grounded Theory) as much as of a top-down approach through theorising.
4 Systematic reconstruction of historical traces: what was understood by Bil-
dung in earlier times of history until today? Can one identify a distinction
between personal versus functional Bildung in the past, in the classical
literature from the Middle Ages via Wilhelm von Humboldt till today?
Can one find traces of ‘subject-based education’ as a task for schools or self-
learning (cf. above all Frederking and Bayrhuber, 2017; see also Schneuwly
and Vollmer, 2018). In this context, Baumert’s theory of four “modes of
world encounter” or of relating to the world (2002, p. 113) is helpful: it
assumes that there are “horizons” of world knowledge and of understand-
ing the world which are fundamental for education (in the sense of Bildung)
and which cannot be replaced by one another nor anything else. This
insight supports the survival of a general, canon-based (possibly domain-
oriented) curriculum.
5 Finally, anthropological dimensions (like rationality, reflexivity, or emotional
balance) as much as basic socio-cultural ones (like discourse ability or accep-
tance of otherness/diversity) have to be checked for inclusion into such a
list of components for a subject-based educational theory. Many more will
be worked upon within the next months (cf. early reflections in Vollmer,
2013, 2014; more recently in Vollmer, forthcoming).
Only by shifting away from descriptive-analytical levels towards normative

argumentation plus recourse to Baumert’s modes of world encounter will a
theory of education succeed in assigning a specific role and position for sub-
jects or subject didactics in a future curriculum. Overall, there will be flexibil-
ity necessary between diferent methodological approaches: on the one hand,
systematic-historical (re-)construction of subject-oriented facets of Bildung,
inductive reasoning and analyses, generalised from specific observations and
findings (bottom-up movement), and finally the level of theoretical construc-
tion and insight (hermeneutic procedures, top-down movement). All of these
approaches can help to identify central elements for an extended understanding
and conceptualisation of a subject-based education theory. We are looking for cog-
nitive, emotional, physical, and interactional categories of Bildung which are
cross-curricular and generic in nature, forming the basis for a learner’s personal
development and his/her empowerment simultaneously that help master future
challenges and demands. Other components are self-reflective, critical, educa-
tion towards autonomy, and citizenship. The publication of such a subject-
based theory of Bildung is planned for 2022.
Outlook
Resuming the research question which was posed in the Introduction: can sub-
ject didactics fill the gap which was left open by general didactics – at least in
part? As we have demonstrated, a diversification and specialisation of different
subject didactics can indeed be better equipped and respond more appropri-
ately to the issues of content education, of researching within a limited area of
concern and discussing goals and consequences in personal as well as functional
terms. But it is only the scientific work on the “third level of observation” (Luh-
mann, 1992), the comparative subject didactic research within the framework
of general subject sidactics, which allows us to look at the overall educative
endeavours of the whole system and derive a theory of subject didactics from
it. In connection with a newly developed approach of ‘subject-based education
as Bildung’ we had to overcome (or surpass) the traditional ‘Bildung-oriented
Didaktik’ in the version of Klafki and others in order to unfold an extended
understanding of education, of didactics, and of subject didactics (deliberately
spelled in an Anglicised form) in which Bildung figures differently, yet even
more centrally as the goal of personal development and self-cultivation as much
as of knowledge-building and functional empowerment through the acquisi-
tion of competencies. Such a theory of subject-based education as Bildung
needs more clarification and theoretical precision, of course.
There are also a number of unsettled issues (theoretical and practical ones) in
connection with the topic that we cannot deal with in this chapter. To tackle
them requires a reconsideration of the whole educational system or systems
plus reorganisation of curricula. One of them has to do with a reevaluation of
what constitutes educationally worthwhile knowledge (cf. Derry, 2018; Muller
and Young, 2019), in close relation with the concept of Bildung, as presented
in this chapter (Vollmer, 2021). Another one has to do with a restructuring of
the subjects or learning areas in school. In view of these complex issues, more
general subject didactics is needed: advances in subject-based education theory
as much as in empirical teaching and learning research, including design-based
research, specifically geared to individual subjects.
Whether this is just a national agenda or a European one (cf. Hudson and
Meyer, 2011, or Ligozat and Almqvist, 2018; Hordern, Muller and Deng,
2021) or whether it will even be possible to communicate and discuss these
questions worldwide with some chances of mutual understanding remains to
be seen (cf. Ligozat et al., forthcoming). The problems of different historical,
cultural, and professional traditions remain and those of translation are also
enormous (cf. Hopmann, 2007, 2015). Yet, we need precise terms for the
international exchange on the topic. ‘Subject(-matter) didactics’ is already a
compromise in translating the German term Fachdidaktik: it is an attempt to
enable a more unified exchange and scientific communication across national
borderlines, at least among those who are familiar with didactic thinking. The
use of English as a lingua franca is different from that of British or American
English: ‘Subject Didactics’ (or ‘disciplinary didactics’, as often labelled in other

European contexts) is a paraphrase for what is usually thought of differently
within many Anglo-Saxon communities, so it is not clear at all what meaning
will be associated with that term or whether a common English denomina-
tor can (ever) be found and whether or not something like a scientific theory
of teaching and learning in different content areas is jointly understood by it.
Something similar applies to other notions like ‘content’, for example, where
teachable content is normally derived in a double process of transformation,
according to the didactic framework of thinking. Even in dealing with Shul-
man’s notion of ‘Pedagogical Content Knowledge’ (PCK) there are serious
problems of translation. As much as he tries to bring content, pedagogy, and
teaching methods together in the mind of a teacher, his model does not capture
enough of the interactive nature in the planning, teaching, learning, and evalu-
ation processes along defined goals and areas of knowledge building. There
is something important missing here, at least from a subject-didactic point of
view: but how to express it in English? (cf. Vollmer and Klette, forthcoming).
It remains to be seen how we can revitalise the ‘old’ debate between ‘Dida-
ktik’ versus ‘curriculum’ from the 1990s and turn it more productively than
before (Westbury, 2000), also responding to newer developments in the large
field of didactics. Hopmann sketches some of the dramatic changes which
have taken place ever since. He argues that “the double game of curricula
and testing is far from over” and that there are more theoretical efforts needed
on both sides than ever before and even more dialogue in terms of interna-
tional exchange of experiences, if we do not want “to lose our orientation on
this rocky path” (2015, p. 20). Earlier, Siljander, Kivelä and Sutinen (2012)
have already done some important philosophical groundwork for a potential
meeting of continental European and North American minds, coming from
two different cultures and educational backgrounds – at least for one aspect
of Bildung in connection with the notion of growth and personal, individual
maturity. The other dimension of Bildung in connection with literacy, with
key competences and the needs of a modern society including economy and
employability (as used by the OECD), still has to be explained better and inte-
grated in theoretical terms, if the apparent contradictions between a humanistic
(idealistic) approach and a social scientific one and thus between inner devel-
opments and capabilitiesfor mastering outer life are to be overcome. One of
the points of reference should be the debates about PISA and the national as
well as international comparative measurement approaches triggered by it (for
Germany cf. Klieme et al., 2003, and more specifically Klieme and Hartig,
2007). The authors developed a more differentiated concept of Bildung or
competence; they argued that each subject or area of learning must create its
own competence model. For them, competence means “the ability of a person
to cope with situational requirements” (Klieme and Hartig, 2007, p. 16). What
exactly is the transformative power in that definition of competence? And does
it still reflect Bildung, even in a functional sense?14
Since our discourse seems to be so very European (as didactic thinking is

altogether), it is not easy to be properly understood in anglophone academic
cultures and vice versa. But with the new tendencies of a globalised education
taking place on both sides of the Atlantic, it is worth another try: we should
indeed go one step further towards a deeper understanding of each other this
time. In any case, the dialogue will be complex, if not complicated.
Notes
1 I gratefully acknowledge the cooperation with my colleagues Ulf Abraham, Horst
Bayrhuber, Volker Frederking, Werner Jank, and Martin Rothgangel within our project
General Subject Didactics, funded by the Association for Fachdidaktik, Germany. My con-
tribution is partly based on our joint discussions and findings.
2 We will distinguish between the notion of ‘Didaktik’ (relating specifically to the dis-
course centred around Wolfgang Klafki and his theoretical work on material and formal
Bildung or Allgemeinbildung respectively) and the English terms ‘didactics’ and ‘subject-
matter didactics’. The latter two denote the science and art of teaching and learning in
school and beyond in a general sense or in a domain-specific way, as long as teaching
is planned, goal-oriented, and systematic. ‘Didactics’ and ‘subject-matter didactics’ or
‘disciplinary didactics’ are now largely being used in Europe for cross-cultural commu-
nication and could also become acceptable to native speakers of English. This distinc-
tion coincides with the usage indicated in the introduction of Krogh, Qvortrup, and
Graf (this volume). Nevertheless, some scholars consider the term ‘pedagogy’ a possible
equivalent for ‘didactics’ in English (cf. Vollmer, forthcoming).
3 Some critics mock that didactics without subject specificity is like knitting without wool.
4 This development was analysed by M. and H. Meyer in their joint publication of 2007
(p. 155) based on their observation of an increasing absence of the didactics of Wolfgang
Klafki within the discourse of subject didactics in its different forms and communities.
5 The term ‘pedagogy’ as an academic discipline (and not only as an act of teaching) nor-
mally covers more scientific ground and addresses more issues of education than ‘didactics’,
which deals more systematically with teaching and learning or instruction in institutional
settings in a narrower sense. The latter notion does not exist within the English-speaking
world, however, and certainly not in its comprehensive meaning. In any case, pedagogy
comprises didactics and also specialised forms of teaching and learning (while many Euro-
pean scholars would rather talk about ‘subject-matter didactics’ or ‘disciplinary didactics’).
6 According to Thomas Kuhn (1962), old theories do not only die because they are
outdated or cannot be confirmed by empirical data, but because the young, emergent
researchers do not turn to them anymore – they turn to new paradigms with more
precision and explanatory power. This could happen to general didactics: there seems
to be little increase in new knowledge and understanding, instead repetition and new
summaries of the old discourse (cf. Porsch, 2016).
7 There is no space here to outline the procedures or results of his study in more detail.
8 It is striking that Scholl used the same theoretical framing and methodology for his
re-analysis of some of the important didactic models in Germany and for building his
‘Meta-Theory of General Didactics’, as did a group of subject didacticians in developing
their ‘(Meta-)Theory of Subject-Matter Didactics’, namely by comparing and identify-
ing the differences and commonalities among the existing subject didactic disciplines
and by theorising those.
9 Outside of Germany, the term ‘disciplinary didactics’ instead of ‘subject didactics’ is also
used (in France and in parts of Scandinavia as well) – the problem being that it brings the
content or knowledge to be taught at school into too close a relationship with ‘academic’
disciplines and their findings (at least in German). If the term ‘discipline’, however,
denotes the subdivisions of content structures or the different areas/domains of knowl-
edge at university and equally so in school (cf. German: Fach/pl. Fächer, Wissenschaftsfach
vs. Schulfach), both terms describing different specialised fields of teaching and learning
content in school are acceptable (Vollmer, forthcoming). In any case, scientific content
has to undergo several transformations in order to become teachable and relevant for dif-
ferent groups of learners within school subjects (cf. Schneuwly, this volume).
10 In order to prepare for this, learners have to become active participants within the
teaching-learning processes themselves.
11 The notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ in connection with curriculum studies opens a
totally new debate which cannot be dealt with here; but see Young (2008), Young and
Muller (2016), and Guile, Lambert and Reiss (2018); see also Vollmer (2021).
12 The contribution of English as L2 for a comprehensive education (Bildung) of learners
can be exemplified here. English contributes to intercultural sensitivity, to structuring
and transforming thoughts into text, to experience as a system or to analyse (subject)
discourse critically and thus to develop also the personalities. But English as a subject
also fosters the formation of relevant socio-cultural knowledge by language use: critical
capacities and skills, knowing conventions, comparing expressions and language systems,
knowing how to learn a language, etc. (Vollmer and Vogt, 2020).
13 The three research groups, ROSE (Research on Subject-specific Education), SSRG (Sub-
ject Specialism Research Group), and HuSoEd (Research Community for Humanities
and Social Sciences Education), within KOSS focus “on the ways in which knowledge
itself is transformed as it is re-contextualized at individual, institutional and societal levels.
Our long-term goal is to contribute to meeting the needs of future citizens by produc-
ing new knowledge about educational processes; this will have the potential to improve
education by supporting the development of powerful subject disciplinary knowledge in
schools” (KOSS, 2020; cf. also Gericke et al., 2018; Hudson, 2019).
14 Horlacher rightly points out that the term ‘Bildung’ has lost “none of its brilliance and
public efficacy for both defenders and critics of PISA. Defenders wish to replace Bildung
with the term competence, thus overcoming its perceived limitations as an ambiguous
and yet culturally specific term; critics wish to restore the classical concept of Bildung”
(2016, pp. 125–126). Both resort to the notion when it comes to discussing normative
guidelines and perspectives.
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Chapter 8
‘Didactiques’ is not (entirely)

‘Didaktik’
The origin and atmosphere of
a recent academic field
Bernard Schneuwly
Switzerland, as many know, is a multicultural country where different languages

and cultures coexist and meet. And so, also, do the francophone and germano-
phone cultures of ‘didactique/Didaktik’. At encounters where researchers of both
communities interact – and they have to do so in order to develop the academic
field of ‘Fachdidaktik/didactique disciplinaire’ on a national level – it is immedi-
ately noticeable that their main research interests do not coincide. ‘Competence’
and ‘competence models’, for instance, are at the core of German-speaking col-
leagues but a topic almost absent on the French-speaking side. Thorough analysis
of what happens in ordinary classes with the taught contents is a common topic
in the ‘didactique’ of Suisse romande, whereas reform and intervention in order
to transform school practice is much more of a preoccupation of the ‘Didaktik’ in
the Deutschschweiz.1 This difference is linked to the fact that both sides refer to
their respective francophone and germanophone communities and are also part
of two wider scientific cultures.2 Taking this difference as its point of departure,
the present contribution tries to shed a little light on the francophone community
and scientific culture in ‘didactique disciplinaire’.
As can be seen, the preceding paragraph and the title of this chapter make
use in part of French (and German) expressions: indeed, ‘didactics’, as one
knows, is a plurale tantum and as such cannot express the fact that there is a
scientific field ‘didactique’ which itself contains, for instance, ‘la didactique du
français’ (French didactics, in the singular) and many others, too, namely ‘les
didactiques disciplinaires’ (disciplinary didactics, in the plural).3 In addition to
this, the word ‘disciplinaire’ refers to ‘school subjects’, that is, to ways of organ-
ising knowledge4 in order to make it teachable. These preliminary remarks
show that there are cultural differences in the ways of thinking about school,
knowledge, teaching, and learning through teaching5 that are crystallised in
different languages. In a certain sense, the mere fact of writing in English
sets limits on the possibility of transmitting what ‘didactiques disciplinaires’ –
henceforth the expression ‘disciplinary didactics’ will be used – in francophone
countries might mean. The more so as the francophone scientific community
working in this domain is quite important and has been producing knowledge
for some 50 years and in consequence of numerous different orientations.6
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-9
‘Didactiques’ is not (entirely) ‘Didaktik’ 165
Although there is no ‘école francophone’, no ‘French school’ in disciplinary

didactics, it is nonetheless possible to describe something like an ‘atmosphere’,
a common feeling that allows researchers to communicate across school disci-
plines and tendencies. This is because common concepts exist to which most of
them refer in one way or another. One reason for this is, in turn, that the origins
of many francophone disciplinary didactics have something in common. This
text begins therefore with some of the characteristics of these origins that allow
us to understand some dimensions of the particular atmosphere. In so doing, it
contributes to the discussion in the present volume in a specific way. Its central
aim is to shed some light on what ‘didactique’ can mean – on a way of thinking
about this domain which differs for historical and cultural reasons from ‘Didak-
tik’, one of the two central concepts of the dialogue analysed in the volume.
‘Didaktik’ is one educational tradition of didactics; ‘didactique’ is another, with
other roots, other cultural references, other histories. Becoming aware of these
traditions does indeed give the “chance of becoming aware of ourselves as his-
torical and cultural constructions” (Tröhler, 2014, p. 65). To put it in another
way: the dichotomy to which the phrase ‘Didaktik and curriculum’ points has
as its background an antithesis between continental European and Anglo-Saxon
traditions. This is the way the discussion has been led up till now; but this
dichotomy has to be specified. One way to do this is to integrate ‘didactiques
disciplinaires’ and their specific context, linked also to an educational tradition
which differs from (yet at the same time is similar to) the German and, more
generally, the north and central European one and its important reference to
Bildung. In the first part of my chapter, I will describe some elements that
explain how and why ‘didactiques disciplinaires’ emerged in French-speaking
countries, and what is their background. This is a way of contributing to the
dialogue between Didaktik – in a new and larger sense – and curriculum,7 which
forms the topic of the present volume.
In the second section of my chapter, I will present what I have called ‘atmo-
sphere’. What does it mean to describe an ‘atmosphere’ in a scientific field?
Giving answers to questions like the following allow us to characterise an
atmosphere in a scientific community, in an ‘academic tribe’ as Becher (1989)
calls it. What kind of questions do researchers ask, mostly? What are the most
common interests? Which notions and concepts do they use regularly? What
kind of contradictory debates draw people in? In order to give elements of
answers to these questions on a more specific level, I have drawn on two jour-
nals dedicated to (disciplinary) didactics in general, Éducation et didactique and
Recherches en didactique, the synthetic presentations of particular didactic disci-
plines mentioned in note 6, descriptions of various didactic domains collected
in the collective volume entitled Les didactiques en questions: état des lieux et per-
spectives pour la recherché et la formation (Didactics in question: state of the art and
perspectives for research and training; Elalouf et al., 2012) and the Dictionnaire
des concepts fondamentaux des didactiques (Dictionary of the fundamental concepts
of didactics; Reuter et al., 2013).
166 Bernard Schneuwly
‘Didactiques disciplinaires’: origin and background
The driving forces of a new academic field

Two driving forces contributed to the development of disciplinary didactics (see
Hofstetter and Schneuwly, 2014). The first one was the tertiarisation of teacher
education: on the one hand, the education of primary school teachers was
systematically transferred from normal schools to higher education institutions;
on the other, the professional dimension of secondary school teacher education
was taken over by universities or, if already governed in that institution, greatly
strengthened. What does ‘higher education’ or ‘university education’ mean?
Two elements are essential: the systematic articulation between research and
education, and a deeper articulation of education and practice. In the teaching
profession, knowledge (in the broad sense defined earlier) that is to be trans-
mitted from one generation to the next is at the heart of its practice. Since the
linking of research and education is one specificity of university education, it
was necessary to develop a disciplinary field that was centrally concerned with
the processes of the dissemination and transmission of knowledge in schools and
other institutions, namely disciplinary didactics. In many European countries,
this field was indeed developing in direct connection with the construction of
teacher education institutions located at the tertiary level. This was the first
driving force behind the development of disciplinary didactics.
The second driving force is an indirect effect of what we may term the ‘mas-
sification of secondary education’, which was an essential feature of the trans-
formation of school systems in many countries from the late 1950s onwards
(see e.g. Kamens and Benavot, 2007). In accordance with variable rhythms and
forms, more and more students – often, all of them – are following so-called
secondary studies, with a more marked organisation into disciplines and teach-
ers trained as secondary teachers. This implied, and was accompanied by, a
profound reconfiguration of all curricula.
Francophone disciplinary didactics – and this may be a distinctive feature
that explains the particularities of the field in the context of the more general
educational dimensions that we explain later – have their origin also in this
process of transformation: that is, in the analysis of the inadequacy and the
partial failure of curricular reforms as an effect of two illusions (Johsua and
Dupin, 1993). The first of these, the lyrical illusion, arose from the fact that in
the reference disciplines of school, new theoretical approaches were devel-
oped which explain complex phenomena starting from relatively simple basic
assumptions. Precisely because these are relatively simple – although abstract –
and because they were regarded as the first, genetically primitive elements of
logical developments that can explain complex phenomena, these seemed to
be ideal objects for introducing students to, for instance, grammar or math-
ematics. A pre-established harmony between the construction of scientific
knowledge and the ways of its acquisition was postulated. The romantic illusion
was Rousseauism, which sees development as a natural process and one that
education and training can only accelerate or slow down. According to this
approach, knowledge of the child’s spontaneous development (which is elabo-
rated by psychology) allows the possibilities and limits of teaching to be deter-
mined. Education as such, conveying concrete cultural content to the child, has
little influence on development. In this context, didactics called into question
the traditional dependence of pedagogy and educational science on psychol-
ogy. The development of disciplinary didactics was based, among other things,
on the postulate that the relationship between teaching and development must
become the object of research, with teaching being regarded as an element
determining development. It is from this point of view that certain questions
can be asked about, for instance, the development of formal concepts, or about
complex cultural techniques such as reading and writing, which are difficult to
address in the paradigms of spontaneous development.
‘Didactique’: a term for combatting

The attempt to overcome both lyrical and romantic illusions is concretised
in didactic research approaches. These differ from discipline to discipline, but
common basic assumptions can nevertheless be recorded for most of them
(Raisky and Caillot, 1996). It is assumed that the didactic system, with its
three poles – students, with their knowledge and skills; content that is to teach
and to be learned (savoirs), their history, and their place in the system of the
school disciplines; and teachers, with their historically grounded practice, ideas,
and gestures – is the central object of research. In disciplinary didactics, the
savoirs – ‘knowledges’ in the sense defined earlier, the objects of teaching – are
of central importance. This is so not in the sense of ‘dead’ objects taken directly
from academic disciplines, nor objects that are appropriated as such by stu-
dents, but objects that are constantly renegotiated in the interaction between
object, student, and teacher. The analysis and criticism of curriculum reform
and the transformation of content linked to changes in the school system were
thus the starting point for the constitution of disciplinary didactics as academic
disciplines. Examples include ‘modern mathematics’ (Brun, 1996; Margoli-
nas, 2005; Dorier, 2008), the ‘communicative turn’ in first- (Bronckart, 1985;
Chiss, David and Reuter, 1995) and second-language teaching (Coste, 1994),
the ‘dominance of the humanistic model’ in arts education (Gaillot, 1997; Mili
and Rickenmann, 2005), and ‘sportivisation’ in sports education (Amade-Escot
and Marsenach, 1995). Here, it is not so much the reforms as such as the limits
they encounter, even the failures they suffer, that impose new forms of reflec-
tion on contents. To put it in Margolinas’ words:
One of the originalities of the French research paradigm in mathemat-

ics didactics [and this is true also for other disciplinary didactics] is that it
takes basic research seriously, and not directly the success of students. It is a
question of seeking conditions that in theory allow students’ knowledge to

evolve and not only that actually improve teaching.
(2005, p. 345; my translation)
Disciplinary didactics is a descriptive and explanatory science. The existence

of a strong tendency to this kind of approach, besides of course a didactic of
intervention tending to promote reforms and innovation, is a central aspect of
francophone disciplinary didactics as academic disciplines. And even didactic
engineering is very often understood not primarily as a means of changing
teaching practice but as a basis for experimental research into the conditions of
teaching and learning.8
In a certain sense, in francophone countries the word ‘didactics’ was invested
as a term for combatting, as a combat term, exactly as did Rathke and Come-
nius, the inventors of the Latin ‘didactica’, who used it in their combat against
feudalism through education for all (Schneuwly, 1990). This was possible for
at least two reasons. First, the word ‘didactique’ was not really used in the
discourse of educational sciences and could therefore be used freely. Almost
absent in France, it was used in the écoles normales of Belgium or Switzerland
in the context of the education of future teachers in methods of teaching.
‘General didactics’ did not exist as an elaborated theory as it did in Germany
(Schneuwly, 2018a). Scientific approaches to the teaching of subject matters
were generally called ‘psychopédagogie’: the ‘psychopédagogie des mathéma-
tiques’, for instance, heavily involved in the modern mathematics reform men-
tioned earlier and influenced also by Piaget (Brun, 1996). From a scientific
point of view, the term ‘didactique’ was at disposal: it was clearly different from
‘pedagogy’ but nonetheless usable in the context of the educational sciences
where disciplinary didactics as academic field was often institutionalised. The
second reason was that ‘didactique’ – unlike ‘Didaktik’ – was not dominated
by the reference sciences; it did not develop in the context of – and generally
in dependence upon – physics, history, or linguistics. Psychologists and educa-
tionalists too could become didacticians: among the most famous didacticians
were, for instance, Gérard Vergnaud in mathematics, a psychologist formed
by Piaget, or Frank Marchand, primary teacher and later director of an école
normale, in French as mother tongue. This also meant that research in didactics
included all school levels, without any distinction.
Disciplinary didactics can be seen as the construction of a generation formed
after 1968 in the social movements of the 1970s. They were often political
militants, teachers in primary and secondary schools involved in school reforms;
many of them belonged to the communist party (they quite rapidly quit). They
had to find their way between three dominant poles in the educational debate.
The ‘instrumentalist’ pole (Young, 2008) became dominant in the official dis-
courses, but also, in attenuated form and for other purposes, in progressive con-
ceptions of education. Education here was conceived of as being closely linked
to everyday knowledge, knowledge of action and experience. Epistemologically,
this conception of knowledge is commonly based on a (socio-)constructivist,

even post-modernist vision of knowledge which makes it dependent on action
and experience, on the needs and interests of each individual. The possibility of
knowing, and therefore the objectivity of knowledge or even its claim to truth,
is thus relativised. The instrumentalist vision is sometimes accompanied by a
differentialist, even individualistic, vision of the acquisition of knowledge, with
each person ultimately constructing knowledge according to his or her own
needs and path. The individual thus becomes responsible for his or her own
training, for better or for worse. The second, ‘neoconservative’ pole – its defend-
ers in France often call themselves ‘républicains’ – under the guise of defend-
ing knowledge, supports an immutable and objectively elitist form of it. Here
knowledge is conceived of as given once and for all and defined essentially by
tradition, insensitive to any change in the social context. Knowing and knowing
how to teach are one and the same: the problem of transforming knowledge to
make it teachable does not exist; and its ‘elementation’ is conceived as a simple
mechanical procedure that at the same time defines a linear progression in a
transmissive teaching that appeals above all to the teacher’s charisma. Although
the approach is not differentialist, the individual is, again, primarily responsible
for his or her learning process. In such a conception, professional knowledge
about school, social determinants of learning, about pedagogy is useless. The
third pole, close to the first one but acting on the level of the school system,
aims to control its output through the concept of competence. In the French-
speaking area, ‘compétence’ was criticised by many researchers in didactics from
the very beginning of its use in schools; it is understood as the school’s orienta-
tion towards the market and economy. Researchers analyse the international tri-
umph of the term as explained by three processes: the marketing of the school,
the development of psychometrics, and new types of management.9 Ultimately,
this approach is about the possibility of measuring the output of the school
system. This is made possible and strengthened by the concept of competence,
but it also includes control of the teacher’s actions from outside, and therefore
ultimately a weakening of the teaching profession.
These three poles come together in a vision that reifies the knowledge that is
to be taught. Everything happens as if this knowledge should represent knowl-
edge as such, both in everyday life and in science and tradition, without the
need for didactic transposition: without, that is, the transformation of knowl-
edge for teaching and through teaching, and through learning on the basis of
teaching. These questions are at the core of disciplinary didactics: how does
knowledge – ‘savoirs’ – become teachable and learnable through teaching?
How is it taught and learned through teaching?
Instruction and the central place of the ‘savoirs’

It is most probable that this way of thinking about education is deeply rooted in
a deeper layer of educational tradition. This tradition, insisting heavily on what
in French is called ‘instruction’, is embedded in the thinking about education

and the particular relationship to school.10 Once again, the word ‘instruction’
has a very different meaning than in English: more generally, ‘instruction’ in
French means the transmission of ‘savoirs’, knowledge and know-how, the
acquisition of which enables the ability of free judgement with regard to all
knowledge and also to all laws and constitutions. It is in this way that people
can participate in the culture of which knowledge is both expression and motor
(Hameline, 1999). The decisive point here is that public education must be
limited to ‘instruction’: that is, to the imparting of knowledge and know-how.
One cannot help but relate this concept of ‘instruction’ to Humboldt’s con-
cept of ‘Bildung’, elaborated at exactly the same time, in 1791, as Condorcet’s
‘instruction’ (Schneuwly, 2018b). Of course, the concepts have been funda-
mentally transformed through history (Horlacher, 2016; Hameline, 1999). But
they continue to influence the way education is conceived of and to give an
insight into fundamental differences. The conceptions of Humboldt and Con-
dorcet pursue similar goals but are fundamentally different. What they have in
common is the right for everyone to embrace as much knowledge and abil-
ity as possible, and thus make democracy and freedom possible for everyone.
But Humboldt’s starting point and point of view is the developing person;
Condorcet’s, the knowledge of the ‘citoyen’ that is necessary for democracy
and society. Humboldt speaks of mind, whereas Condorcet is concerned with
‘raison’ (reason/understanding). School is rather an ‘adjuvant’ for the first, the
decisive condition for democracy for the second.
In combating for the centrality of knowledge, ‘savoirs’, in thinking about
school, didacticians continue to think in the tradition of Condorcet. But con-
trary to the concept of diffusing knowledge from top down, which is implic-
itly Condorcet’s approach – a necessity during the French Revolution that he
justifies by his theorising of democracy, with its mathematical foundation of
voting – the didacticians’ grassroots origin let them adopt a bottom-up strategy,
with the teaching profession as central lever. One could even say that disciplin-
ary didactics originated as a sort of social movement before it ever acquired the
emblems of an academic discipline.
***
But then: how were these academic disciplines – the ‘didactiques disciplinaires’ –
constructed? There is no doubt that mathematics didactics, the first to be insti-
tutionalised with a specialised scientific society and an academic journal at the
beginning of the 1970s, played the role of forerunner and produced strong,
coherent theories whose concepts then spread among other disciplinary didac-
tics. Among these, one was Brousseau’s theory of didactic situations, with con-
cepts like (didactic) milieu and didactic contract (2006); another, Chevallard’s
theory of anthropological didactics (heavily influenced, by the way, by Althuss-
er’s theory of ideology), with concepts including the didactic system, the noö-
sphere, meso-, topo- and chronogenesis and, above all, didactic transposition
(Chevallard and Sensevy, 2014). These concepts will be discussed in more detail
later in the chapter. In other disciplinary didactics, such concepts as epistemic
obstacle (in the natural sciences) or double semiosis (in French first-language
didactics) were introduced. All these concepts are generic and can be used in dif-
ferent disciplinary didactics, with specific meanings depending of the specificity
of each disciplinary didactics. This is the landscape in which a common didactic
atmosphere can coalesce, superseding all essential differences. In order to give an
idea of the research done in francophone disciplinary didactics – to give an idea
of this ‘atmosphere’ – two central concepts used by most researchers at one or at
another moment, will serve as guides: didactic transposition and didactic system.
The conceptual atmosphere of French

disciplinary didactics
Didactic transposition and didactic system

The concept of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1985) played an essential role
in the theoretical constitution of the discipline ‘disciplinary didactics’ because
of its claim of autonomy. Here is one of many definitions:
The transition from knowledge regarded as a tool to be put to use, to

knowledge as something to be taught and learned, is precisely what I have
termed the didactic transposition of knowledge.
(Chevallard, 1989, p. 58)
Useful knowledge – knowledge that is to be used in various situations of

research and of action – constitutes a point of reference, a starting point for the
knowledge to be taught. This latter includes scientific knowledge in the con-
text of its use in research practice but also expert knowledge in various social
practices such as writing, music, or technology, for example. In institutions
which specialise in education and teaching, this scholarly or expert knowledge
first becomes knowledge to be taught and learned, then becomes taught and,
hopefully, learned knowledge. Through this change in institutional location,
its meaning changes deeply: from knowledge to be used in various contexts,
it becomes objects to be taught and learned. This ‘transposition’ transforms it
fundamentally, necessarily, irremediably – not at all in the sense of a simplifi-
cation (a spontaneous, habitual conception of this transformation adopted by
many researchers) but in the sense of a reconstruction, a rebuilding of knowl-
edge11 in order to achieve other goals: to allow its appropriation by students,
which has as its aim the deep change of the ways in which individuals think,
speak, and act. The process of didactic transposition can be represented by a
small diagram (see Figure 8.1).
As stated already, it is not just scientific knowledge that is transposed but also
social practices of reference (Martinand, 1986). Education systems mediate and
Knowledge in use (scholarly knowledge,

expert knowledge,
social reference practices)
transpositation
Co-determinants (among them

External
didactic
Educational
educational systems)
systems
Knowledge to teach
transpositation
didactic
Internal
Didactic
system
Taught knowledge
Figure 8.1 Schema of didactic transposition
transform knowledge through the intervention of multiple actors – teachers,

pedagogues, didacticians, educationalists, members of the administration, rep-
resentatives of the political sphere – generally speaking, what Chevallard calls,
somewhat ironically, the ‘noösphere’, the sphere that thinks. These actors have
divergent, sometimes contradictory interests. For the school discipline ‘eco-
nomics’, for instance, some of these actors wish to define knowledge so as to
build good consumers, whereas others wish to train critical citizens for whom
some possibility of distance from consumption is possible (see Beitone et al.,
2013). The construction of knowledge to be taught constitutes the first level of
the didactic transposition: the external transposition.
What happens with the knowledge in this external didactic transposition?
Three processes are particularly important, theorised in numerous studies in
different disciplines (for instance natural sciences in Marty, 2019; earth sciences
in Roubaud and Dupin, 2003; French as first language in Bronckart and Plaza-
ola Giger, 1998; sports education in Lenzen and Cordoba, 2016; social and
economic sciences in Beitone et al., 2013; visual arts in Fabre, 2015):
• Desyncretisation: knowledge is cut off from its original use, and this trans-
forms its meaning for students and teachers.
• Programmability: objects of teaching are ‘elementarised’, cut into signifi-
cant elementary units and organised in a progressive sequence; they are
‘didactically modelled’, fundamentally reconfigured to become teachable.
• Publicity: the objects of teaching are made explicit and public, and become
a contract between teacher and learner.
The second level of didactic transposition is internal. It is the process through

which the objects to be taught – which are the product of the external
transposition that materialises in ‘programmes d’études’ (study programmes,

Lehrpläne), in textbooks, but also in the professional journals and the discourses
of the teaching profession – enter the classroom and become the object taught
through the interaction of the three poles of the didactic system: knowledge
and know-how, students, teachers. This is another constitutive concept of dis-
ciplinary didactics:
To posit the existence of a ternary didactic system, as opposed to the dual

model of pedagogy and educational psychology, seems to me to be one of
the founding acts of disciplinary didactics.
(Schubauer-Leoni, 1998, p. 274, my translation)
In the didactic system, the objects of teaching are continually negotiated as

teaching and learning progresses: teachers propose an object to be learned, stu-
dents resist it, do not immediately understand it, interpret it, often add unex-
pected dimensions. All this has the efect that the object to be taught evolves:
it becomes the object really taught in a classroom, a progressively changing one.
And it is this process whose theorisation, description, and explanation consti-
tutes a central object of research in francophone didactic, as we will see.
As Figure 8.1 also shows, the didactic transposition, mediatised at the exter-
nal level by the educational systems and at the internal level by the didactic
system, is moreover subject to multiple co-determinations: by the school disci-
pline, by pedagogical theories, by the given society as a whole.
The (historical) analysis of the objects to be taught

as products of multiple determinations (external didactic
transposition)
An important object of francophone didactics is indeed the (historical) analysis
of the objects to be taught as products of multiple determinations: that is, of the
external didactic transposition.
A small example of analysis can illustrate the ways of thinking in the context
of the theory of external didactic transposition. A well-known text by Vol-
taire, originally entitled “De l’horrible danger de la lecture” (On the Horrible
Danger of Reading), in the textbook became “Le palais de la stupidité” (The
Palace of Stupidity): an astonishing transformation, one has to understand. The
page includes a series of typical textbook features. The numbering of lines, for
example, is used to interpret and explain texts in class by referring to specific
passages. At the top of the page, there is a general title, “Arguing with Irony”:
obviously, this gives both page and text a general orientation. One could con-
tinue the analysis of the characteristics of this external didactic transposition,
that is, the passage of a reference text that is a great classic and plays an impor-
tant role in literary studies and in literary criticism, perhaps even in everyday
practice, to an object to teach in a textbook (for more details, see Aeby Daghé
and Schneuwly, 2012). The analysis of the external transposition can be done
on three levels (a common approach in didactics): at the micro-level (for exam-
ple, numbering and its rationale), at the meso-level (for example, the place of
the page within a textbook, its function in the teaching of literature, and the
uses that can be made of it in the didactic system), and on the macro-level of
the meaning of the page according to the co-determinants (the discipline, the
social purposes of literature, the place of literature in society). Figure 8.2 is a
schematic representation of such an analysis.
It can be shown that this text is the result of the superimposition of two oppo-
site teaching paradigms: two different historical paradigms of teaching literature
appear in one and the same book, on the same page. On the one hand, one finds
the teaching of hermeneutic reading called ‘explication de texte’, with which
all French-speakers who have studied in the lycée in France or in the gymnase
in Switzerland are familiar. On the other hand, another paradigm of teaching is
superimposed, namely communicative reading oriented towards argumentative
processes. A pursuit of the macro analysis in detail could demonstrate that the
hermeneutic reading is part of the struggle against the dominance of rhetoric
in the nineteenth century. It is an essential aspect of the emergence of literature
as a social field in the course of the nineteenth century, as Bourdieu (1992), for
example, shows. The other teaching paradigm can be interpreted as the reap-
pearance of rhetoric as part of the transformation of the school discipline French
in the 1970s: the dominance of communicative approaches. But the appearance
of a new paradigm, as always in human practices, does not make a clean sweep
of the other: it superimposes itself upon it. Practices are thus the product of sedi-
mentation processes (Ronveaux and Schneuwly, 2018), new layers being added
(LITERATURE), DISCIPLINE (FRENCH), EDUCATIONAL
CO-DETERMINANTS: DISCIPLINARY DOMAIN
- Literature as a new - Communicative

SYSTEM AT HISTORICAL MOMENTS
social field approaches as new paradigm

- Explication de texte as of the school discipline
new school exercice of the “French”
discipline “French” (end of - Renaissance of rhetoric
19th century) - Argumentative analysis as
- Battle against rhetoric part of the school discipline
Communicative reading
Hermeneutic reading
oriented towards
of explication de texte
argumentative procedures
PROCESS OF SEDIMENTATION OF PRACTICES
Figure 8.2 Analysis of the didactic transposition: a text by Voltaire and its co-determinants
on top of old ones while mixing with them in a thousand ways. The analysis
of the external transposition of Voltaire’s text is an example of the presence of
different historical layers of teaching practices in the same synchronic moment.
The analysis of the functioning of the didactic system:

one of the central tasks of didactics (internal didactic
transposition)
The analysis and modelling of the actual functioning of didactic systems is another
central area of francophone disciplinary didactics: bits of lessons, a whole lesson,
sequences of lessons, but also lessons by teachers over a whole year are observed,
described, and analysed. The approaches are essentially comparative in nature:
different school levels, contrasting teaching objects, varied school disciplines,
different countries and/or cultures, and so on are subject to the analysis. Before
offering some examples, here by way of illustration in a list of a series of concepts
used to analyse the functioning of the didactic system from the point of view
of the three poles that make it up (see Figure 8.3). It is of course not possible
to explain all these concepts here: the Dictionnaire des concepts fondamentaux des
didactiques (Cohen-Azria et al., 2007) can provide an overview, albeit limited.
It is important to stress that in fact each concept always implies all three
poles. But one can – albeit artificially – determine a major point of view that
each concept privileges, the didactic contract being the central linking ele-
ment. During a session whose purpose is to teach students a specific content
knowledge (a didactic situation), the student interprets the situation presented
to him/her. The didactic contract is the rule for decoding the didactic activity
The didactic system

as object of research
DOMINANT POINT OF VIEW: DOMINANT POINT OF DOMINANT POINT OF

OBJECT OF TEACHING VIEW: VIEW: STUDENTS
TEACHER
• Topogenesis Defining a milieu Consciousness of
Mesogenesis Devolution of task school discipline
Chronogenesis Regulation of Obstacles
Double semiosis students’ actions Disciplination
… Institutionalization Relationship to
Creation of (school) knowledge
didactic memory …
…
Didactic contract
Figure 8.3 Concepts for analysing the functioning of the didactic system
through which school learning takes place. The usual and specific uses of the
objects present in the task – the didactic contract – guide the students’ interpre-
tation of what is to be done in the situation. The didactic contract is an evolv-
ing interpretative framework that allows for the negotiation of the meaning of
objects of teaching by students and teacher.
From the point of view of the object of teaching, the concept of double
semiosis defines the object of teaching: it sheds light, on the one hand, on
how the teacher introduces an object as being the one of the common work to
come, how she/he makes it present, ‘presentifies’ it – a semiotic act; and on the
other, it elucidates how she/he comments, describes, stresses one or another
aspect of the object for the students – another semiotic act. The three geneses
allow understanding of how the object of teaching evolves in function of time,
milieu, and the relationship between students and teacher. From the point
of view of the teacher, the researcher’s attention can be oriented towards the
didactic milieu in which the teacher places the students to act, or to the modes
of regulation of their action, or to the fact that the teacher gives the students
the responsibility for learning (devolution), that she/he institutionalises knowl-
edge and creates memory about it. From the point of view of the students,
we can, for example, analyse how they are ‘disciplined’, that is, how they can
appropriate the disciplinary tools (concepts, ways of speaking, diagrams, maps,
etc.) in order to learn to act, speak, and think according to the modalities of
the school discipline into which they are gradually introduced; but we can also
look at the epistemic obstacles of the objects of teaching, or the students’ con-
sciousness of the school discipline in which they are involved, something that
heavily influences their relationship to the disciplinary knowledge.
In order to give a more concrete sense of the work that can be done with
these concepts, I draw on their definition and global use in three doctoral
theses to shed some light on the atmosphere of didactic working. The theses
were chosen in order to illustrate each point of view through one concept and
through the analysis of contrasted disciplines.
The first thesis illustrates chrono-, topo-, and mesogenesis as a productive
triplet. How do teachers teach the reception of musical oeuvres, for instance
Smetana’s Moldau, with ten-year-old students (Maizières, 2016)? The knowledge
‘to be taught’ – the oeuvre to be studied – is chosen and presented by the teacher,
but the ‘taught’ and ‘learned’ knowledge is co-constructed during didactic inter-
actions. However, on the students’ side, we can only observe the signs they show,
notably the words they express about the work; this expression is guided in a
milieu strongly organised by the teacher. Thus, the analysis of verbal interactions
will focus more particularly on the three geneses: the milieu (‘mesogenesis’ –
mesos = milieu), the didactic time (‘chronogenesis’), and the places and
responsibilities of each person (‘topogenesis’). In the didactic process, the objects
of teaching and their organisation form a milieu. The mesogenesis describes
the process by which the teacher and students organise or reorganise the milieu
through the changing knowledge itself. The didactic process is characterised by
constantly evolving knowledge. Chronogenesis refers to the temporal advance-

ment of knowledge in the didactic system. The didactic process involves actors
whose positions are not equivalent. Topogenesis makes it possible to consider the
distribution of epistemic responsibilities between teacher and students in didactic
transactions. There is a close relationship between these three dynamics, which
‘evolve together’ in the didactic situation. The analysis of these geneses makes it
possible to answer the question of who is supposed to participate and when and
how in the construction of the knowledge of the work being studied. This has to
do with the programme, its organisation, and the characteristic elements relating
to the musical theme and the parameters of the sound (duration, pitch, intensity,
timbre), basing the analysis mainly on the images evoked by the music through
the contrasts of nuance, orchestration, and tempo. The analysis also enables the
description and understanding of the place of each of the actors in the emergence
and co-construction of the knowledge related to this work.
The second thesis analyses the creation of didactic memory in showing that
it makes contents institutionally visible. How do teachers create a didactic
memory when they teach mathematics in secondary school (Araya-Chacón,
2008)? Didactic memory is the collective memory of the knowledge that has
been constructed and is common to the group; it is to a large degree controlled
by the teacher in order to progress in the construction of new knowledge.
Recall, the explicit evocation of a ‘didactic memory’, is a particularly impor-
tant form of creation of didactic memory. It is the teacher who embodies the
didactic memory and who asks students to explicitly call upon their memory
of certain events of formerly mobilised knowledge in order to study a new
problem, these events being part of the official memory of the class. Recall
is an essential modality ensuring ‘institutional visibility’. When knowledge
is recalled, its institutional visibility is increased. The main form of didactic
memory is ostensive memory, deliberately constructed by appropriate means
by an institution or individual. In her thesis, Araya-Chacón distinguishes sev-
eral types of gestures that ensure didactic memory and its management. Some
are oriented towards the recall of technical contents and notions; others are
intended to move students into previous positions in the course of the teaching
sequence by allowing them to remember ways of doing something they already
know; yet others have the function, in the course of the teaching sequence,
of placing an object of knowledge on other levels and in other perspectives
of what has been learned. Didactic memory plays an essential role in distin-
guishing between what is worth remembering and what can be forgotten, or
simply ignored. In this respect, it fits in perfectly with Halbwachs’ anthropo-
logical conception (quoted by Araya-Chacón), which consists in approaching
the capacity for individual memorisation by reintegrating it into a collective
point of view, here constructed in the classroom, itself manifesting the school
institution’s valuation of knowledge worthy of being memorised.
The third thesis studies the relationship of student to school knowledge, an
essential dimension for teaching and learning. The circulation system of the
blood is quite commonly taught in primary school: how does the relationship
of students towards knowledge, more particularly towards the knowledge of the
‘vivid’, influence teaching and how is it transformed by it (Pautal, 2012, 2015)?
Every individual has a certain (dominant) relationship with knowledge (i.e. with
the very question of knowing) and may have different relationships with different
types of knowledge. This perspective is essential for didacticians whose preoc-
cupations are centred on the transmission of disciplinary knowledge. Learning
knowledge relating to the circulation system can, for instance, be strongly influ-
enced by the relationship with knowledge of the lived experience of the students
concerned. Can the way in which knowledge progresses as activities take place
in the classroom (chronogenesis), the way in which the actors take hold of this
knowledge in order to make it progress (topogenesis), the possible transforma-
tion of the environment of shared meaning (mesogenesis) be better understood
by being observed and analysed from the angle of the relationship to knowledge?
Applying such concepts to the analysis, the type of relationship that students have
with the knowledge in life science, for instance to that relating in particular to
the circulation system, makes it possible to explain how they seek to take over
and exploit the didactic milieu according to their concerns, and in turn why the
advancement of knowledge in the classroom progresses – or not.
Conclusion
The main aim of the present chapter was to elucidate the dichotomy between
Didaktik and curriculum. Didactics as an academic discipline is indeed a con-
tinental European phenomenon; professorial chairs in the curriculum are, as
Tröhler (2014) states, very rare. This probably has to do with the conjunc-
tion of many factors – including the status of teachers, teacher education, the
governance of schools and their relationship to the state, the way Lehrpläne or
‘plans d’études’ are elaborated and validated, and many others. But the feature
they have in common – namely that didactics is the main reference science
(with educational sciences) in the professional part of teacher education in the
whole of continental Europe – should not hide the fact that what is apparently
the same name, ‘Didaktik/didactique’, does not designate the same reality. As I
have shown, the origin, the raison d’être, the positioning of francophone disci-
plinary didactics is quite specific (and, by the way, besides many Latin countries
in Europe, also influences Quebec and Latin America). It can be described as
the result of a constant combat12 against the lyric and romantic illusions that
still dominate in curriculum reform. It has itself resulted in a critical attitude
towards the notions of competence and individualistic approaches to teaching
and learning and towards dominant poles in the educational discourse, includ-
ing constructivist education, neoconservative elitism, and neoliberal control of
output. The background of this orientation is the political origin of the pio-
neers of disciplinary didactics, and a general educational background that can
probably be traced back to the concept of ‘instruction’ in Condorcet.
This does not at all lead to a homogenous school of thinking in francophone

disciplinary didactics, to a united scientific community. On the contrary, dif-
ferent theoretical approaches are competing with each other, here as in any
disciplinary field. But one can nonetheless distinguish some features that are
common and characterise francophone didactics compared to others, in the
sense that there is an attraction to ways of doing research, asking questions,
using concepts that are oriented towards how the didactic system functions
more than towards how it can be transformed. An original theoretical appara-
tus is under construction that transcends the single disciplinary didactics and
makes possible the development of original empirical research guided by con-
ceptual tools. Didactics as scientific research, as science, develops first of all as
a multitude of didactics, from and around school disciplines. This construction
of plural didactics, and also the fact that these are mainly based on teacher edu-
cation and their institutions, calls, by their very movement and by the reflection
that accompanies it, timidly, and with difficulty, in various forms for a more
general science whose purpose is to analyse, describe, and understand the dis-
semination of knowledge in institutions specialised for this purpose: disciplin-
ary didactics as an academic field. The constitution of this science requires, as
does any science, a general reflection by each researcher on the generality of his
conceptual and methodological tools. There is a need, in other words, for what
could be called ‘general (disciplinary) didactics’.13
Notes
1 An analysis of the bilingual special issues on didactics of the Schweizerische Zeitschrift für
Bildungswissenschaften/Revue suisse des sciences de l’éducation [Swiss Journal of Educational
Sciences] confirms these tendencies (see for instance no. 12, 1990; no. 13, 1991; no.
27, 2005; no. 38, 2016; see also the analysis of all papers on didactics between 2000 and
2020: Aeby Daghé and Schneuwly, in press).
2 Keiner and Schriewer (2000) show similar differences between educational sciences:
‘sciences de l’éducation’ on one side and ‘Erziehungswissenschaft’ on the other; more
generally, Charle, Schriewer and Wagner (2004).
3 On the dialectic between the ‘didactique’, singular, as an academic field in construction
and the construction of several ‘didactiques’ for different school subjects leading to a more
or less unified scientific field, see Dorier, Leutenegger and Schneuwly (2013), where one
can also find a general history of francophone ‘didactiques disciplinaires’. A contradictory
debate on this question is documented in Ligozat, Coquidé and Sensevy (2014).
4 ‘Knowledge’ in the large sense of what Comenius termed scire, which includes, in his
own words, ‘Wissen’ [knowledge] and ‘Können’ [knowhow] (1648/2005, p. 159).
5 Teaching and learning through teaching is, by the way, the double meaning of the
ancient Greek word διδάσκειν [didáskein], which is the root of ‘didactics’.
6 There are at least ten different francophone research associations in disciplinary
didactics and about 15 journals; the first one in ‘didactique des mathématiques’ was
founded in 1973, two others in ‘didactique du français’ about at the same time.
Hundreds of books and theses were produced. Some syntheses exist, for example, for
natural sciences (Astolfi and Develay, 2005), French (Simard et al., 2019), social and
economic sciences (Legardez, 2001), and life and earth sciences (Orange-Ravachol,
2012).
7 In francophone countries, the concept ‘curriculum’ is almost absent, in the same way as
Horlacher (2018) shows for German-speaking countries: ‘plans d’études’, the equivalent
of Lehrpläne, define what has to be learned. ‘Curriculume’ is however quite widely used,
since the 1980s, in the sociology of education (Mangez and Liénard, 2008).
8 The autobiographies of two important participants at the ‘birth’ of mathematics didactics
(Mercier, 1999) and French first-language didactics (Bronckart, 2016) show this evolu-
tion from the point of view of actors.
9 One of the best critiques of the ideology of the OECD discourse in PISA is by two
didacticians: Bart and Daunay (2016).
10 This is also true for Switzerland, for instance. It is noteworthy that in French-speaking
Switzerland, the ministries in charge of schools – each of the 26 Swiss cantons has such
a ministry – are called ‘départements d’instruction publique,’ whereas in the German-
speaking Switzerland one finds ‘Bildungsdepartement’.
11 This process of rebuilding and reconstruction, and even of building of school knowledge
of its own, is theorised by the concept of ‘scolarisation’ (Denizot, 2013) of knowl-
edge: the construction of a ‘school culture’ (Chervel, 1998) of its own. The relationship
between didactic transposition and scolarisation is discussed in Denizot and Ronveaux
(2019).
12 As one knows, Comenius himself, and Rathke before him, introduced the Latin word
‘didactica’ in the combat for education for all.
13 A systematic comparison with the approach presented by Vollmer (in this volume)
could show, in still another way, differences and commonalities between ‘Didaktik’ and
‘didactique’.
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Chapter 9
Non-affirmative school
didactics and life-world
phenomenology
Conceptualising missing links
Michael Uljens and Tina Kullenberg
Introduction
In principle, the importance of recognising students’ experiences and learning
holds a central position in all teaching theory; but this central assumption about
how we should acknowledge and explain the relation between teaching and
learning raises a number of complicated issues. For example, the vital role of
the student’s views and experiences in learning is in tension with the fact that
teachers’ work is directed by pre-given educational goals set by the teacher/
school/state. More precisely, not only curriculum theory and didactics (Didak-
tik) but also life-world phenomenology, need to explain how to balance and
span the gap between the regime of imposed curricula (that is, educational val-
ues and means predefined from the perspective of society) and the more open-
ended, student-centred idea of freedom in schooling. A second and closely
related dilemma is the pedagogical paradox of freedom. This paradox states
that in order for education to be possible, the individual must be considered
undetermined, that is, free, even though education seems at the same time to be
a precondition for the individual to reach practical cultural freedom. Here we
encounter Kant’s famous question: how to cultivate freedom by external influ-
ence. Furthermore, as learning seems to require the learner’s own intentional
activity, we need to explain how education is expected to promote such activity.
Historically, we can identify discussions of these kinds going back at least to
Plato’s Meno, where Socrates carries out an instructional dialogue on a geo-
metrical problem. Ever since the Bildung-centred theory of education was
first established two centuries ago, the question how teachers might draw on
and expand the student’s life-world experiences in order to organise activities
around selected cultural teaching contents has continued to occupy a central
position. Compared to earlier didactics, the Bildung tradition argued for a new
moral legitimation on the part of the school and teacher. In its acceptance of
a non-teleological cosmology, that is, in viewing the future as radically open,
European Bildung-centred didactics emphasised that the aim of education was
now to support the learner’s personal growth and freedom – and, much later,
political autonomy. Since then, the core focus in the disciplines of didactics
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-10
186 Michael Uljens and Tina Kullenberg
and curriculum research has been how societally institutionalised schooling at

different levels is to engage with selecting and treating cultural contents (Klafki,
2007; Deng, 2020) in order to support the student’s growth as a unique and
autonomous cultural and political subject, yet sharing the world with others.
In didactics, two familiar triangles are often used to visualise the dilemma.
The first of these is a triangle depicting the three questions of what, how,
and why; the second is a triangle depicting the teacher, the student, and the
contents (Künzli, 2000). Common to both are the contents and the learn-
er’s experiences of it. Classical proponents of the Bildung-centred tradition
as explicated in Humboldt’s theory of Bildung, Herbart’s view of ‘educative
teaching’, and Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic pedagogy share the idea that edu-
cation is about an intervention in the learner’s life-world. In this tradition,
teaching focuses on changes in how learners relate to themselves, the world,
and other humans, but these changes are themselves mediated by a treatment
of the selected cultural contents of teaching (Benner, 2015b). Educative teach-
ing is then about an intervention in the subject’s relation to herself (I/Me), to
others (I/You, I/We, We/You), and to the world (I/It) by artificially working
on selected cultural contents. Sometimes this is said to occur through the ‘free-
ing’ of the educative qualities (Bildungsgehalt) of the selected contents (Bildung-
sinhalt). Such educative teaching (Erziehende Unterricht) aims at human growth.
Teaching contents are always secondary to this aim. Educative teaching is thus
to invite and lead learners to engage in questions to which existing knowledge
(i.e. selected teaching contents) is an answer. Educative teaching thus implies
the idea of supporting the learners in critically dwelling upon similarities and
differences between the values and knowledge claims in the contents, on the
one hand, and their own previous experiences and understanding on the other,
in order to establish the validity of these experiences and understandings, and
possibly move beyond them.
In our argument for the value of exploring teaching, studying, and learn-
ing from a phenomenological perspective, we want to call attention to the
hermeneutic vantage point. Hermeneutics has a double role, both theoreti-
cal and methodological, in phenomenologically oriented research on teach-
ing, studying, and learning. First, on the theoretical level, teachers operate by
interpreting the world, the contents, and the student. In such interpretative
activity they participate in an ongoing deliberation around the aim, meaning,
contents, and methods of teaching. They mediate between the students and
the world by creating pedagogical spaces for critical reflection and action. If
we take such contextual and deliberative dimensions as our point of departure,
they then require attention when developing theory within didactics and cur-
riculum studies has to take them into account. Second, from the preceding it
follows that when we want to make sense of the empirical findings of teachers’
and students’ experiences of the teaching contents, we need to acknowledge
the broader institutional, political, and cultural context. A deliberative and her-
meneutically oriented life-world approach to research on teaching would then
Non-affirmative school didactics 187
expand the questions posed by the traditional didactic triangles (c.f. Uljens,
1997). In teaching there is always:
• somebody (who?) is presenting/pointing/showing at

• something (what contents? Bildungsinhalt)
• as something (what meaning? Potential Bildungsgehalt)
• in some ways (how?)
• to somebody else (who?)
• to reach towards aims (which?)
• for some reason (why?)
• with some justification/obligation (which?)
• somewhere (where?)
• in relation to different societal interests (which?)
Understanding teaching in context

In order to train our focus on students’ life-world experiences in pedagogical
settings, we need to consider teaching in its context. Paradoxically, as organised
teaching and related learning opportunities are now so widespread both in
working life and on social media – once learning is all over, so to speak –
schools have gradually lost their unique character as ‘temples of learning’. This
may have contributed to a crisis of general didactics as it does not seem valid for
teaching and learning outside schools. On the other hand, the fact that we have
moved into a ‘learning society’ has led to renewed exploration of what kind of
pedagogical knowledge is indeed required for understanding teaching, study-
ing, and learning in schools – something that is obviously very different from
experiential real-life learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Schools stand out as
very specific contexts for teaching and learning in their own right. They were
established when participation in everyday practice was no longer adequate to
reveal necessary insights. Indeed, as research on real-life learning cannot replace
research on learning in schools, we welcome an ongoing rediscovery of teach-
ing in schools as a problem of its own in didactics and curriculum research
(Biesta, 2017). Yet, in principle, subject didactic research claims validity for
both inside and outside school settings. In this light, school didactics might be
a more fruitful and accurate delineation of subject didactics. However, research
in the separate field of subject didactics, almost without exception, locates
its object of study within schools. In this respect, subject didactics is, practi-
cally taken, school didactics. This also means that school didactics as a field of
research always includes a subject didactic dimension – teaching, studying, and
learning is always teaching, studying, and learning something (see the preced-
ing list). Conceptualising subject didactics for school settings is thus different
from subject didactics aimed for understanding teaching, studying, and learning
outside school settings. A solution to these dilemmas was sought by introducing
school didactics as a field of research in the 1990s (Uljens, 1997). In Germany, this
field is identified as (or sometimes included in) ‘Schulpädagogik’ (Meyer, 1997;

Rothland and Lüders, 2018).
Lee Schulman’s definition of pedagogical content knowledge in the 1980s,
framing professional teachers’ competence, would also fall within what is
referred to as school didactics. In Finland, professorial chairs in pedagogical
content knowledge or subject didactics, as they were called, were established
on a large scale in 1974 when primary school teacher education moved to the
universities and was developed into a five-year master’s of education degree.
School didactics as a field of research does not bear the burden of general didac-
tics in attempting to explain teaching, studying, and learning irrespective of
context. Acknowledging school didactics may also help to avoid the risk we see
in the rapid differentiation of the field of subject didactics. Indeed, we see rep-
resentatives of subject didactics today striving towards more general approaches,
such as general pedagogical content knowledge or generalised subject didactics
(Vollmer, 2014).
From a phenomenological life-world perspective, too, the contents of teach-
ing, as well as social life in and outside school, are central. In school didac-
tics, the contents of teaching are located at the very centre of the teaching/
studying/learning process, maintaining a distinction between the content as
intended, as practised, as experienced, and as evaluated. The teaching con-
tent is the medium through which the individual comes to share the world
with others (socialisation), and at the same time discovers their own self and
their own uniqueness (personalisation). Realising that the contents are both
the medium of the process of individuation (Bildung) and also the medium
for aiming beyond the given contents themselves, we identify similarities with
Bill Pinar’s approach to curriculum studies (Pinar, 2011). Perhaps in contrast to
Pinar’s approach, school didactics as a field of research is also interested in how
pedagogical activity operates to expand the learner’s life-world (Uljens and
Ylimaki, 2017). In fact, this is one of the classical questions in both didactics
and curriculum studies (English, 2013; Wahlström, 2020), expressed already by
Kant in his questions of how it is possible to support the development of indi-
vidual autonomy using external influence (Benner, 2015b). Furthermore, in
emphasising as a research field that curriculum work, pedagogical practice, and
evaluation at different levels are reciprocally related core issues, school didactics
is a field of research that has the potential to span general didactics and subject
didactics. A multi-level approach to curriculum work, leadership, and teaching
(Gundem, 1997) has increasingly gained support in curriculum studies, build-
ing upon discursive institutionalism (e.g. Nordin and Sundberg, 2014) and on
curriculum studies doing transnational policy transfer research (e.g. Steiner-
Khamsi and Waldow, 2012). And lately, educational leadership as curriculum
work has come to be seen as an important but neglected field of knowledge
for understanding curriculum reform and school development (Uljens, 2015;
Uljens and Ylimaki, 2017).
Understanding research on teaching in context

Earlier in the chapter we argued for a contextual awareness, both regarding
theorising teaching and in doing research on teaching. One aspect of such
contextual awareness with relevance also for life-world-oriented curriculum
research and didactics has to do with how various approaches conceptually
respond to policy developments in education (for example), as Englund (1986)
convincingly demonstrated. The answer depends partly on whether a concep-
tual position in didactics is considered a theory or a doctrine. To the extent that
didactics is considered a doctrine, it typically aims to present normative alter-
natives to existing curricular ideologies or prescriptive instructions informing
teaching methods. When didactics is considered as a theory, as in this chapter,
the aim is to refine concepts as analytical tools which allow us to talk about
education more precisely (Uljens, 1997, p. 112f.; Uljens and Ylimaki, 2017,
p. 10ff.).
There is also an epistemological reason for asking how contemporary devel-
opments in didactics and curriculum studies relate to a broader policy context.
As pointed out already by Schleiermacher (1998), we do not claim that educa-
tional theories are universal over time and culture. Educational theories need
to be analysed in context. Limiting our attention to only the past few decades,
we would argue that the increased focus on subject didactics since the 1980s
and the parallel movement towards an output-centred curriculum policy are in
part expressions of similar societal movements. Both are responses, though very
different ones, to a performative, instrumental, back-to-basics movement. One
argument for such an interpretation would be that the neoconservative ‘cultural
canon’ movement in curriculum policy is used to define core features of what it
is to be an educated or a qualified member of a society or nation (Young, 2008).
This reflects the traditional ‘material’ approach to subject didactics. In addition,
what we call the ‘competency canon’ policy movement supports an instru-
mental or performative view of knowledge by promoting practice-relevant sets
of competencies. The focus on tasks or generic competencies within wider
contexts reflect a ‘formal’ theory of Bildung. Further, while the cultural canon
draws on an experienced deficit in societal and cultural coherence, the com-
petency canon is based on ambitions of serving the needs of working life and
economy. The fundamental dilemma for both approaches is not their respective
valuing of cultural knowledge or useful competencies but the fact that while
both emphasise contents in an output-centred policy, both are at risk of ending
up with instrumental teaching and learning because the expected competences
tend to be set in advance. A related dilemma is that they do not see contents or
competencies as interrelated vehicles for inviting students to engage in contents
intended to develop personality, cultural identity, and citizenship – Bildung, in
other words.
Adopting a critical hermeneutical view of curriculum formation and teaching
as mediating activities within fields of contrasting interests and power structures
and hermeneutic epistemology, our argument in this chapter is that phenomeno-

logical life-world research also makes sense as a part of the research field of school
didactics. A life-world approach that does not take account of curriculum as a
field of social, political, institutional, and professional struggles risks going wrong.
Although we come to didactics from a hermeneutic Bildung-centred tradition
of theorising education, we support Englund’s idea of deliberative curriculum
research:
This view of curriculum content and school subjects implies that we see
them as contingent moral and political constructions that are constantly
reshaped, without definite limits, capable of being interpreted and realised
in different ways, politically contested at all levels, and in an ever-changing
situation in relation to the struggle between different social forces.
(2015, p. 51)
Our approach is closer to a transactional view of realist epistemology in cur-

riculum research than a transcendental approach (Wahlström, 2020).
Sharing the worries expressed by Wheelahan (2010) that theoretical knowl-
edge is increasingly marginalised in favour of competency-based training, we
wish to reassert that theoretical knowledge in schools not only creates critical
distance to practice, but may also educate beyond the knowledge itself. By
turning learners’ attention to those questions that theoretical knowledge aim at
answering, promotes awareness to pose these very questions differently.
A challenge for didactics and for phenomenological

learning research
The theory of, and research in, didactics typically values the intention to grasp
the learner’s experiences in the pedagogical process. These experiences are
often discussed in terms of the learner’s understanding and experience of the
contents and, naturally, changes in this understanding. Life-world phenomenol-
ogy again emphasises the notion of a shared world. This shared world may be
a starting point, but it is also the result of a pedagogical process. A challenge
for both didactics and life-world phenomenology is to what extent they con-
tain conceptually satisfying answers to the question of how teaching is seen as
related to learning: in other words, how they explain pedagogical interaction as
a movement from one ‘shared world’ to another. What kind of concepts do we
need to make sense of how we as individuals come to share an understanding
of the world? How do we explain in theoretical terms what kind of activities
or processes are in operation when this occurs? How, then, does teaching influ-
ence the individual’s move into and beyond a given life-world?
The question of how human beings can share a view of the world is certainly
not for only education or didactics to deal with. In the philosophy of mind and
in social philosophy, these questions are analysed in terms of how subjectivity
relates to intersubjectivity. The debate of how to relate subjectivity and inter-

subjectivity was originally initiated by J. G. Fichte in his critique of Kant. The
debate, far from losing its significance, has been a recurring topic. In fact, in the
last two decades there has been internationally increasing awareness that this
debate has value in the theorising of teaching. A recent tendency in European
social philosophy has been to emphasise the importance of intersubjectivity
(Varga and Gallagher, 2012). As Brinkman and Friesen (2018) recognise, the
reason phenomenological philosophy is pregnant with significant potentials for
the educational field is that it addresses crucial issues that concern precisely the
experiential and intersubjective dimensions of pedagogy. We may therefore ask
if life-world phenomenology contains a language that is sufficient for explain-
ing learning. Or, perhaps it is the other way around – that educational theory
indeed provides us with the conceptual tools to help us understand what it
means to come to share the world and to move beyond our previous under-
standing. We argue, though, that it is not only life-world research that could be
supported by elaborating the theory of education. For all the didactic triangles,
we note that many contemporary positions in didactics and in curriculum
theory are in fact underdeveloped when it comes to explaining the core issues
of the field itself: that is, how teaching influences studying that in turn may
result in learning.
The more general dilemma regarding subjectivity and intersubjectivity –
important in didactics, curriculum, and education theory perspectives – is the
long-standing debate over what ‘comes first’, subjectivity or intersubjectivity.
The question is whether either of these two can be considered more funda-
mental than the other. Do we have to assume some form of subjectivity in
order for intersubjectivity to be established? Or does some kind of intersub-
jectivity always have to be assumed in order for anything like subjectivity to
be established? As the task of education typically is about supporting both the
establishment of the subject’s individuality and her cultural belonging, we see
how crucial this question is in didactics. What kind of subjectivity does educa-
tion aim at, and what kind of subjectivity does education presuppose? Should
a theory of education take its point of departure in some version of intersub-
jectivity instead, for example in a phenomenological life-world? On the other
hand, if we, in theorising education, assume that the individual already shares a
cultural life-world, then, obviously, the individual has already become a part of
a life-world. How did that happen?
Versions of subject-centred and intersubjectivity-

centred positions
In philosophy, there are various ways to understand subject-centred and inter-
subjectivity-based conceptions of subjectivity. In phenomenology, too, different
positions exist regarding intersubjectivity. In contrast to Husserl’s subject-centred
philosophy, Merleau-Ponty, Buber, Bakhtin, Mead, Levinas, Taylor, and Rançière
have all challenged the subject-centred, individualistic, rationalistic approach. In

this chapter, we limit ourselves to Merleau-Ponty as representative of a phe-
nomenology that emphasises intersubjectivity as a core concept. But we wish to
reassert that the tradition of modern education theory as originally developed
between 1760 and 1840 did give an account of the relation between subjectivity
and intersubjectivity. That tradition argues that subjectivity and intersubjectivity
are not mutually exclusive. Our argument is that there is a need for different
versions of both subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In addition, in modern educa-
tion, the dynamics between these versions of subjectivity and intersubjectivity
are explained by pedagogical concepts: ‘recognition’, Bildsamkeit, ‘summoning to
self-activity’. We will discuss this tradition in terms of the non-affirmative theory
of education (Benner, 2015a).
In the philosophy of mind, we can historically identify two different but
complementary subject-philosophical positions. According to a so-called ego-
logical conception, ‘the Other’ is constituted by the experience of the subject.
This is the traditional subject-philosophical position: the encapsulated subject
is at the centre of the world and experiences the external and outside world
exclusively from this position (Crossley, 1996). Husserl’s philosophical episte-
mology represents such a position. Knowledge of the outside world is thought
to be achievable, but that knowledge is based on the fact that the outside world
is something subjectively experienced. Thus, the meaning of the world is sub-
ordinated to the experience of the self, and thus reducible to subjectivity rather
than intersubjectivity. Descartes’ “I am thinking, therefore I exist” also expresses
such an egological view, and Kant’s separation between the phenomenal world
and the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich) also reflects a subject-centred position.
A kind of reversed position, though still subject-centred, is the recognition-
oriented philosophy of mind, as represented by Hegel. Here the self as recognised
by the other is of primordial significance. The other’s recognition of the self
subordinates the subject’s coming into being to the other, so that the self is partly
constituted by the other’s experience. If we transpose this to the sphere of child-
rearing and early education, the adult, by the act of loving, invites the child to
the most basic form of self-esteem (see e.g. Heidegren, 2009; Honneth, 1996).
Intersubjectivity-based life-world
phenomenology
In the course of the twentieth century, the phenomenological research tradition
came to regard intersubjectivity as a necessary point of departure, thus replac-
ing Kantian and Husserlian epistemologically oriented transcendental idealism.
Kant had explained that knowledge of the thing-in-itself was not possible, only
of the thing-as-experienced. Husserl had accepted the Kantian assumption in
his phenomenological epistemology, developing a position in which the life-
world in all its richness was accepted as a fundamental point of departure, but
insisting that true knowledge claims had their origin in phenomenological
reflection on the world as experienced. The life-world had to be bracketed.
Later, Husserlian epistemological phenomenology, based as it was on the pri-

macy of the subject, was transformed by Merleau-Ponty into an ontological/
existential phenomenology based on intersubjectivity.
In the deep-rooted thought tradition of philosophical idealism – transcendental
idealism – the subject is more or less understood as self-constitutive (Bengtsson,
1991; Merleau-Ponty, 1962/1989; Winch, 1998). The transcendental approach
to phenomenology defended an individualistic knowledge theory. An individu-
alistic philosophy means one that reduces everything to the individual, who is
consistently understood as an autonomous being.
For Husserl, personal, life-world-based experiences had to be transcended in
order to reach true knowledge. What made such a project possible was, first, the
assumption of a pure, transcendental ego. Second, given that Husserl’s phenom-
enology is a theory of knowledge, he advocated an abstraction method in his
persistent search for pure (i.e. absolute) experiences: that is, insight undistorted
by the experiencing subject’s own life history. Husserl intended this abstrac-
tion method to do full justice to subjectively experienced phenomena. As the
position was developed as a general epistemology, not as a theory of teaching
and learning, Husserl’s interest is therefore of lesser value. Rather, theorising
education needs to start from the concrete life-world, where people of flesh and
blood meet, where they share and link empirically based life experiences with
each other. This is precisely the starting point of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics.
For Husserl, there existed two versions of intersubjectivity. The first was
the taken-as-given everyday world where we operate and where we are in a
‘natural attitude’. In this life-world, the other is co-present with the subject.
The second version of intersubjectivity is what can be called a transcendental
intersubjectivity, that is, general, shared, and true knowledge. This is no longer
a question of embodied, shared everyday experience but general conceptual
knowledge that unites (Bengtsson, 1991, 2001; Merleau-Ponty, 1962/1989).
It is indeed common to understand conceptual knowledge in this way, but in
Husserl’s phenomenology this transcendental sphere implies that all influence
from social, cultural, and historical conditions is put in parenthesis and thus
‘purified’ of empirical relativity (Uljens, 1992). Consequently, the life-world is
here significantly reduced to the decontexualised experience of the individual
beyond embodied intersubjectivity, that is, withdrawn from its worldly empiri-
cal basis (Bengtsson, 2001; Kullenberg, 2015; Merleau-Ponty, 1962/1989).
These subject-centred positions, the first starting from the primacy of the
self, the second from the primacy of the other, can be contrasted with a phi-
losophy that assumes intersubjectivity as its first principle. Crossley conceptual-
ises this as radical intersubjectivity. He sees in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy the
radical concept of intersubjective perception:
By defining perception as an opening to another that functions on a pre-

reflexive, pre-objective and pre-egological level, the solipsist idea is chal-
lenged about private perceptual worlds.
(1996, p. 29)
Here the focus turns to the common sphere – an intermediate world – where
these perceptual worlds are conceived as both overlapping and interlaced. Given
this, it follows that human consciousness can be defined as a radically interper-
sonal opening to alterity, that is, the genuine other (and all that is diferent from
oneself), as opposed to the egological view of reduction of the other to the
self ’s experience. This also indicates that intersubjectivity is no longer regarded
merely as a function or result of an acting subject but rather as an independent
dimension – existential, linguistic, or practical – that reflects lived experience.
Such intersubjectivism thus assumes that the subject’s subjectivity follows from
something that can already be considered shared.
As we have seen, for early transcendental phenomenology only the absolute and
unconditional ego, beyond empirical and worldly grounding, remains significant.
By contrast, Merleau-Ponty (1962/1989) belongs to a group of phenomenolo-
gists who seek an alternative. Could a genuinely interpersonal understanding that
builds upon reciprocity help us to move beyond the framework of a narrow Hus-
serlian interpretation of intersubjective premises? Merleau-Ponty (1962/1989)
elaborates on the difficulty of being a subject who gains an in-depth knowledge
of himself through inward-looking reflection (introspection). This may seem like
a paradox, because in a well-known sense we stand closest to ourselves. Our
instantly given life-world and our natural, embodied orientation to it is a basic
premise for this natural point of view: in what we want, feel, think, and in what
we do, our life-world is insurmountable in the sense that we are always condi-
tionally bound to our lived bodies (Bengtsson, 2001).
However, bodily experiences are not limited to a specific type of biolog-
ical phenomenon in the phenomenological sense (for instance, not limited
exclusively to the brain’s neurological cognitions). Instead, bodily being should
be understood on the basis of existential dimensions. Moreover, the lived
body cannot be considered free from social, historical, and cultural premises.
Through personal reflection, cultural experiences are an inseparable part of
life-world conditions, a part of being able to navigate in life, to find com-
munities, and, above all, to find meaningful development. The significance of
existential reflection is thus emphasised.
Educational challenges for life-world

phenomenology
As already discussed, Fichte was the first theorist of teaching to criticise the
transcendental philosophical idealism represented by Kant (although this insight
into the evolution of European educational theory has now been forgotten).
The relational tradition of thought, which emphasises the importance of the
empirical other, began with Fichte’s work and was further developed by Hegel,
then by Vygotsky, Mead, Dewey, and Habermas, while the subject-centred
Cartesian–Kantian tradition was furthered by Husserl and Piaget. The so-
called linguistic turn within philosophy, with its critique of the problematic
idea of the primacy of the transcendental and individualist subject, achieved

widespread acceptance. As the early theorists of education, including Schlei-
ermacher, acknowledged the importance of concrete experience in becoming
and being human, many phenomenologists also underlined the significance of
such an experience-based, intersubjective approach to education. But while
accepting a life-world-based phenomenology brings with it clear benefits and
strengths over a subject-centred transcendental phenomenology, it also brings
its own pedagogical dilemma. The most crucial of these is that as long as the
concept of life-world refers to already encultured subjects, that is, subjects who
already live together and more or less unreflectively share an everyday concrete
world comprising language and practice, there is a risk that the truly edu-
cational issue escapes us deceptively. To the extent subjects share the world,
education cannot be about subjects coming to share the world. Such a position
is not either well equipped for explaining what it means to move beyond this
shared world. Let us explain.
As we pointed out in our discussion of recognition, a premise in all educa-
tion is that learners and teachers already share the world. At the same time
teaching aims at moving beyond existing ways of knowing and coming to share
the world in new ways, beyond what is the case. Education thus paradoxi-
cally argues that we both do share the world and do not yet share the world.
It is also crucial that every teacher see the person in question as the unique
subject she/he is, in parallel with the student being a fellow among others
(recognition). A premise for an individual’s further development in educational
matters is that the pedagogue can and will interpret, through dialogue, the
learned experience of the learner. Among other phenomenologists, Bengtsson
(1997) subscribed to the form of pedagogical action described here – an educa-
tion based on recognition of the potential of the learners based on a practical
intersubjectivity. But how is the change from one form of intersubjectivity
to another explained? And what is the role of the pedagogue as we move in
and beyond such a person-oriented world, for instance, from home to school
or from school to work, developing new understandings as we transcend the
old? In our opinion, pedagogical action is guided by the ambition to “bridge
between students’ different regional worlds and in meetings with people out-
side the school’s regional world, such as home but also hospitals, habilitation
and social authorities” (Bengtsson and Berndtsson, 2015, p. 19, our transla-
tion). The pedagogue would then guide that learning through the intricate
relationships and contexts of life by raising awareness and helping to interpret
the student’s experience-based reality.
One more aspect of note needs to be mentioned when considering the ped-
agogical implications of life-world phenomenology. This perspective, owing
to its knowledge-theoretical recognition of people’s unique and experience-
based life-worlds, ultimately endorses an existential take on being, learning,
and teaching: even in the learning of cognitive content, the whole existence is
involved, not just the reason; without the involvement of existence, we cannot
speak of learning. Existence is thus very important for learning (Bengtsson and
Berndtsson, 2015, p. 25f.).
It is important to add that life-world phenomenologists highlight various
kinds of action rather than exclusively intellectual ones. For Merleau-Ponty, all
kinds of skills are viewed as both body-based and experience-based in the wid-
est sense, beyond the realm of pure cognition and mental reasoning. Bengtsson
advocated an education that explores what it means to live in a human world
with other people:
how we can be influenced by other people in their capacity of being other

subjects and not just things, that is, how upbringing is possible, which is
about relationships between people as subjects, and not between human
beings and things or things and things.
(1997, p. 13)
Subjectivity and intersubjectivity in a

non-affirmative theory of education
Having demonstrated that we may identify different ways of understanding
subjectivity and intersubjectivity in phenomenology, in what follows we point
out how these are discussed in non-affirmative education theory. Rather than
taking either subjectivity or intersubjectivity as its point of departure, non-
affirmative theory argues in favour of an educational approach that distinguishes
between several forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity at play (Uljens, 2001;
Uljens and Ylimaki, 2017).
In non-affirmative theory it is argued that, in his or her summons of the
learner to engage in a learning process, the pedagogue cannot exclusively
assume a shared life-world or some form of mutuality (symmetry) between
self and other. Symmetry – or rather the negation of asymmetry in the form
of the establishment of a shared life-world – is sought through the pedagogical
process. But the opposite is also true. In his or her summons or invitation of
the learner into an activity aimed at learning, the pedagogue cannot rely solely
on a radical and total difference (asymmetry) between self and other, because
an asymmetry is part of the objective of the pedagogical process. A ‘sought-
for asymmetry’, in other words, refers to the aim of the pedagogical process:
namely, that the individual develops uniqueness in a cultural sense, a unique-
ness that did not originally exist.
We see that neither a symmetrical intersubjectivity nor an asymmetrical sub-
jectivity can suffice as either the point of departure or the end point of educa-
tion. To express this differently, at the beginning of the educational process
we share the world to some extent, but not totally. Perhaps we speak the same
language, but we are not the same. At the end of the educational process, again,
we find ourselves as subjects that differ from others, but also as subjects that
share the world in new ways. At the beginning of the educational process we
are the same, yet we are also different from each other. But at the same time, it
is true that through the process of education we become the same, yet we also
become different from each other. Didactics is thus the science of being and
becoming both the same (intersubjectivity) and different (subjectivity). The
paradox of didactics is that we are what we become, and that we become what
we are – the same and different. This presents us with two problems. First,
what do same and different mean? Second, what concepts do we need for talking
about this dynamic process?
The relationship between the different forms of subjectivity and intersubjec-
tivity can be explained using the relational pedagogical concepts of Bildsamkeit
and summoning to self-activity. We want to demonstrate that we can draw on
these classical concepts when speaking about phenomenological dimensions of
pedagogy (Benner, 2005; von Oettingen, 2001; Uljens, 2001).
Bildsamkeit refers both to the human capacity to learn allowing of influenc-
ing the other by educational means and to the learner’s activity aiming at learn-
ing. In the present context, the principle of Bildsamkeit refers to the individual’s
engaging in learning activity, in pedagogical situations. In such situations, the
learner has accepted a pedagogical invitation or provocation and, in a way, is
open to becoming engaged in and by an activity, having been summoned to
this by the pedagogue. The principle of Bildsamkeit means that the learner
is recognised as a subject with a potentiality of self-activity. This potentiality
is made real through the subject’s own actions in an educational space. An
educational space refers to a common world established between teacher and
learner through the summoning of the learner to self-activity (or self-initiated
activity). Bildsamkeit thus refers to the individual’s reflection on enacted expe-
riences, his or her relationship to the world (Benner, 2015a; Uljens, 2001).
How this educational dynamic takes place in each case is by definition impos-
sible to predict. Through educational actions from the teacher’s side, with the
learning subject, a space of education is established. This pedagogical space is
a temporary construction, a space that depends on the engagement of the sub-
jects involved. The experiential or virtual space is a space in which the learner
does not feel alone but experiences being seen and recognised, experiences
being accepted but also challenged, experiences being involved in working on
a topic. The space offers the subject a learning opportunity to exceed herself.
Insofar as it summons the learner to self-activity – that is, calling the other
to self-promotion – educational activity entails (1) recognising the subject’s
potential and ability to engage in self-promoted learning (hence the potential
for reaching empirical or cultural freedom is a guiding assumption), but also,
importantly, (2) being attentive to the concrete life situation of the other, their
phenomenological or experiential reality and personal life history (Goodson
and Sykes, 2001). Such cultural awareness and knowledge is important. How
the learner appears to perceive herself and the world is crucial, and it points
to the phenomenological sphere of interest. It is important for a learner to
experience the teacher as somebody who cares for her and somebody who is
present for the other in the educational situation, meeting and seeing the student
as they appear as an existential subject to the teacher (Nordström-Lytz, 2013).
A further dimension of recognition is related to the educator’s actions support-
ing the individual’s development of a reflected own will. This aspect is linked
to the goal of the process, that is, to acknowledging the other’s potential inde-
pendence or autonomy as a goal of education. Finally, if the establishment of
the individual’s self-image is dependent on social interaction with others, and
if the ability to discern and critical, autonomous thinking are regarded as indi-
vidual rights, then pedagogical activity can be seen as a response to the moral
demand that arises from recognising these particular rights (Fichte, 2000). The
concept of self-promotion can then be seen as a lived enactment of our moral
responsibility for the other.
The teacher’s recognition consists in truly seeing the other as a unique per-
son, assuming both that the individual’s development is not determined by
something totally pre-given and that the growing persons are entitled to find
themselves and their ‘voice’ through their own activities. Pedagogical encour-
agement thus points to the need to consciously observe the ways in which a
child responds to the call for self-promotion, without assuming (as in con-
ventional affirmative pedagogy) that they should end up at a predetermined
form of perception. One important implication for educators is therefore that
non-affirmative education is emphatically critical of educational ideas, ideolo-
gies, and curricular policies that overemphasise either socialisation to existing
norms in society or the fostering of values that form a predetermined future.
Both these perspectives, in our view, exemplify normative/prescriptive edu-
cational thinking. One example of such future-oriented normative education
is emancipatory pedagogy, also known as critical education. Here, what the
student is to be liberated to and for, and all the normative values embedded in
the process, are already known in advance. The goal is thus already outlined,
and the teacher’s task is consequently, with the help of methodology, to guide
the student to the beginning of the course. Our critical point here is that nor-
mative socialising pedagogy, like societal transformational education, can easily
overshadow the student’s own development, preferences, and life experiences
and therefore become a kind of educational indoctrination (Uljens and Yli-
maki, 2017; Matusov and Lemke, 2015).
By contrast, a non-affirmative call for self-promotion insists that the learn-
ing process should be guided also by the student’s own voice. The teacher’s use
of communicative provocations as an educational action should deliberately
refrain from unproblematically confirming both current social interests and
ideal future states (cf. von Oettingen, 2016; Kullenberg and Eksath, 2017).
Such a conscious pedagogical judgement can create space for a process of learn-
ing that acknowledges the student’s right to exercise conscious initiatives and
actions within the educational dialogue. Such a position is also value-driven,
yet reveals a careful approach to the act of teaching and leadership, especially
in relation to the young. Leaders and teachers in democratic public school
systems are, by law, expected to follow the spirit of a curriculum and respect
such interests. At the same time, teachers are expected to adopt teaching to
the unique needs, interests, and circumstances at hand. Non-affirmative theory
solves this tension by arguing that while teachers must recognise curricular
aims and contents, they must not simply affirm these aims and contents. To do
so would mean failing to problematise these aims and contents for and with
students, thereby reducing education to transmitting given values and contents.
The non-affirmative approach also has to deal with a pedagogical paradox,
but now in a new version. This version of the paradox states that the individual
has to be treated as if she/he were already capable of what she/he is being
encouraged to do and already capable of realising her freedom through her
own activity (Benner, 2015a). As Benner puts it, pedagogical action involves
treating the other as if the learner were already capable of what they are called
to and what the other through its own activities may conquer. An example is
when a child is learning to stand on her/his own feet and is asked to take a few
steps across the floor to a waiting adult who will embrace her/him. Here the
child is treated as if it can already walk, even if it is through responding to the
parent’s call through their own activity that they learn to take their first steps
in life. But it is an open question whether this happens or not: time will tell,
but we do not know for sure in advance. When Herbart refers to the concept
of pedagogical tact, his intention is to show that the call not only falls back upon
recognition of the freedom of others in itself, but that it must, in order to func-
tion, be experienced as reasonable by the other person in the dialogue. In such
tactful action, the pedagogue shows awareness of the empirical reality, life situ-
ation, and identity of others, even as this may appear in the eyes of the other.
A final word
We have demonstrated, and problematised, the relation between life-world
phenomenology and a theory of pedagogical activity based on non-affirmative
education theory and structured within the research field of school didactics.
Both life-world phenomenology and hermeneutic phenomenology offer us
a fruitful language for talking about the individual’s formation (the theory of
Bildung). The phenomenological theory of Bildung typically views the life-
world as open, intersubjective, and changeable in its ongoing complexity. This
acknowledgement of openness and radical intersubjectivity, accommodating
existential dialogues, has intriguing educational implications. In contemporary
phenomenology, we find a language of education and human learning that in
some respects reflects the concepts used in non-affirmative education theory.
For example, Van Manen (1991) clearly takes such an interpretative, guiding
approach in his The Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical Thoughtfulness.
In fact, he even suggests subtle non-action as an important pedagogical act, a
tactful ‘holding back’ when teaching children (p. 78). ‘Holding back’ includes
a recognising dimension. It prepares a space for the other, but it also has a
summoning dimension. Being silent in front of the learner in the context of

a structured educational situation both invites and challenges the learner to
involve herself. On the question of mediating between worlds, Van Manen
also emphasises children’s everyday world as a crucial influence alongside the
influence of those who are pedagogically responsible for them. Interestingly, in
contrast with more conventionally authoritarian educational regimes, he sees
the role of teaching as somewhat discreet, due to the normative idea that the
pedagogue should try to avoid directly influencing the child as much as pos-
sible. He takes seriously the risk of imposing too many values and guidelines
on young learners in this life-world-oriented approach to teaching. As he puts
it: “To teach is to influence the influences. The teacher uses the influence of
the world pedagogically as a resource for tactfully influencing the child” (p. 80).
Meyer-Drawe (1984) also developed an educational theory of intersubjectivity
based on Merleau-Ponty’s existential principles. She argues that self-perception
and other kinds of experience are dialectically intertwined and form a ‘middle
embodiment’ (Zwischenleiblichkeit) in which the intersubjective dynamics of see-
ing and being seen can be realised in a way that has educational relevance. We
cannot become human beings without the other’s response, she suggests, thereby
defending the dialogue-oriented foundation for knowledge-building developed
by our earliest teaching theorists. Truly dialogic intersubjectivity between teacher
and student not only legitimates the student’s own voice and needs but also
accepts a portion of unexpected dialogue and, consequently, a knowledge devel-
opment beyond the pre-given and ready-made. The strength of phenomenology
is, obviously, that it recognises the educational significance of lived experience. In
the practice of teaching as well as educational research, it implies interpreting that
is open-minded and other-oriented, understanding the learner’s lived experience
in its current life-world context.
Despite the strengths, we argue that life-world phenomenology does not
adequately explain how the learning individual may really transcend her life-
world-based socialisation – or, more precisely, what role the pedagogical act
may be assigned in that process. A second dilemma with life-world phenom-
enology is limited analytical attention to how power structures and policies
operate in directing teachers and students’ work. Despite fruitful attempts,
life-world phenomenology does not seem to provide elaborate conceptual or
analytical tools that can explain how politically agreed curricula direct initia-
tion and transgression that occur in educational practices like schools. Life-
world phenomenology tends to limit its focus to the student’s perspective, thus
disregarding the very specific contextual factors in school teaching. After all,
strongly directing decisions of aims and contents are made before and beyond
the classroom.
In our view, the non-affirmative pedagogical theory incorporates much of
the ideas developed within life-world phenomenology but challenges phe-
nomenological learning theory by providing a conceptual language for the
explication of human learning and the role of teaching in this learning. The
non-affirmative approach to education promotes a liberal, person-oriented

path of learning, focusing the individual’s space of lived experience as related to
selected cultural contents didactically treated within an institutionalised school
(Benner, 2015b; Uljens and Ylimaki, 2017). On the part of the teacher, teach-
ing in schools is an interpretative and mediational activity between the stu-
dents’ life-worlds and culture, mediated by the contents of the curriculum. In
a non-affirmative school didactics these contents offer the medium by which
the subject is summoned to reflection on her relation to herself, others, and
the world in order to transcend her present state by her own activity. Non-
affirmative school didactics makes visible that to the extent to which teachers
are entitled not to affirm, that is, to question and problematise existing cur-
ricula, their degrees of freedom increase to create space for students’ interests
and life-worlds. This position also reminds that the task for the teacher is not
limited to recognising the learners’ life-worlds but to challenge them to work
on their experiences. In this sense, we are arguing for a critical discussion of the
idea of standardised and detailed curricula, defined without the student’s own
ideas and established as a guiding tool that leaves only limited space for open-
ended or unexpected knowledge created in and through pedagogical dialogues.
Consequently, we advocate further research exploring the theory of pedagogi-
cal action in life-world phenomenology – and vice versa.
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Part III
How to construe the

thematics of Didaktik
and curriculum
Chapter 10
The dialogue between

Didaktik and curriculum
studies within mainland
China
Bangping Ding and Xun Su
Introduction
International and intercultural dialogues in education science between the advo-
cates of Didaktik (didactics) and of curriculum studies are a frequent occur-
rence all over the world (Hopmann, 2015; Lee and Kennedy, 2017; Westbury,
Hopmann and Riquarts, 2000). In mainland China, however, these encounters
have taken place within one country (Ding, 2011, 2015; Ding and Wang,
2017). Modern Western schooling systems were adopted in China early in the
twentieth century to replace traditional systems and meet the pressing demand
for trained schoolteachers. By turns, first the German Didaktik approach and
then, within 20 years, the Anglo-American discipline of curriculum studies
were adopted, with few modifications, as pedagogical theories. After the period
of the Cultural Revolution, where influences came from the Soviet Republic,
Anglo-American curriculum studies began to be reintroduced in the Chinese
educational landscape; and with the turn of the millennium, calls for the
re-establishment of educational science (or simply pedagogics) have been
in the air in mainland China, and reflective discourses on the rebuilding of
Chinese didactics have come to the fore (Ding, 2009; Xu, 2019). Hence, the
situation today is, as in the Nordic countries, that didactics and curriculum
studies go hand in hand as pedagogical approaches in the educational landscape
of mainland China, reflecting the fact that both systems took root there (Deng,
2013, 2015; Ding, 2015; Zhang, 2017). Retrospectively, we find that the dia-
logue between didactics and curriculum studies in this country may perhaps
have tended towards the simplistic, rather than exhibiting the depth and com-
plexity called for by Pinar (Pinar, 2011, 2014). As a result, a number of mis-
readings and misunderstandings of both disciplines have arisen among Chinese
educators and educational researchers, even including didacticians. This has had
a significant impact on the policy formation and implementation of recent cur-
riculum reforms: curriculum studies are currently predominant in the realm of
theory, with many Chinese educational policymakers and curriculum theorists
considering didactical theories to be outdated or even anachronistic.
For this reason, we argue that it is of the first importance that didactics should
be conducted as an independent university subject with the full range and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-11
208 Bangping Ding and Xun Su
depth of academic reflection in the context of mainland China. Our objective

here is not just the rediscovery of the true quintessence of didactics in a form
that can complement Anglo-American curriculum studies, but for the essen-
tial elements of both disciplines to be integrated with traditional educational
culture and/or wisdoms. To this end, this chapter will review in some depth
the historical trajectories by which first didactics and then curriculum studies
were introduced and localised in mainland China. This historical process was
not only long and complicated but also fraught with selections and options that
resulted from cultural misunderstandings as well as educational needs.
In the following sections, we will first introduce the historical background
against which models and theories from German Didaktik and from Anglo-
American curriculum studies were introduced in China at different points in the
twentieth century. We will then present the research method for the study: that is,
qualitative content analysis of didactics and subject didactics textbooks. The results
of the study will then be presented. Next, issues arising from the research ques-
tions and the analyses will be discussed, with the aim of shedding light on current
and future issues in the conceptualisation and re-establishment of the new, mixed,
and integrated pedagogical discipline, Curriculum and Didactics. It is hoped that
this integrated discipline, based on the analysis and re-conceptualisation of mod-
ern didactics and curriculum theories and on a reflection on Chinese didactics,
will embody the true Chinese spirit of pedagogical and educational theorising.
Finally, some concluding remarks will be presented.
Historical background and context

As has been described elsewhere (Deng, 2015; Ding and Wang, 2017; Zhang,
2017), German Didaktik was originally introduced to China by way of Japan
when Western school systems were transplanted in China in the first decade
of the twentieth century. What was called didactics (and/or pedagogics) at
the time was part of the teacher preparation programme so badly needed for
the newly established schools and colleges of teacher education (the so-called
normal schools). After the May Fourth Movement of 1919, China broke with
Japan politically, ideologically, and educationally, and in 1922 the 6-3-3-4
school system of was adopted from the United States (six years of primary
school, three years of junior high school, three years of senior high school, and
four years of college/university undergraduate study), drawing on the work
of John Dewey and progressive educational ideas. For the next three decades,
until 1949, American educational influence was predominant in China, find-
ing its theoretical expression in the emerging field of educational study that
was Anglo-American curriculum studies. In these circumstances, the theory
of Didaktik/didactics adopted in the first two decades of the century receded
into the background of Chinese educational theory and practice and Anglo-
American curriculum theory became the major influence on educational
developments in mainland China.
Didaktik and curriculum studies, China 209
The first half of the twentieth century, therefore, saw the encounter between
didactics and curriculum studies in the Chinese educational landscape, and a
resultant ‘dialogue’ between them. It is necessary and indispensable to explore
the traces and/or tendencies of this encounter, because the educational ideas
and theories that are influential in a country during a given period are not iso-
lated, nor are they without influence on wider social and historical movements
and ideas. In our reflection on, and reconstruction of, didactics and curricu-
lum studies for contemporary teacher education in mainland China today, we
have to draw upon the historical experience of earlier generations of Chinese
educationalists. These scholars, as we saw in our preliminary study of didacti-
cians and curriculum scholars in the first part of the twentieth century (Ding,
2009, 2015; Ding and Wang, 2017), not only introduced European Didaktik
and Anglo-American curriculum theories, but tried with varying degrees of
success to combine them with Chinese national needs in educational practice;
they even tried to formulate their own theories of didactics and curriculum. In
this sense, the Sinicisation of Didaktik/didactics and curriculum studies now
has been ongoing for more than a century in China.
Next, our study moves to the second half of the twentieth century and the
resurfacing of didactics in Chinese educational discourses, this time introduced
from the Soviet Union. With the shift of political regime in China, during the
three decades from 1949 to 1979 curriculum studies was abandoned as a field
of study. In train with mainland China’s alignment with the Soviet Union,
Soviet didactics and pedagogics were now embraced as the correct educational
disciplines for the teacher education programme, replacing Dewey’s theory of
education and progressive educational theory in general (including curriculum
studies). As the German Didaktik of the Herbartian school had been sup-
planted by Anglo-American educational theories, Soviet/Russian didactics
(in the form of Kairov’s Pedagogy textbook) was now influential for just one
decade between 1950 and 1960. Following the Sino-Soviet political and ideo-
logical rift, however, it was severely criticised during the Cultural Revolution
of 1966–1976. But with the opening and reform of China in 1978, Kairov’s
Pedagogy was re-evaluated in academic circles, and the subsequent three decades
from 1979 to 2009 witnessed the flowering of Chinese didactics and subject
didactics as pedagogical subdisciplines for a teacher education knowledge base,
now impacted once again both by contemporary German Didaktik and by
Soviet didactics (Xu, 2019).
Meanwhile, following the resumption of diplomatic relations with the United
States in 1979, curriculum studies re-emerged after 30 years of proscription as a
pedagogical field of study in mainland China during the 1980s and 1990s. Cur-
riculum textbooks published during the nationalist period before 1949 were
now reissued, and a new generation of curriculum scholars grew to maturity
and formed research groups in teacher education colleges/universities. In the
1990s they founded the Association for Curriculum Studies of China (Zhang,
2017). Although many of these scholars had first studied in the didactics camp,
at this time their academic interests turned to curriculum studies and they
found themselves among curriculum scholars. By the same token, some of the
didacticians found themselves attracted by the curriculum discourses translated
from the US curriculum literature and went on to incorporate curriculum
theories into their own work on didactics (e.g. C. S. Wang, 1985).
Thus, a confluence emerged in the 1980s in Chinese educational thinking
between German Didaktik (including Martin Wagenschein’s exemplary teach-
ing methods and Wolfgang Klafki’s critical categorical didactics) and Anglo-
American curriculum theories (including Tyler’s theory of curriculum, Pinar’s
theory of reconstructionist curriculum, Doll’s post-modern curriculum theory,
just to name a few). At this confluence, a blended field of pedagogical study
was thus created in mainland China, called Curriculum and Didactics. This
new field of Curriculum and Didactics, together with subject curriculum and
didactics for various school subjects (physics didactics, chemistry didactics, biol-
ogy didactics, mathematics didactics, and Chinese language didactics), became
a new subdiscipline among the educational sciences as a university discipline in
its own right – although curriculum studies and didactics still continued to be
researched separately by some educationalists.
The aims of the present study are to reflect on the nature of the dialogue
between Didaktik/didactics and curriculum studies in mainland China over
the past four decades, and to address the question of how this dialogue has
become problematic through misreadings and misunderstandings by influential
researchers in didactics and curriculum. This question has not received much
attention within educational circles in mainland China, because most Chinese
researchers in both camps seem to argue that the two fields of study originally
adopted from the West, although distinct, are interrelated, as if they did not
exemplify profound cultural or national differences.
In view of these aims, the specific research questions of the study are as
follows:
1 What were the traces and/or tendencies in Chinese didactics and curricu-
lum studies?
2 How did didactics and curriculum studies encounter one another and
interact in the academic field of education in mainland China?
Methodological considerations
The method used to address these questions is qualitative content analy-
sis, which reveals some traces and/or tendencies in the encounter between
Didaktik/didactics and curriculum studies in the Chinese landscape of educa-
tion. “Content analysis involves reading and judgment”, as Cohen, Manion and
Morrison state in their Research Methods in Education (2000, p. 284). Because
space is limited, we have confined ourselves to the content analysis of selected
textbooks as exemplars among those published over the past four decades in the
fields of general didactics and subject didactics. Two major didactics textbooks,
one on general didactics and one on subject didactics, were chosen to identify
the traces and/or tendencies in order to show how Chinese didacticians have
dealt with issues of teaching/learning and curriculum in their works on general
didactics and subject didactics.
Content analysis of Chinese didactics textbooks
Chinese general didactics textbooks

The first selection of textbooks from general didactics comprises two works:
A Seminar Notes on Didactics ( Jiaoxuelun Gao, 教学论稿) by Professor Ce-san
Wang (1928–2017) of Beijing Normal University, first published in 1985 and
running into several later editions, and Didactics (Jiaoxuelun, 教学论) by Profes-
sor Bing-de Li (1912–2005) of Northwest Normal University, first published
in 1991 and the most-used university textbook of its kind. For space reasons,
in the present chapter, our content analysis will be limited to the first of these
two works, Wang’s textbook.
Wang has been teaching without interruption since the early 1950s at the
Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University, one of the top research
universities training future educational researchers as well as schoolteachers
(and other professionals). His textbook is based on his lecture notes, prepared
as an elective course in 1979 and eventually published in textbook form. The
author describes his book as featuring “a discussion and exploration of theoret-
ical issues and problems in didactical research” (C. S. Wang, 1985, p. 1, authors’
translation). As a textbook of general didactics, A Seminar Notes on Didactics is
highly regarded by students of education studies in mainland China, as it rep-
resents a breakthrough in numerous respects.
In the first place, rather than merely presenting teaching/learning methods
for students of education and/or prospective teachers, the book stands out
for its theoretical exploration. In that sense, it is the most significant work in
Chinese didactics to have been published in mainland China. Although Johann
Amos Comenius’ Didactica Magna (Great Didactic) had been published in Chi-
nese translation in the 1930s and the Chinese version of Johann Friedrich
Herbart’s General Pedagogy (1806) had also been familiar to teachers and edu-
cationists in China in the first half of the twentieth century, the predominant
influence among foreign pedagogical works stemmed from the United States,
especially after the visits by John Dewey and his progressive followers (such
as William H. Kilpatrick) to China in 1919 and the 1920s respectively. In the
field of pedagogical studies, therefore, Anglo-American curriculum studies and
general methods of teaching or instruction were more influential than Ger-
man Didaktik had been, even if Herbart’s formal steps of instruction became
rooted in the practice of classroom teaching in China at the beginning of the
twentieth century.
During the 1950s, however, owing to the shift in political regime, it was
Soviet pedagogy that abruptly superseded the influence of Anglo-American
educational science (and especially curriculum studies). Soviet official peda-
gogics were very popular among educational researchers and schoolteachers;
Kairov’s Pedagogy (1953) and his didactics in that work were regarded as the
most ‘scientific’ theory of all. That popularity was short-lived, however. From
1957, China started to explore its own way of building a socialist country, as
distinct from the Soviet model, while resisting the overwhelming influence
from the Soviet Union. That exploration, however, was in turn cut short by
the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976, which prohibited Chinese educational
researchers in general and didacticians in particular from developing Chinese
didactics of any kind. Against this background, it can be said that Ce-san
Wang’s textbook was by some margin the first ever comprehensive and influen-
tial work of its kind in mainland China. It differed markedly from, for example,
Chinese works on teaching/learning methods that were written on the basis
of Anglo-American works published during the 1930s and 1940s on teaching/
instruction theories and methods. A further difference from translated works
on didactics from the Soviet Union was that it was partly based on the Chinese
culture of education and Chinese traditions of wisdom (Zhang, 2017).
A second remarkable feature is that while Wang’s textbook tries to create
a systematic structure for Chinese didactics as an academic subdiscipline with
Chinese educational culture in mind, it is still redolent of the influence of Kai-
rov’s Pedagogy (1953). For one thing, the textbook acknowledges that a Marxist
didactics was established in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries,
and Wang is ready to follow in the steps of this Marxist tradition in didactical
research. For another, Wang had structured his textbook of didactics along a
similar model to Soviet didactics, that is, dealing with such topics as basic con-
cepts in didactics (Chapter 4); the process of teaching/learning (Chapter 5);
principles of teaching/learning, methods of teaching/learning (Chapter 10);
modes of teaching/learning (Chapter 11); forms of organisation in teaching/
learning (Chapter 12); and assessment criteria for student assignments (Chap-
ter 13). These discourses in Chinese didactics reflect their origin in Russian
didactics, and implicitly, therefore, in continental European Didaktik/didactics.
There were however changes in and additions to the content of Wang’s text-
book: American curriculum theory – a different Western educational culture
to that of European Didaktik or Soviet/Russian didactical culture – was also
subordinated to Chinese didactics. For this reason, Wang’s Chinese didactics
is regarded as a model of ‘large didactics’ by other educational researchers in
China (e.g. Ding, 2009; Ding and Wang, 2017).
Third, Wang made a significant contribution to integrating Chinese peda-
gogical culture into Chinese didactics. For instance, in defining the concept of
teaching/learning (jiaoxue, 教学), one of the foundational concepts in didac-
tics, Wang contended that although there are many different definitions of it in
the literature, “teaching/learning is always an integrating activity of teaching and
learning” (C. S. Wang, 1985, p. 89, authors’ translation). He further criticised

the dichotomy between teaching and learning as follows:
[I]n didactical (i.e. teaching-learning) activities, it is plain, of course, that

there is either separate teaching or separate learning, and that one cannot
take place without the other; but on this special occasion teaching cannot
be detached from learning, and so teaching-learning is always a common
activity involving one another, rather than simply teaching plus learning.
Teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, and so they are dia-
lectical and integrating, so to speak.
(p. 89, authors’ translation)
In defending this idea of the inseparability of teaching and learning, Wang cites
Fu-zhi Wang (1619–1692), a philosopher of the Ming dynasty (AD 1368–
1644), who remarked:
[L]earning is to learn what the teacher imparts, so learning is not to teach;

whereas teaching is to teach students to learn what is taught by the teacher,
so teaching is not to learn, of course.
(quoted in C. S. Wang, 1985, p. 90, authors’ translation)
Wang illustrates this principle by saying:
When students are self-studying in the classroom in the absence of the

teacher, or when students are doing assignments at home, is their ‘learning’
considered to be separated from ‘teaching’? No! Take another example,
when a teacher is marking students’ compositions in the staffroom with no
students around, is this kind of ‘teaching’ detached from his/her students’
‘learning’? No!
(p. 90, authors’ translation)
Following this analysis, Wang defined the concept of teaching/learning as

follows:
By teaching-learning is meant an activity integrating teaching given by

the teacher with learning on the part of the students; in this shared
activity, students master a certain body of knowledge and skills, mean-
while they also gain development of body and mind and develop moral
character.
(pp. 88–89, authors’ translation)
Fourth, Wang was the first Chinese didactician to draw on curriculum theory
to enrich Chinese didactics research. The table of contents indicates that three
of the chapters (Chapters 7, 8, and 9) deal with curriculum issues in a way
that subordinates curriculum studies to Chinese didactics. In Chapter 7, for

example, Wang contends that:
We hold that curriculum can be looked upon as the arrangement of instruc-

tional content, and that didactics without instructional content is empty,
and curriculum is in fact subjected to the law of instructional process.
(pp. 165–66)
In his own research on didactics, therefore, Wang did not distinguish either
between didactics and curriculum or between didacticians and curriculum the-
orists. In Chapter 2, for example, Wang places the American psychologist and
curriculum reformer Jerome Bruner (1915–2016) side by side with Russian
didacticians such as I. V. Zankov (1901–1977), asserting that “Bruner’s didac-
tical thought [sic] lies in his curriculum theory” (p. 26). On the other hand,
although curriculum study did not constitute an independent field of research
in Soviet pedagogical sciences at the time, the significant Russian idea of obra-
zovanie (образование, similar to the German idea of Bildung) concerning the
content of instruction in Soviet didactics is nearly absent from Wang’s work
(or any other works by Chinese didacticians, for that matter). The pre-1949
nationalist era saw few, if any, attempts to establish Chinese didactics other than
by introducing the Anglo-American curriculum theories and their methods
of instruction. This meant that once the time was appropriate for Chinese
didacticians like Wang to build a didactics as a theoretical subdiscipline within
pedagogics or the educational sciences, they found it necessary to make use of
Anglo-American curriculum theories as an element in their attempts to found
Chinese didactics. But because the two approaches originated in two distinct
and separate Western pedagogical and educational cultures, these attempts led
to frequent misunderstandings of both Didaktik/didactics and curriculum
studies (Ding, 2009; Ding and Wang, 2017).
A fifth remarkable feature is that one can readily see in Wang’s didactics that
he tried to establish Chinese didactics on the foundation of Marxist philoso-
phy: that is, on dialectical and historical materialism, which was regarded as
the guiding rationale for all research in human and social sciences, including
didactical study. Wang states:
The main characteristics of Marxist didactics rest in the recognition that

dialectical and historical materialism – most of all dialectical materialist
epistemology of reflection – is the foundation of methodology.
(1985, p. 9)
Here Wang is acknowledging that Marxist didactics was originally founded

in the Soviet Union and his wish to continue this tradition of Marxist didac-
tics in mainland China. A few years later, Wang and colleagues published a
monograph entitled Theory of Knowing in Teaching/Learning (教学认识论)
(C. S. Wang, 1988/2002), which systematically expounds the theoretical foun-

dation of Chinese didactics from a Marxist epistemological point of view.
A sixth and final remarkable feature is that Wang’s textbook lays the ground-
work for Chinese didactics. He makes great efforts to construct a version of
Chinese didactics by integrating Soviet didactics, American curriculum theo-
ries, and the rich Chinese educational culture and wisdom traditions. In par-
ticular, he emphasises the value of teaching/learning, an important idea that
permeates Confucian works on education. Such teaching/learning notions as
‘Teaching is half of learning’ (jiaoxue ban, 教学半), ‘Teaching and learning will
enhance each other’ (jiaoxue xiangzhang, 教学相长), and ‘Teaching students
by using the elicitation method and helping them infer from examples’ (qifashi
jiaoxue, 启发式教学) are reactivated and transformed in Wang’s textbook of
didactics. Most important of all, he insists that Chinese didactics should be
a theoretical pedagogical discipline. He thus distinguishes between general
didactics (jiaoxuelun, 教学论) and methods of teaching/learning (jiaoxuefa,
教学法) (Ding, 2015).
Chinese subject didactics textbooks

The past four decades have also seen considerable growth in subject didactics in
the colleges and universities that train primary and secondary school teachers
in mainland China. Like their counterparts in continental European countries,
however, researchers in subject didactics (Fachdidaktik) are located within their
respective academic departments rather than as an independent discipline. A
certain tension thus exists between researchers in general didactics and subject
didactics, based on the somewhat different training and competences of the two
groups (Strømnes, Rørvik and Eilertsen, 1997).
Like their colleagues in general didactics, researchers in subject didactics
(including chemistry didactics, physics didactics, biology didactics, mathematics
didactics, and Chinese language didactics) in mainland China since the 1980s
have to an extent misread and misunderstood subject didactics and curriculum
studies. Rather than recognising curriculum studies as an independent disci-
pline, they have sought to integrate ideas gleaned from Anglo-American cur-
riculum studies with subject didactics. This can be seen in the textbooks edited
by subject didactics researchers for teacher education programmes. While the
titles of these textbooks use the term ‘didactics’ rather than ‘curriculum’, their
content is replete with discourses originating in Anglo-American curriculum
studies, blended with some content of curriculum studies as well. One typi-
cal example is a widely used textbook entitled Didactics of Chemistry, edited
by Professor Zhixin Liu (b. 1928) (Wei, 2012), a famous specialist in the field
of Didactics of Chemistry in China, now a retired professor in the College of
Chemistry, Beijing Normal University.
Published in 1990, the first edition of this textbook is pervaded by dis-
courses from the field of didactics, including teaching syllabus, teaching plans,
and teaching content. Although the word ‘curriculum’ is used in Chapter 1,

entitled “The Setup and Content of the Chemistry Curriculum”, the reference
here is to the curriculum of required courses in secondary schools, rather than
to the sense used in curriculum studies, which is of a much richer connota-
tion (Liu, 1990). In addition, this textbook is visibly deeply influenced by the
Soviet-led chemistry didactics of an earlier era. In the earliest, pre-publication
manuscript of the text in 1957, the structure and organisation of the book were
mainly borrowed from similar textbooks translated and published in the former
Soviet Union during the 1950s honeymoon period between the two countries
(Wei, 2012). Four chapters (Chapters 3, 10, 11, and 12) of the 1900 textbook
edition elaborate on the chemistry teaching skills and chemical knowledge
that a chemistry teacher should master, while one chapter (Chapter 4) intro-
duces teaching about dialectical materialism and patriotism into the teaching
of chemistry (Liu, 1990). Interestingly, however, the Russian concept of obra-
zovanie, fundamental to Soviet didactics and subject didactics, cannot be found
in the first edition of Didactics of Chemistry.
By contrast, in the most recent edition of the Didactics of Chemistry, pub-
lished in 2018, discernible differences and changes have been introduced in
the intervening decades since first publication. There are several notable dif-
ferences. First, the 2018 edition has been very heavily influenced by Anglo-
American curriculum studies in discourse. The discourses of didactics that
informed the first edition – teaching plans, teaching syllabus, teaching content,
and teaching assessment – have disappeared, and instead the salient discourses
are taken from curriculum studies: for example, curriculum development, cur-
riculum reform, and curriculum standard. Second, the new edition has also
been considerably influenced by Anglo-American curriculum studies in terms
of substance. Methods of subject teaching and learning – including teaching
methods (Chapter 4), teaching skills (Chapter 5), chemistry experiments teach-
ing (Chapter 6), and the inquiry-based teaching of chemistry (Chapter 7) – have
been added. Additionally, some content has been incorporated from Anglo-
American curriculum studies (Chapters 2 and 3): Chapter 2 refers to the com-
pilation and renovation of the chemistry curriculum, and Chapter 3 to the
design and content construction of chemistry textbooks (Liu, 2018). Third, the
renovation of the chemistry curriculum discussed in Chapter 2 is clearly influ-
enced by the recent Chinese curriculum reforms during the period 2001 to
2016. Fourth, a chapter on theories of chemistry learning (Chapter 8) has been
added, an obvious influence from Anglo-American learning theories, which
centre on the general principles of learning. Fifth, knowledge of the content
of chemistry, measurement and evaluation of chemistry teaching, and teaching
of chemistry exercises and revision, all of which appeared in the first edition,
have been expunged from the fifth edition (Liu, 1990, 2018). This too may be
due to the influence of Anglo-American teaching theory, which concentrates
on effective teaching methods rather than the teaching of content and practi-
cal classroom teaching (Ding, 2015). Finally, the integration of information
technology with the chemistry curriculum (Chapter 9) and the professional

development of chemistry teachers (Chapter 10) are also newly introduced in
the fifth edition.
In conclusion, it is reasonable to say that the fifth edition of the textbook has
moved decisively towards the Anglo-American discipline of curriculum studies
and its theories of learning and teaching, leaving the older, Soviet-style chem-
istry didactics behind. The resulting work, however, turns out to be something
of a mixture: that is, the ‘Curriculum and Didactics’ of chemistry (or physics,
biology, mathematics, or the Chinese language), as the discipline is known
today. This simplistic blending of content and discourses from subject didac-
tics and curriculum studies indicates that a thoroughgoing and cross-cultural
dialogue between curriculum and didactics has yet to take place in the field of
subject didactics in mainland China today.
Back to the research questions

We turn back to our research questions. The first question asks, what are the
traces and/or tendencies about Chinese didactics and curriculum studies?
In contrast to Germany, where Didaktik originated and where curriculum
studies was in vogue only for a short time in the 1970s, and in contrast also to
the United States, where curriculum studies came into being from an indig-
enous culture of pragmatism, in China both didactics and curriculum studies
were adopted children, gradually indigenised from the early twentieth cen-
tury as part of the Chinese modernisation programme. Politics played a huge
role in the indigenisation of these disciplines, especially in the latter half of
the century, when shared beliefs in communism in both countries led to the
didactics (and pedagogics) of the former Soviet Union being chosen as the
dominant pedagogical and educational theory, severing the earlier-established
traditions of German Didaktik and Anglo-American educational science in
general and curriculum studies in particular. It is also important to bear in mind
that continual political disruption from the 1950s up to 1976 – in the cor-
rection movement of intellectuals, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural
Revolution – largely prevented researchers and university teachers from doing
any research in their fields, let alone publishing work that might be socially
valuable or creative.
Over the past four decades, however, the political environment for academic
work in mainland China has very much improved for Chinese researchers
and academics, characterised as it has been by reform and by opening up.
International academic exchanges and cooperation have taken place, and Chi-
nese researchers and academics have been able to visit other countries, with
their international counterparts frequently invited to their home universities
in return. It is in this period of Chinese modern history that Chinese didac-
tics and curriculum studies have made great progress in research and with the
completion of many PhD projects in the field. According to the didactician
Professor Ji-cun Xu (2019) of Shandong Normal University, there were only

80 graduates with a master’s degree in the programme of Curriculum and
Didactics and five PhDs in 1997, but by 2005 these numbers had increased to
500 and 38 respectively. Between 2006 and 2010, there were more than 3,500
graduates with a master’s degree in the programme of Curriculum and Didac-
tics and nearly 300 with a PhD, and more than half of the latter were graduates
in a subject curriculum and didactics (such as the Chinese language, mathemat-
ics, foreign languages, biology, chemistry, or physics).
Now we turn to the second research question: how did Chinese didactics
and curriculum studies encounter one another and interact in the academic
field of education in mainland China?
Chinese didactics gradually evolved as a field of study from the mother dis-
cipline of pedagogics into its independent form (C. S. Wang, 1985), including
various subdisciplines such as curriculum studies and subject didactics, and
finally converging over the last 40 years in a comprehensive discipline called
Curriculum and Didactics (Xu, 2019). The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the
rapid development of didactics as an independent subdiscipline among edu-
cational sciences in mainland China. In 1985, Chinese didacticians organised
themselves into the National Association of Didactics within the Chinese Soci-
ety of Education, thereby promoting the rapid development of the discipline.
In 1997, a group of curriculum researchers networked and went on to establish
the National Association of Curriculum Studies, also within the Chinese Soci-
ety of Education, claiming independent identity of curriculum studies as a sub-
discipline of educational sciences in mainland China. However, also in 1997,
the Council of the State Commission of Academic Degrees and the Ministry of
Education determined that didactics and curriculum studies were to be merged
in the combined subdiscipline of Curriculum and Didactics. A new generation
of master’s and PhD students have now graduated within the new Curriculum
and Didactics graduate education programme in colleges and universities.
In spite of their official merging, however, there have been operational dif-
ficulties in the harmonious combination and integration of the two fields of
study, stemming as they do from two very different educational cultures. For
one thing, Chinese specialists in both schools tend to use their own distinct dis-
courses. When they find themselves in different linguistic contexts, they con-
sequently tend to talk past each other. For example, in didactics, the following
expressions are used: teaching/learning (rather than instruction or learning),
teaching plans, assessment/evaluation of teaching/learning, reform in teaching/
learning, process of teaching/learning, principles of teaching/learning, and
methods of teaching/learning. In curriculum studies, on the other hand, a
parallel but different set of expressions is used: curriculum standards, curricular
implementation, curriculum assessment/evaluation, and curriculum reform.
This dichotomy between terminologies creates difficulties not only for practis-
ing teachers in their communications with academics but also for didacticians
and their curriculum counterparts when they compare notes on professional
occasions. Given this situation, the construction of a harmonious and blended
discipline of Curriculum and Didactics is proving a difficult task for Chinese

educational scholars. In this respect we would welcome learning from our
international and intercultural dialogues, and particularly from our colleagues
in the Nordic countries.
Conclusion
The development of the new discipline of Curriculum and Didactics in main-
land China is of course rooted in reforms of teaching, learning, and schooling.
As a result, many pedagogical problems and issues have arisen in the reform
process. For example, as part of the current reform of science education in
schools, inquiry-based teaching and learning has been promoted since the turn
of the millennium as the curricular content of school science and as a bet-
ter mode of pedagogy. In spite of this policy, however, a phenomenon that
has been termed pseudo-inquiry (Jiang, 2015) has surfaced in many science
classrooms across the country in recent years, whereby science lessons in the
classroom have frequently been characterised by seemingly hands-on and coop-
erative learning. How are researchers in the field of Curriculum and Didactics
in mainland China to conceptualise such challenges and deviations from the
objectives of the science curriculum reforms? So far, neither Chinese didactics
nor curriculum studies in their existing form have proved capable of resolving
such challenges in a satisfying way. One possibility is that international and
intercultural scholarly dialogue may help to facilitate the emergence of the new
Curriculum and Didactics discipline in such a way that these problems can be
resolved in a practical way.
Another aspect importantly requiring study is the need to build a Chinese
culture of education, with the new and blended discipline of Curriculum and
Didactics as an integral part. By the Chinese culture of education, we refer to
the traditional culture related to teaching, learning, and schooling, and espe-
cially to Confucianism in terms of the way of thinking as regards education.
For example, the concept of ‘Chinese harmonism’1 (Z-H. Wang, 2012) is one
of the most important philosophical cornerstones of this tradition. In our view,
this concept could be extremely useful as a tool in constructing and develop-
ing the new blended discipline of Curriculum and Didactics (Ding and Wang,
2017). As Ding and Wang put it:
As an epistemological way of knowing, the concept Chinese harmonism

does not try to treat reality as the same; rather, it teaches people to dis-
criminate between the differences.
(p. 133)
And again:
[I]t recognises, first, the differences of the ideas, and then takes advantage
of the differences to innovate and make something new and valuable, just
like the chemical change that takes place in different elements when they
happen to encounter each other.
(p. 133)
Note
1 ‘Harmonism’ is a new word, which is meant to indicate the ancient Chinese idea expressed
in the phrase ‘he er bu tong’ (和而不同), which was put forward by Confucius. In Chi-
nese, ‘he’ (和) is meant to be harmony, while ‘tong’ (同) is just the opposite; the former is
an epistemological way of creative knowing, trying to absorb various elements from dif-
ferent things to create something new and valuable, whereas the latter cannot do so. (See
more of the idea ‘Chinese harmonism’ in Z-H. Wang, 2012.)
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Chapter 11
Teacher responsibility
over intended, taught, and
tested curriculum, and its
association with students’
science performance in PISA
2015 across Didaktik and
curriculum countries
Armend Tahirsylaj
Introduction
Various foci of curricula affect modern-day schooling. Educational authori-
ties design formal curricula to structure educational experiences for students.
However, students are not exposed only to formal curricula within bounded
school settings but also to other unofficial curricula that shape what students
learn in and out of schools. Schubert (2008) elucidated eight formats of curri-
cula that influence schooling directly and/or indirectly, namely, (1) intended –
which means the specific education goals as defined by the formal schooling
institutions – most often by a central or local government; (2) taught – which
means the actual curriculum that teachers cover in their day-to-day teaching
in classroom settings; (3) experienced – which implies thoughts, meanings,
and feelings of students as they encounter the curriculum delivered to them by
teachers; (4) embodied – primarily meaning the curriculum that students ‘take
with them’ beyond what is measured by grades and test scores; (5) hidden –
capturing the education that is conveyed to students by school structures that
are not part of the official/formal/intended curriculum. The sources for the
hidden curriculum might include race, class, gender, culture, ethnicity, lan-
guage, religion, and so on; (6) tested – which captures what gets tested in the
school settings and why, and who benefits from testing; (7) null – which is
referred to as the curriculum that does not get tested and is not usually repre-
sented in tests, such as capacities for art, philosophy, psychology, imagination,
and lifelong learning to name a few; and (8) outside curriculum – which covers
the out-of-school curricula that students are exposed to through their contexts
of culture, community, language, families, mass media, the internet, and so on.
Teachers, meanwhile, from the triangle of teachers, students, and content
in the Didaktik tradition, facilitate students’ access to specific subject content/
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-12
Teacher responsibility in PISA 2015 223
curriculum. This chapter explores the extent to which teachers are respon-
sible for three of the eight curricula aspects, namely intended, taught, and tested
curriculum. Regarding teacher responsibility, the study relies on the definition
provided in OECD’s (2009) assessment framework, where teacher responsibil-
ity was taken to mean responsibility over decisions pertaining to school man-
agement, financial issues, and instructional issues. Further, the study utilises
the definition of Corcoran (1995) on teacher responsibility as teachers’ capac-
ity to make curriculum- and assessment-related decisions. As conceived here,
teacher responsibility is different from teacher autonomy, which has been defined
along professional, faculty/staff, and individual dimensions (Frostenson, 2012),
or as having an institutional dimension, implying collective autonomy of the
teaching profession, and a service dimension, concerning individual teacher
autonomy at classroom level and school level practices more broadly (Wermke
and Höstfält, 2014).
To achieve its goals, the study uses Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) data to examine variation of teacher responsibility over
intended, taught, and tested curriculum in different contexts, and also to
explore whether teacher responsibility over these three curriculum foci mat-
ters for student science performance in PISA 2015. The study addresses two
main research questions: (1) do teachers have a say on intended, taught, and
tested curriculum across Didaktik and curriculum countries? and (2) what is
the association of teacher responsibility over intended, taught, and test curricu-
lum with student science performance in PISA 2015 across six Didaktik (Den-
mark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Germany) and six curriculum
(Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United
States) countries? The purpose of the study is first to empirically test claims
made about teachers’ responsibility across Didaktik and curriculum traditions,
and second to further contribute to the field of comparative curriculum stud-
ies employing education frameworks and quantitative approaches, as a new
method to address curriculum/Didaktik issues in the twenty-first century. The
study builds on author’s prior work (Tahirsylaj, 2019) to expand the range of
data used to test theoretical claims put forth over similarities and differences
between curriculum and Didaktik traditions.
Theoretical framework
Curriculum and Didaktik serve as two main education traditions in the West-
ern world that shape to a large extent, for example, what education policies
are implemented in school systems (Hopmann, 2015; Tahirsylaj, Niebert and
Duschl, 2015) and how teachers are educated and trained (Tahirsylaj, Brezicha
and Ikoma, 2015). Curriculum and Didaktik frameworks claim, amongst else,
that there is a higher level of teacher responsibility among teachers working in
Didaktik than those in curriculum countries (Westbury, 2000). While there
224 Armend Tahirsylaj
are four competing ideologies that constitute the field of curriculum studies,
including scholar academic, social efficiency, learner centred, and social recon-
struction (Schiro, 2013), the social efficiency model was dominant throughout
the twentieth century up the present day (Tahirsylaj, 2017; Deng and Luke,
2008; Kliebard, 2004; Westbury, 2000). Didaktik, on the other hand, developed
as a theory of teaching and learning in continental Europe, dealing with issues
of order, sequence, and choice (Hopmann, 2007) and a tradition “as a relation
between teachers and learners (the who), subject matter (the what) and instruc-
tional methods (the how)” (Klette, 2007, p. 147). While both traditions have
experienced revisions and modifications as a result of global education trends
since the early 2000s, they still operate under their own original assumptions,
meaning Didaktik is still more teacher oriented and content focused, while
curriculum is methods oriented and assessment intensive (Tahirsylaj, Niebert
and Duschl, 2015).
The study follows a logic of rationale where the constructs of interest per-
taining to intended, taught, and tested curricula are thought to be mediated
by the instructional system in place in corresponding countries representing
curriculum and Didaktik traditions, which in turn affect the student’s test
score in PISA assessment, while controlling for a number of student- and
school-level variables. In this vein and in line with the first research ques-
tion and curriculum/Didaktik framework, the hypothesis is that teachers
in Didaktik traditions have stronger say regarding their responsibility over
intended, taught, and tested curriculum than their counterparts in curricu-
lum traditions. The second research question is exploratory in nature, how-
ever based on prior work (Tahirsylaj, 2019) it can be hypothesised that the
three variables of interest used as proxies for intended, taught, and tested
curricula will not show strong associations with students’ science perfor-
mance in PISA 2015 across both curriculum and Didaktik tradition coun-
tries in the sample.
Methodology
This study employs an innovative quantitative approach to address the two main
research question. It utilises PISA 2015 data made available by the Organisa-
tion for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The PISA test has
been administered every three years since 2000. PISA tests 15-year students’
skills in three cognitive domains, including mathematics, science, and reading.
To address the first research question, the study employs descriptive analysis
to examine variation in teacher responsibility on intended, taught, and tested
curriculum across Didaktik and curriculum countries. Two-sample difference
of proportion test for teacher responsibility over intended, taught, and tested
curriculum is used, while case-wise deletion is applied to address missing data.
To address the second research question, a hierarchical linear modelling (HLM)
procedure will be used to explore the association of teacher responsibility mea-

sures over three foci of curricula on students’ science performance in PISA
2015, while controlling for a number of student-level (socio-economic status
(SES), gender, age, grade, and immigration status) and school-level (school
type – public vs. private) variables. Mean substitution and dummy adjustment
are applied as methods to address missing data.
HLM is a useful method for this study considering that PISA datasets have
a nested structure of data with students nested in schools and schools nested
in regions and/or countries, which arguably provides more precise estimates
given that data structure (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002). HLM is preferred over
simple ordinary least square (OLS) method, since the latter assumes indepen-
dence of observations which is rather misleading in nested data where variance
within group tends to remain dependent.
To develop the HLM models, first an unconditional model was run for each
country using the dependent variable. Here is the specified equation for sci-
ence achievement.
scienceij = ß0j + eij (1)
Each school’s intercept, β0j, is then set equal to a grand mean, γ00, and a random
error u0j,
ß0j = g00 + u0j (2)
where j represents schools and i represents students with a given country.

Substituting (2) into (1) produces
scienceij = g00 + u0j + eij (3)
where:
ß0j = mean science achievement for school j

g00 = grand mean for science achievement
Var (eij) = θ = within school variance in science achievement
Var (u0j) = t00 = between school variance in science achievement
This model explains whether there is variation in student’s standardised sci-

ence scores across j schools for the given country. From here, a linear random-
intercept model with covariates was set up. This model is an example of a
linear mixed efects model that splits the total residual or error into two error
components. It starts with a multiple-regression model, as follows:
Science scoresij = ß1 + ß2j x2ij+ . . . + ßp xpij+ ξij (4)

Here ß1 is the constant for the model, while ß2j x2ij to ßp xpij represent covariates
included in the given model. ξij is the total residual that is split into two error
components:
ξij Ξ uj + eij (5)
where uj is a school-specific error component representing the combined

efects of omitted school characteristics or unobserved heterogeneity. It is a
random intercept or the level 2 residual that remains constant across students,
while level 1 residual eij is a student-specific error component which var-
ies across students i as well as schools j. Substituting ξij into the multiple-
linear regression model (4), we obtain the linear random-intercept model with
covariates
Science scoresij = ß1 + ß2j x2ij+ . . . + ßp xpij+ uj + eij (6)
Again, ß2j x2ij to ßp xpij represent the covariates included in the model, and they
vary depending on how many covariates are included in a specific model. The
final model focuses on three level 2 covariates representing teacher responsi-
bility items – whether teachers were responsible for course content, choosing
which textbooks are used, and establishing student assessment policies – and it
also includes one school-level covariate of school type (public vs. private) and
a number of student level 1 covariates, including SES, age, grade, immigration
status (native vs. first generation vs. second generation), test language (native vs.
another), and a dummy variable for gender, where female = 1 and male = 0,
and controlling for dummy missing variables. The same full model is then run
for each of the 12 countries in the study.
Teacher responsibility (TR) over intended, taught, and tested curriculum is
measured in PISA 2015 by a question that asks school principals “Regarding
your school, who has a considerable responsibility for the following tasks?”
where principals had to select whether principals, teachers, school board,
regional education authority, or national education authority decided about
the following (coded 1 if teachers made the decision and 0 otherwise):
1 Deciding course content (a proxy for TR over intended curriculum)

2 Choosing which textbooks are used (a proxy for TR over taught curricu-
lum, assuming textbooks extensively guide what teachers teach)
3 Establishing student assessment policies (a proxy for TR over tested cur-
riculum, especially in terms of how the tested curriculum gets tested)
While it is acknowledged that school principals might be biased towards over-

reporting teachers’ responsibilities that bias cannot be tested here because PISA
2015 collected data on these three variables from school principals only. The
possibility that school principals might understand concepts related to the three
variables diferently constitutes another noise in the data that should serve as a
caution in results’ interpretation.
Four criteria – historical, cultural, empirical, and practical – as developed
by Tahirsylaj (2019) are used to designate the 12 countries into respective
Didaktik and curriculum groupings. In brief, the historical criterion relates to
historical initiation and development of Didaktik tradition within German-
speaking contexts in continental Europe, which then spread to the rest of
continental and northern Europe, while curriculum tradition emerged in the
UK and then spread to the rest of the English-speaking countries. The cultural
aspect is borrowed from prior studies on world cultures, and more specifically
Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness Research Proj-
ect (GLOBE), which grouped world countries into ten cultural clusters based
on data from the surveys aimed at understanding organisational behaviour in
respective societies (House et al., 2004). For example, the GLOBE project
distinguishes between Anglo cluster, Germanic cluster, and Nordic cluster that
are represented in the sample of the present study. The empirical criterion relies
on empirical evidence from educational studies that examined whether the ten
culture clusters could explain differences in students’ performance in respective
clusters (Zhang, Khan and Tahirsylaj, 2015). The practical element pertains to the
first Didaktik-curriculum dialogue that took place during the 1990s, when
two groups of scholars were involved – scholars and researchers representing
Didaktik that included both German and Nordic scholars and, on the other
hand, curriculum experts that included scholars mainly from the UK and US
(Gundem and Hopmann, 1998).
Results and findings

Prior research exploring teacher responsibility across curriculum and Didaktik
countries with PISA 2009 data (Tahirsylaj, 2019) showed that teachers across
all 12 respective curriculum and Didaktik countries were reported to be highly
responsible for issues related to course content, textbooks, and assessment poli-
cies. This study extends and expands prior work by examining the more recent
dataset of PISA 2015. Results pertaining to the first research question on varia-
tion across Didaktik and curriculum countries over intended, taught, and tested
curricula are presented in Figures 11.1 through 11.3. Figures are colour-coded
and the black bar shows OECD average. The light grey bars show proportions
for curriculum countries, while dark grey bars show results for Didaktik coun-
tries. Across the countries, there is a wide variation, and countries are spread
over a continuum, while the two-sample difference of proportion test showed
in all three measures that proportions were higher and statistically significant in
Didaktik than in the curriculum sample overall.
Figure 11.1 shows the proportions of schools where teachers are reported to
be responsible for course content in respective countries. As per curriculum-
Didaktik framework, the hypothesis was that more schools report teachers to
Proportion of students in schools where teachers decide about

course content (Intended curriculum)
Curriculum | Didaktik | OECD
100% 93.95%
90.72% 91.35%
90%
80.77% 81.00%
80% 75.17% 75.80% 75.93%
70.02% 71.12%
70%
60.12% 62.70%
60% 53.91%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Figure 11.1 Intended curriculum (teacher responsibility over course content)

Source: OECD PISA 2015 Datasets
be responsible in Didaktik than in curriculum countries. The graph shows that

United Kingdom (93.95 per cent) and New Zealand (91.35 per cent) have
the highest proportion of schools where teachers are responsible for course
content. Canada has the lowest proportion of schools that have teachers who
are responsible for course content, as reported by school principals, with 60.12
per cent. All countries in the sample are above the OECD average of 53.91
per cent. No clear separation is observed between curriculum and Didaktik
countries. A difference-of-proportion test between Didaktik and curriculum
countries produced a z statistic was z = 4.02, p < 0.001, indicating that the dif-
ference between the two groups was statistically significant, and the mean was
higher for Didaktik than curriculum countries.
Figure 11.2 shows the proportion of schools with teachers reported to be
responsible for deciding about textbooks used in their respective countries.
Overall, the proportions are quite high and above 70 per cent for all coun-
tries, and all countries are above the OECD average of 65.56 per cent. In
Finland, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, close to 100 per cent of schools
are reported to have teachers who decide about textbooks to be used. The
proportion-of-differences test showed that the mean was higher for Didaktik
than curriculum countries, and z statistic z = 6.33, p > 0.001 indicated that the
difference in proportions between the two groups was statistically significant.
The results are in line with the original hypothesis that teacher responsibility is
higher in schools in Didaktik than curriculum countries.

textbook selection (Taught curriculum)
120%
100% 96.26% 96.58% 97.64%

92.56% 92.88%
87.76% 88.87% 90.29%
85.22%
80% 76.36%
72.36%
65.56%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Figure 11.2 Taught curriculum (teacher responsibility over textbook selection)

Figure 11.3 shows the proportions of schools where teachers are reported to
be responsible for making decisions about student assessment policies in respec-
tive countries. As per curriculum-Didaktik framework, the hypothesis was that
more schools report teachers to be responsible in Didaktik than in curriculum
countries. The graph shows that Germany (83.63 per cent) and Ireland (83.36
per cent) have the highest proportion of schools where teachers are responsible
for assessment policies. Denmark has the lowest proportion of schools that
have teachers who are responsible for assessment policies, as reported by school
principals, with 50.70 per cent. All countries but Denmark and Canada are
above the OECD average. A difference-of-proportion test showed that Dida-
ktik countries together had a higher mean than curriculum countries with z
statistic z = 3.49, p < 0.001 indicating that the difference between the two
groups was statistically significant.
Tables 11.1 and 11.2 show the results related to the second research question
on associations of teacher responsibility items to students’ science performance
in PISA 2015 in curriculum and Didaktik countries. Only significant results
are shown in the two given tables. Among curriculum countries, only Intended
measure was significant and positive in the US. Only Taught (negative) and
Tested (positive) items were significant in Finland only among Didaktik coun-
tries. Even though the proxies for Intended, Taught, and Tested curriculum

assessment policies (Tested curriculum)
90% 83.36% 83.63%
78.74%
80% 76.26%
73.07% 73.18% 73.26%
70.64%
70%
57.93% 58.42% 59.65%
60% 54.01%
50.70%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Figure 11.3 Tested curriculum (teacher responsibility over assessment policies)

Table 11.1 Associations of teacher responsibility items and control variables to PISA 2015
science performance (curriculum-full model)
Australia Canada United Kingdom Ireland New Zealand United States
Intended / / / / / 33.33
Taught / / / / / /
Tested / / / / / /
SES 28.81 24.33 22.21 31.31 33.25 16.37
Girl −6.25 −5.21 / −11.05 −8.86 −11.77
Age −8.41 / / / / −19.68
Grade 28.65 39.58 30.11 8.87 27.52 39.28
First / / −23.21 / −11.29 −17.68
immigration
Second / / / / / /
immigration
Public school −32.71 −28.21 −41.36 −21.24 −60.21 /
Note: Only results significant at p < 0.05, p < 0.01, and p < 0.001 shown. If bold, significant at p < 0.001.
were significant only in three cases, the coefficient was large, indicating that
when these factors matter, they do matter significantly in students’ science per-
formance in PISA assessment.
The results for control variables across curriculum and Didaktik countries
show interesting results, particularly with the negative impact of public school
Table 11.2 Associations of teacher responsibility items and control variables to PISA 2015
science performance (Didaktik-full model)
Austria Germany Denmark Finland Norway Sweden
Intended / / / / / /
Taught / / / −57.28 / /
Tested / / / 38.18 / /
SES 9.11 9.96 23.19 29.93 29.33 28.67
Girl −24.54 −24.09 −11.56 14.93 / /
Age / −18.57 / / 17.44 /
Grade 40.29 38.81 44.77 39.02 44.60 67.79
First immigration −35.01 −37.99 −49.25 −72.01 −38.81 −51.84
Second immigration −37.04 −31.97 −46.78 −61.09 −33.08 −33.75
Public school / −56.88 / / / /
Note: Only results significant at p < 0.05, p < 0.01, and p < 0.001 shown. If bold, significant at p < 0.001.
among curriculum countries, and the negative role of immigration status on sci-
ence performance among Didaktik countries. This means that students in public
schools in curriculum countries have lower performance in science compared
to students in private schools, while students of immigrant background per-
form lower than native students in Didaktik countries. Further, as expected
and shown from prior studies, the SES is strongly and positively associated with
students’ science performance in all countries in the sample, meaning that stu-
dents that come from more affluent families perform higher than those that
come from less affluent families. The results also show that students who are in
a higher grade at the time of PISA test perform better than students who are in
a lower grade. The gender variable also shows interesting patterns across coun-
tries by being strong and negative in almost all countries but Finland where it is
strong and positive. This means that girls score lower than boys in PISA science
test in all countries in the sample where the variable is statistically significant,
with the exception of Finland, where girls outperform boys. Lastly, students’ age
does not seem to be strongly associated with students’ science performance in
the given statistical models and controlling for the listed variables.
Overall, the results of HLM models are in line with prior work and hypothesis
that teacher responsibility proxies are statistically significant only in a few cases.
Discussion and conclusions

The results of the study point towards a Didaktik-curriculum continuum,
rather than a strict dichotomy as suggested by the theory, however the countries
tend to stick together within either Didaktik or curriculum grouping. Because all
the countries in the sample have a relatively high number of students in schools
where teachers are responsible for all three variables of interest, a practical
convergence is observed that seems to go against the clear theoretical divide

between curriculum and Didaktik as theorised in the literature. Still, the find-
ings from the first research question point to statistically significant differences
in variation between Didaktik and curriculum in Teacher Responsibility over
Intended, Taught, and Tested curriculum – in all three cases, teacher respon-
sibility is higher among teachers in schools in Didaktik than in curriculum
sample. On average, teacher responsibility among all countries in the sample is
higher than the OECD average, with a few exceptions, indicating that overall
teachers in schools in both educational traditions have high responsibility, as
reported by the school principals through the PISA study.
Regarding the second research question, which tested whether teacher
responsibility items make a difference in students’ science performance as mea-
sured in PISA 2015, the results are discouraging overall, as significant asso-
ciations were identified in three cases in two countries only – in the US and
Finland. The lack of significant results may be an effect of the global education
reform movement in the Western world, primarily that has made education
policy and practices more uniform across countries, a phenomenon labelled
as institutional isomorphism (Baker and LeTendre, 2005). Nevertheless, the
evidence for continued variation pertaining to the first research question indi-
cates that divisions between Didaktik and curriculum traditions still persist and
that traditions on which education systems are built upon continue to affect
educational practices within countries. Further research could potentially focus
on how teacher responsibility is shared with other stakeholders such as school
leaders and parent communities within the school context, where usually a
broad array of interests and responsibilities have to be negotiated, shared, and
executed to create and maintain learning environments that enhance students’
performance and achievement in and out of schools.
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Chapter 12
Education as language and

communication (L&C)
A blindness in didactics and
curriculum theory?
Sigmund Ongstad
Introduction
Language awareness?
Language awareness appears at life’s many crossroads. Can the new-born make
sounds? What is the child’s first word? Should pupils start school with the let-
ter A? What is pupils’ text competence at the end of schooling? What should
teachers do with students’ misconception of disciplinary genres? L&C – here
spelt languageandcommunication – seems omnipresent but is not always at the
mind’s forefront. In fact, it is mostly tacit, implied, taken for granted, silenced,
forgotten, or ignored. In one word, it is about blindness, except when it is
focused. Blindness of focusing means that what is won in focused clarity could
be lost in obscured context. Languageandcommunication in one word looks
like a mistake, but it is a deliberate construction. Although there are historical
reasons for arguing that language is one thing and communication something
else, and that they should therefore be kept separate, there are just as good
reasons for handling them as one, as a whole. A clash creates epistemological
turmoil, as will be seen.
This mini-introduction illustrates and implicitly initiates a first problema-
tising of two main aspects of this chapter’s two sub-theses – the ‘separable
inseparability’ of L&C as a whole with parts, and an assumed general blindness
to L&C’s crucial role in constructing knowledge (‘disciplining’). The main
hypothesis, reflected in the title, is that such a blindness, somewhat surprisingly,
may concern two major ‘worldwide’ well-established educational and academic
fields – didactics and curriculum theory – which seemingly refrain from see
education as L&C.
I am not the first to claim the omnipresence of L&C. In his seminal book
Education and Democracy, Dewey writes: “Not only is social life identical with
communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is
educative” (1916, p. 6). Further, he holds that, in an advanced culture, which
necessarily moves from life as education to education as formal schooling,
“much of that which has to be learned is stored in symbols” (p. 10). While
DOI: 10.4324/9781003099390-13
Education as language and communication 235
Dewey, in this book, just sketches communication and semiotics but elaborates
deeply on education, Habermas (1987), by contrast, theorises communication
in-depth and just sketches its systemic connection to institutionalised knowl-
edge and thus to education at large (Murphy and Fleming, 2010). However, his
theories of how communicational acts relate to institutionalised knowledge can
be combined with the work of theorists such as Bakhtin, Bühler, and Halliday
to form an overarching framework that can help in discussing the language
and/as communication paradox, as well as recognising the principle connec-
tions between knowledge forms and communicational acts (see Figure 12.1).
This ‘bringing-together’ is the key issue addressed in this chapter.
Structuring the chapter

These views have several implications for the structuring of the chapter. A first
is to increase the likelihood of there being little concern about the issue in the
fields mentioned. A second is to show in what sense education is L&C, which,
as a third, calls for an explanation of why L&C should be seen as a whole.
Finally, the context of the chapter is a book comparing two educational fields
and aiming for a dialogue between them. Hence, the fourth implication should
be to look for inherited issues in other contributions.
In order to support these assumptions and hypotheses, the chapter is struc-
tured as follows. It first focuses on adequate fields and subfields within educa-
tion, inspected by means of simple content analyses of how these selected data
sources have handled L&C. Further, some ‘neighbouring fields’ with seem-
ingly growing awareness are highlighted to serve as a contrast. Some key trends
regarding L&C awareness are then briefly summarised. Further, main elements
of an overall framework based on utterance/genre theory are outlined. Ele-
ments are used as simple analytic tools and categories for communicational
positioning, applied to didactic challenges related to L&C blindness. Position-
ing here implies perspectives on three levels. First, it can reveal background-
ing of certain communicational aspects in teaching and learning (educational
practice). Second, it can help describing ideological positions in educational
studies. Third, it can, on a meta-level, be used as a self-/critical methodological
tool in educational sciences.
The chapter deals with various fields. At this stage, a common-sense, every-
day understanding of language and of communication could be that language
is a whole, a system, combining grammar (syntax) and vocabulary (semantics).
Communication is hence language used in context (pragmatics). This view
separates them. There are disturbingly many variations, though, of both. Beau-
grande (1982) found more than 80 kinds of grammar, and Wikipedia (2020)
lists close to 100 types, fields, and theories of communication. Yet, utterly
simplified, both can basically be reduced to complex interplays of different
versions of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (Morris, 1946).
236 Sigmund Ongstad
Further on the matter of fields: although I have mentioned Dewey’s broad

conception of education, this chapter confines itself to institutionalised edu-
cation. What is meant by didactics and curriculum theory, including disciplinary
didactics, I leave to this volume’s introduction and other chapters where these
fields are clarified (Krogh, Qvortrup and Graf, this volume; Vollmer, this vol-
ume; Schneuwly, this volume). These fields are now often termed educational
sciences. In addition, I touch upon particular school subjects where awareness
of L&C has been studied. In the Anglo-Saxon world, curriculum studies and
curriculum theory are more prominent (Pinar et al., 1995; Pinar, 2013). How-
ever, Gundem (1995, 2011) has shown that Norwegian and European didactics
received strong impulses from curriculum theory, which implies that they may
be blurred. In the following section, though, I keep them separate.
Finally, it should be made clear that even if the chapter begins with empirical
text studies, it is mainly theoretical, focusing on how L&C is amalgamated and
how aspects of this ‘whole’ can be seen as elements in disciplinarities of school
subjects and academic fields and disciplines.
Inspected sources
Out of the vast field of curriculum studies and theories, only two texts have
been inspected, first 39 contributions in the International Handbook of Curricular
Research (IHCR) (Pinar, 2013), and second the entry ‘Curriculum Theory’ in
Wikipedia (2020). A Swedish contribution in IHCR does mention topics such
as frame factor theory (used by Bernstein and Lundgren), the notion of the
linguistic turn, different studies of language in classrooms, and poststructuralist
critique of educational texts. Wikipedia does not mention communication:
‘language’ is mentioned twice but is not an issue. The outcome of the inspec-
tion is clear – neither language nor communication is an issue in these sources.
Googling the Danish term didaktik and the Norwegian term didaktikk on
Wikipedia (2020), and didaktikk in SNL (2020), there is no mention of L&C.
From the didactic field, Imsen (2016) and Imsen (2014) have been chosen.
These two textbook volumes are of course not ‘representative’. Both books are
re-edited, based on earlier versions, the first stemming from the 1980s. They
are chosen as ‘Norwegian’ examples of influential textbooks read by genera-
tions of student teachers.
Imsen’s Lærerens verden (The Teacher’s World; 2016) was simplistically con-
tent checked. The following topics associated with L&C were found (my
translations): “the frame factor theory” (pp. 170–179), “language in curri-
cula” (pp. 291–293), “situated learning” (p. 366), and “knowledge and codes”
(pp. 375–377). To conclude, this much-used textbook does touch upon some
few aspects, but L&C as such and how L&C might relate to education and
didactics is not an issue.
In Imsen’s 2014 book, Elevens verden (The Student’s World), Chapter 6
describes the ‘constructivist theory of learning’ (pp. 145–182), Chapter 7
“socio-cultural perspectives of learning” (pp. 183–214), and Chapter 8 “lan-

guage, thinking, and communication” (pp. 217–240). Since the book is within
the field of pedagogical psychology, it does mention the traditional discussion
of different theories of thinking, such as Piaget versus Vygotsky, which contains
L&C topics. Nevertheless, an overall conclusion is that, although language and
communication are topics, there is no problematisation of education as C&L.
Roger Säljö’s Læring i praksis (Learning in Practice; 2001) could be placed
within the realm of pedagogy and didactics, as learning is the key issue. Although
it too focuses on the inevitable issue of Piaget versus Vygotsky, it extends the
horizon by adding important topics such as communication situatedness (con-
text), de- and re-contextualisations, written language as a tool, and learning
in new communicative practices. Yet, even this book does not question how
pedagogy or didactics as fields and disciplines may be formed by L&C.
Didaktikk for grunnskolen (Didactics for Primary School/Education;
Halvorsen, 2008) is a textbook for teacher education combining didactics
and disciplinary didactics. Neither language nor communication are keywords
in the register. The didactic models presented incorporate neither language,
semiotics, nor communication. The book Språk, kommunikasjon og didaktikk
(Language, Communication, and Didactics; Ongstad, 2004a) appears in the
references, but not in the text. A key text by Mellin-Olsen (Mellin-Olsen,
1989) is mentioned, but not his radical claim for new discourse for disciplinary
didactics (Mellin-Olsen, 1989, p. 4). A conclusion is that issues of L&C have
not had a significant impact either on the editor’s article on didactics or on
articles covering school subjects.
Taken together, these text inspections in three interrelated fields indicate
that discussions of relationships between education and L&C are scarce or non-
existent. Even within disciplinary didactics, problematisation seems unusual,
although there exist early scattered signs of dealing with the issue, such as
Mellin-Olsen, mentioned earlier (1989) and Ongstad (2004a). With some
exceptions, there is hardly any mention of L&C as posing challenges in the
study of curriculum and didactics, or of how L&C is part of their disciplinarity.
L&C seems taken for granted. To conclude – L&C awareness in educational
sciences is low.
Signs of awareness of education as L&C

in other texts
Taken as a whole, the chapter’s main assumption seems to hold, at least regard-
ing the texts inspected, albeit they are admittedly not the newest. A search in
neighbouring fields reveals a growing concern with the role of language, for
teaching, for learning, and for shaping knowledge. An interesting case of aware-
ness is a rearrangement found in Svein Sjøberg’s model of science studies. In a
much-used textbook in science studies, Naturfag som allmenndannelse (Natural
Science as General Education), a flowchart model of science studies places
238 Sigmund Ongstad
education in the middle, with various elements of science to the left and ele-
ments of pedagogy to the right (Sjøberg, 1998, p. 31). The elements are drawn
as ‘boxes’ connected by lines, and the ‘divide’ is kept rather strict. However, in
a research article published three years later, a minor box/element entitled “lan-
guage theory, rhetoric, and semiotics” has been added. This points directly to
science studies and is not related to science or pedagogy (Sjøberg, 2001, p. 14).
The crucial L&C issue is brought to the fore, but not further problematised.
However, it did represent a possible shift in the air.
A field of increased importance both for didactics and for curriculum theory
is the implementation of curricular reforms. A second case stems from the
Council of Europe project, Language(s) of Schooling, which investigated the
role of language in European curricula for school subjects (CoE, 2009; Beacco
et al., 2016). This comprehensive project documented that different school sub-
jects were constructed rather differently linguistically and that such differences
mostly were not addressed. Silencing has made possible decades of increased
curricular homogenisations and thus a convenient simplification of curriculum
challenges, turning school subjects to plain content (Sivesind, 2013; Ongstad,
2010b, 2014b). National curricula in Europe treat school subjects as compat-
ible and equal entities, repressing the importance of disciplinary difference and
a need for differentiation. The role of L&C in constructing school subjects has
mainly remained inherent.
A third example is the Norwegian reform Knowledge Promotion,
launched in 2006 (UF, 2006). All school subjects for years 1–13 in this
radical reform had to clarify, within each written curriculum, what role the
five basic competencies – oral skills, reading, writing, numeracy, and digital
skills – should have for learning in each school subject. Of these five, the
first three clearly concern L&C. All school-subject teachers are expected to
integrate the skills. This somewhat invasive grip by the ministry has made
the role of three language modes explicit. Language as disciplinarity has
at least become an implicit issue. Yet, still there is no mention in national,
written curricula of how a school subject or a scientific discipline may work
as communication, or of how disciplinarities may be constituted by L&C
(Ongstad, 2010b).
Hence, there is a growing concern among researchers in some fields about
low awareness. More recently, the intimate and complex relationship between
disciplinarity and discursivity, for example, has been problematised (Kelly, Luke
and Green, 2008; Krogh, 2015; Langer, 2011; Ongstad, 2014b; Vollmer, 2006;
Beacco et al., 2016). So, there are, in various fields, signs of change. Initiatives
mainly stem from L&C fields, often L1 research.
First, in communicational theory one can, from time to time, register claims
that disciplinarity cannot exist outside communication (Habermas, 1987; Ong-
stad, 2014a; Vollmer, 2007; Christie and Maton, 2011). Key elements of com-
munication such as utterances, texts, genres, and discourses are in these works
seen as key aspects of constructing disciplinarities. As hinted, a key pattern is

to see communication as a meeting between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
(Morris, 1946). This triadic view of both language and on communication as
well as semiotics makes possible a necessary first clarification of what is ‘lan-
guage’ and what is ‘communication’, and hence how they are related and can
form a whole. So far, traditional views have kept them apart simply by defining
language as a quite closed system. Consequently, communication is perceived
as language in use, much in line with Saussure’s discrimination between la
langue and la parole (Saussure, 1916/1974). There are reasons to believe that this
divide has inhibited L&C awareness within education, supported by national
school grammars which cement this perception and by influential Chomskyan
perceptions of language as a (closed) system (Chomsky, 1965).
Second, disciplinarity in school and curricula is questioned, both in cur-
riculum studies (Pinar, 2013; Deng and Luke, 2007; Kelly, Luke and Green,
2008) and in communication theory and literacy studies (Ongstad, 2007a;
CoE, 2009; Christie and Maton, 2011; Langer, 2011; Krogh, Christensen and
Jakobsen, 2015). Third, since 2006, disciplinarity in Norwegian school has, as
we have seen, been ‘invaded’ by three components traditionally significant for
L1: reading, writing, and ‘oral’. They are given a role as disciplinary means,
or modes, by which a school subject expresses itself and develops. The new
2020 reform continues to insist on this idea (Ongstad, 2020). Fourth, as shown
in Table 12.1, didactic triads, for instance teacher–content–learner, could be
seen as versions of communicational triads: in an utterance someone will utter
something to someone. By uttering, one combines form, content, and use at
once in context (Smidt, 2007).
Uttering in contexts = communication
Classical triads in didactics and L&C

A challenge when coming to terms with L&C awareness in education is how
to position L&C relative to, for instance, disciplinary and general didactics.
Strangely enough, there is a rather low awareness of similarities between par-
ticular historical triadic sets, both of didactic concepts and of values on the
one hand and L&C concepts on the other. Through history, several sets have
occurred. They are ‘inherited’ by lines that can be drawn horizontally and verti-
cally between various key concepts.
The double systemness arises mainly from a combination of two basic views,
first education as communication (Dewey, 1916), and second utterance as basic
for communication (Bakhtin, 1986; Ongstad, 2004b). Sentence is language,
utterance communication. Applying a framework described as communicative
positioning (Ongstad, 2007b), which builds on the triadic nature of utterances
shown in Table 12.1, enables some general didactic priorities to be analysed as
240 Sigmund Ongstad
Table 12.1 Overview over epistemologically related triads in different fields and disciplinaries
L&C Key Aspects Form Content Act
Rhetoric:: pathos logos ethos

Classical Bildung: beauty truth goodness
Pedagogical philosophy: aesthetics epistemology ethics
Pestalozzi’s metaphors: heart head hand
Common didactic concerns: feelings thought will
Didactics: teacher subject student
Linguistics and semiotics: syntax semantics pragmatics
Utterances: structure reference act
Communication: utterer content receiver
communication. A major question is, at the next step, where in a triad a focus
may be placed or positioned – on students/learning, content/disciplines, or
teacher/teaching (see Friesen, this volume).
If triadic aspects in the work of Bühler (1934/1965), Bakhtin (1986),
Halliday (1994), Habermas (1987), Martin (1997), and many others are
combined, positioning(s) can be given both broad and more specific ana-
lytic functions. The framework is seen as semiotic and hence multimodal
(Kress, 2010) and is not restricted to verbal language (Morris, 1946). Meth-
odologically, this may work as a tool for operationalising various methods,
approaches, and designs. Finally, it is a crucial tool for validation of research
(Ongstad, 2015).
All kinds of research will have to deal with the question of essence, a
challenge closely related to shifts of paradigms and battles over dominance
in scientific fields over time. Posner (1984) claimed that in the 1930s many
theorists turned away from essentialisms. Against atomism and mechanism,
they developed a holistic approach; against formalism, they investigated
sign function; against psychologism, they showed the possibility of an inter-
subjective analysis of meaning; against biographism and historicism, they
favoured synchronic studies; against academic conservatism, they intro-
duced criteria for the criticism of sign behaviour; against the self-isolation
of the academic disciplines, they practised interdisciplinarity. Later stud-
ies of knowledge regimes through history have switched between a search
for generalisations and for differentiations. Without ending in grand the-
ory, it seems necessary to generalise, searching for possible kinds of L&C
wholeness.
Utterances and genres as disciplinarities

Utterance is the key to L&C seen as a whole. It moves the perception from
a dyadic sign, defined by Saussure (1916/1974) as opposition between and
integration of signifier and signified, over to a triadic understanding. Utterance,

as defined by Bakhtin (1986), is seen as opposition between and integration of
structure, reference, and action, and implies a shift of perspective from language
to communication by incorporating language (Ongstad, 2004b). Utterances in,
for example, teaching, school subjects, and learning can be studied as simul-
taneous form, content, and action (and thus as aesthetics, epistemology, and
ethics). Triadic theories tend to forget that utterances are both produced and
perceived in contextual time and space, sometimes termed chronotope (Ongs-
tad, 2014a). These two inseparable aspects are both incorporated in utterances
and exist as context.
Therefore, it seems adequate to extend the key set of components from three
to five (see Figure 12.1) to reach a more holistic view, keeping in mind that to
clarify how the three and the two are integrated has proved to be a demanding
intellectual task (Ongstad, 2014c).
The five basic aspects can be integrated and further related to different aca-
demic fields and school subjects. Somewhat stereotypically modelled, form is
at the forefront in art, reference in science, action in communicational stud-
ies, time in history, and place/space in geography. To this double set of fives
can be added five key fields of knowledge: aesthetics, epistemology, ethics,
chronology, and topology. Just to make the point clear – all aspects are found
in all utterances, and thus in all school subjects and academic disciplines. The
result of these coincidences can be pinpointed as disciplinarity as discursivity (or
in German, Fachlichkeit als Sprachlichkeit (Vollmer, 2006). A special case of this
systemness then is education as C&L.
However, utterance as such is insufficient to explain educational discipli-
narities. There are kinds of utterance, and thus kinds of educational, didactic,
professional, and disciplinary genre (see Figure 12.2).
A consequence of seeing utterances as dialogical with genres, marked by
arrows pointing both ways, is that even genres should be defined by their bal-
ance and the priority of the five basic aspects. This further implies that genres
will play a crucial role in establishing specific disciplinarities within different
fields of knowledge. Finally, disciplinary genres and research genres are crucial
for methodologies and validation (Ongstad, 2014c).
Form Content
Time Space
Act
Figure 12.1 Utterance in context as a combination of five constituents

242 Sigmund Ongstad
Form Content
LEVEL OF
UTTERANCE
Time Space
Act
LEVEL OF GENRE
Figure 12.2 Five basic aspects constituting utterance as communication. Utterance and
genre are modelled as a shortened or cut pentagonal pyramid with utterance
as a concrete surface plane and genre as an underlying abstract part, marked by
dotted lines.The pentagonal relationship between the five basic aspects applies
for both levels.The double-headed arrows between the two planes symbolise
the dynamic, dialogical, reciprocal relationship between of utterance and genre.
These processes work both in the moment of uttering and of interpreting
(seen synchronically) and over time through communicational development of
utterers/interpreters (seen diachronically).
Source: © The Author
Positioning L&C in educational texts

This section of the chapter exemplifies the different roles that key aspects can be
given in educational texts and contexts. The first of four concerns a national L1
curriculum, and the second some national curricula in mathematics education.
The third and fourth cases exemplify what could be called critical positioning
of discourses in didactics and education. Examples of other studies of different
fields based on versions of the framework, are Ongstad (2014a, 2014b) and
Smidt (2007, 2008).
The national curriculum for Norwegian (as L1) in Norway from 1997 struc-
tured its introduction in a significant way (see Table 12.2). The first six sec-
tions describe the essence of Norwegian as a school subject, each ending with
a slogan-like conclusion (the Norwegian originals are put in brackets). The
ministry later published a translation in English.
Based on this clarity and precision about just what school-subject Nor-
wegian (L1) should be, one could claim that the L1 curriculum in the L97
curriculum had a high disciplinary (self-)consciousness. However, there is an
interesting hidden connection between these descriptions of key elements of
the school-subject Norwegian. Given some rewriting and paraphrasing of these
six text elements, or slogans, the subject Norwegian could first be said to be
about identity and experience, foregrounding form, and structure, connected
Table 12.2 The national curriculum for Norwegian (as L1)
The official English of the curriculum The official, original version in Norwegian
The subject Norwegian, then, is about identity [Norsk er eit identitetsfag]

The subject Norwegian, then, is about experience [Norsk er eit opplevingsfag]
The subject Norwegian, then, is about [Norsk er eit danningsfag]
becoming educated
The subject Norwegian, then, is about culture [Norsk er eit kulturfag]
The subject Norwegian, then, is about skills [Norsk er eit dugleiksfag]
The subject Norwegian, then, is about [Norsk er eit kommunikasjonsfag]
communication
Source:To the left KUF (1999, pp. 121–123), to the right KUF (1996)
to the learning self or person. Second, it could be about Bildung (becoming

educated) and culture, foregrounding content and knowledge connected to the
world as subject matter. Third, it could be said to be skills and communica-
tion, foregrounding act, use, and function, connecting to others as society. As
a whole, these aspects are what Habermas terms life-world (Habermas, 1987;
Ongstad, 2010a).
The notion foregrounding is used deliberately to make explicit that all discur-
sive key aspects would be involved in the disciplinary key elements/curricular
goals mentioned (along with time and space), not just the focused ones. L1, as
responsible for much explicit L&C knowledge in school, is the school subject
above all that one could expect to have developed a meta-understanding. Yet
the systemic discursive and disciplinary coincidences that actually do exist in
this L1 curriculum are still not seen. These striking coincidences have (there-
fore?) silently vanished from later L1 curricula (MER, 2010; NDFT, 2013).
A second example can be found in Ongstad (2020), which studies the dis-
ciplinarities of all national L1 curricula since 1939. The last, in use from 2020,
is characterised by long rows of bullet points, mostly one-liners with a particu-
lar mix of epistemological verbs and disciplinary nouns. These one-liners are
hidden speech acts, establishing a regime for the assessment of student disci-
plinarity termed ‘competence’. The pattern is global and international – the
structure of each point is dominated by a certain verb–noun connection. Verbs
are expected to have performative character, being doings (competences).
Nouns are disciplinary content sub-elements or knowings. Together they form
(expected) competences. Within the set of competences or bullet-point lists,
there lurks a potential tug of war between different forms or aspects of discipli-
narities. What is L&C and what is education is hard to say.
Further, a similar and extensive study was, as mentioned, undertaken by the
CoE in 2007 (CoE, 2009). Researchers studied the role of language in national
school-subject curricula in Europe. Examples can be given from a comparative
study of some national curricula in mathematics (Ongstad, 2007a). Taking the
244 Sigmund Ongstad
point of departure in form prioritises aesthetics. The Swedish curriculum, for

example, stressed the importance of mathematics as aesthetics (Hudson and
Nyström, 2007). Since aesthetics was valued and prioritised, form, structure,
and syntax were foregrounded. Taking the point of departure in knowledge
prioritises epistemology. Singer (2007) pointed to less weight being given in
the new Romanian curricula to memorising and reproducing mathematical
terminology (formal content and knowledge elements). This represented a
conscious shift within semantic and epistemological aspects of the school sub-
ject. Departing from action prioritises ethics. Pepin (2007) showed how newer
UK curricula in mathematics repeatedly underlined the importance of inter-
preting, discussing, and synthesising, almost at every course level. The weight
placed on such processes represented a strengthening of the pragmatic action
aspects of mathematical language.
An overall conclusion after studying these written curricula was that math-
ematics education had not yet really taken on the challenge of clarifying inti-
mate relationships between the school subject’s disciplinarity and discursivity
(Fachlichkeit und Sprachlichkeit; Vollmer, 2006; Ongstad, 2007a). One reason
might be that language is still being objectified as a closed system, rather than
seeing L&C as semiotic, relational, and contextual (Ongstad, 2006, 2007b).
Another reason could be that linguistic scholars, pointing out the patterns, may
not yet have enough disciplinary insight to be able to achieve a fruitful dialogue
with educators in other disciplines. (In Ongstad (2006) Mathematics and Math-
ematics Education: Language and/or Communication? a framework is outlined and
exemplified in detail.)
Schools of thought, ideologies in disciplines, trends in understanding knowl-
edge, and differing research designs often encounter critique from other direc-
tions. Such criticisms may find the theoretical bases for projects and theories
too focused or too narrow. Taking the point of departure in the main aspects
of the utterance, one can do critical positioning of fields, research, and projects
within education. One can search for possible imbalances between said and
unsaid, and further try to make explicit communicational patterns in disciplin-
ary utterances and genres that are characteristic of certain didactic discourses.
To illustrate rather simplistically: if the utterer’s or the text’s perspective or
personal style is exaggerated, the approach can be criticised of subjectivism,
expressivism, or formalism. If exact content seems excessively stressed or exag-
gerated, theories can be criticised of objectivism, positivism, or essentialism.
Overstressing use aspects can lead to criticisms such as activism, functionalism,
or pragmatism. As can be seen, such characterisations parallel communicational
triads, echoing some of the shifts in trends in the 1930s that Posner (1984)
pointed to.
As stated earlier, a restricted theory of utterance is insufficient to explain
disciplinarities and concurrences between education and L&C. The level of
genre, hence context, is needed (Ongstad, 2010b, 2013). According to Bakhtin
(1986), there exists a dialogical relationship between utterances and genres.
Different kinds of utterances can be perceived as (different) sub-genres. Hence,

different speech-act verbs will play an important role for establishing research
discourses, for instance in academic texts: document, argue, present, compare,
comment, evaluate, claim, refer, admit, hypothesise, discuss, suggest, define,
problematise, operationalise, exemplify, focus, deduce, indicate, exclude, illus-
trate, show, . . . and so on (Ongstad, 2014b). These speech acts, verbs, and
functions may, when repeated, structured, and formalised, function as research
(sub-)genres and (sub-)discourses.
I end this section by stressing that what has been outlined is a framework,
not a method. The main line of argument has been to make likely, describe,
and exemplify close connections between L&C on the one hand and educa-
tion and educational sciences on the other by means of key concepts from the
framework.
Educational sciences and the L&C challenge
Points of tangency
It has not been within the scope of this chapter to analyse possible similarities
and differences between didactics and curriculum theory, or their disciplinari-
ties and methodologies, in the light of L&C. However, there are possible con-
tact points with relevant issues in other contributions in this volume. There are
threads to the triadic triangle presented by Friesen, to Krogh and Qvortrup’s
meta-reflective didactics and to didactic ethos, to Vollmer’s outline of disciplin-
ary didactics in Germany and his advocacy for a general disciplinary didactics,
to Schneuwly’s concept of didactic transposition(s) developed in a French con-
text, to Friesen’s and Deng’s concerns for content, and finally to Kullenberg
and Uljens’ life-world phenomenology (in a possible dialogue with a Haberma-
sian life-world perception). Of these, I have chosen to expand further on the
didactic triad (just briefly), disciplinary didactic as didactisation (at length), and
disciplinary didactic ethos and content (both briefly). At the very end, I round
up self-critically and suggest a future disciplinary place for the framework.
The didactic triad

First, if didactics is seen as triadic L&C, each of the aspects in the didactic triad
(Friesen, this volume) can be further differentiated, discursively. In the most
reduced version of the triad, focusing utterances, a teacher expresses, refers,
and acts, as does a subject’s written curriculum, and a student receives what
is expressed, referred, and done. As a thought example of mis-/communica-
tion, a teacher might prioritise the expressive aspect (stressing emotionality)
and aesthetics, while a subject’s content in fact has prioritised essence and thus
epistemology, while in turn a student might prioritise effect and thus ethics, or
simply choose to be entertained rather than educated. This overdose of Es is
246 Sigmund Ongstad
of course a cheap aesthetic trick to get across this chapter’s epistemological key
point to enhance its effect on readers.
Yet the preceding reasoning follows a too-simplistic logic of single-chained
utterances, one after the other. In reality, all teaching, ‘knowledging’, and
learning happen in inevitable discourses/genres (systemic contexts) – you can-
not not use genres. In the context of education, one can speak of a multitude
of disciplinary genres, of didactic genres, and of research genres. For instance,
the Norwegian 1997 L1 curriculum contained more than 100 genres. Further,
all methods in research and teaching can be seen as genres. Finally, genres
generally appear in a mix, unless they are focused and taught meta-discursively
to reduce blindness and increase genre awareness. Dealing with didactic issues
based on L&C theories in the future will encounter increased complexity.
On didactisation
Didactisation brings us back to Mellin-Olsen’s wish in 1989:
If the disciplinary didacticians can free themselves from the original [peda-
gogical, SO’s remark] discourse, the didactic alphabet can be replaced with
statements like: Which consequences will it have for communication of
knowledge if the germ and the preconditions for knowledge lie in lan-
guage, in activity, in dialogue about validity, in experience, in the human
construction of the world?
(Mellin-Olsen, 1989, pp. 3–4)
His if actually did happen, eventually. Over the next 30 years, and mostly isolated
from pedagogy and general didactics, teachers and teacher educators in Norway
and Scandinavia began didacticising their school subjects and disciplines (Krogh
and Qvortrup, this volume; Ongstad, 2017). L&C and subject didactics were
brought much closer by examining how their disciplinarities were constructed
(Vollmer, 2006, this volume; Krogh, 2015; Krogh, Christensen and Jakobsen,
2015; Green, 2018; Ongstad, 2014a, 2014b, 2020; Beacco et al., 2016).
I find Vollmer’s description of the development of subject didactics as sci-
entific disciplines (in Germany) to be quite close to the history of disciplin-
ary didactics in Norway (Vollmer, this volume; Ongstad, 2017). An important
similarity in the light of comparison and dialogue is the claim that this growth
has, to a high degree, happened independently of pedagogy and general didac-
tics. Using the framework to position the two fields communicationally, a main
difference could be that general didactics is to a higher degree a given field and
has a relatively more stable disciplinary content, while disciplinary didactics are
relatively new fields, in search of new content, on the move, characterised by
processes in progress.
I find Krogh and Qvortrup’s contribution, taking one point of departure
(among others) in the concept of didactisation and working their way further,
adequate and stimulating. Yet, in the particular context of this volume, I would
like to hint at yet another possible direction for future research. In the 1970s
Schwab was concerned by a deep split between languages for theory and for
practice (Schwab, 2013). A common perception has been to see teaching and
learning primarily as doing, and didactics and curriculum theory mainly as
thinking. This contrast mostly goes hand in hand with keeping a traditional
split between practice and theory. A counter-thought might be that practice
represents just as much thinking as theory, and theory just as much doing as
practice. Both could be seen as both/and, but they differ in the weight they put
on different L&C aspects.
Encouraged by a comment from an anonymous reviewer, I would like to
develop on the idea that L&C might be connected to the splitting of theory
from practice. Twenty years ago, I saw didactisation as a discursive, semiotic,
or textual process that weaves a subject or field of knowledge closer together
with meta-knowledge of the subject knowledge in new contexts, under pres-
sure from a changing society. Hence, didactisation can be seen as driven by
the ‘languaging’ of experiences and discoveries. It therefore adds to, develops,
and changes subjects and disciplines. To pinpoint and exemplify – after a year-
long international debate over the school subject English as L1, Elbow (1990)
famously asked, “What is English?” He answered, radically, “The question is
the answer.” Questioning educational subjects is didactisation. Challenging,
enhancing, criticising practice (including one’s own) means reflecting over
and languaging experience. Such knowledge is new, heterodox, subjective,
not yet validated, still marked by knowledging as non-finished processes. It
seeks out for dialogues with practices. Its L&C priority is within the realm of
pragmatics. Referring to the outlined framework, it relates to doing. Didac-
tics, by contrast, is more of a given (established), doxic, intersubjective (‘objec-
tive’), validated field. It seeks dialogues with (other) theories. Its L&C priority
is within the realm of semantics. Referring to the framework, it relates to
thinking.
To keep the two too separate might contribute to increased practicism and
theorism. So how could L&C be a bridge over such troubled waters? Because
L&C is inevitable for both production and dissemination of knowledge.
Because the building blocks of conscious understanding consist of concepts
made explicit with words. Because utterances create coherence between them,
and thus further lead to enhanced and growing recognition. Because kinds of
knowledge presuppose kinds of genres (both disciplinary and didactic ones).
Because meta-language helps to distance a too-narrow teaching, knowledging,
and learning.
An advanced meta-language that is at hand, along with L&C, is philoso-
phy, which seeks to comprehend the dynamics of aesthetics, epistemology, and
ethics, echoing both Aristotelian and classical triadic values for education (as
shown in Table 12.1). My own description of these systemic connections is
mainly (meta-)thinking. However, there is no direct, given route from this
248 Sigmund Ongstad
abstract thinking to concrete doing, from an is to an ought. A future fate of

advanced disciplinary didactics, comparative disciplinary didactics, general dis-
ciplinary didactics, general didactics, and advanced curriculum theory could
ironically be that all go academic, seeking an ever ‘researchable’ is and resisting
a normative ought. In striving to become accepted members of academia as part
of professions, educational sciences risk their ethos. Again, the solution is not
either/or, but both/and. Researchers need to recognise, in and by L&C, what
their discursive paths from their own discourse are – not ‘down’ to, but ‘over to’
practitioners. Likewise, teachers should be educated and experienced enough
to see connections between their own didactic practice (and discourses) and
what researchers are up to.
Further, there is a challenge regarding power and powerlessness for didactics
and curriculum theory. In one sense, these two fields have a significant influ-
ence on education as major contributors to and critics of curricula all over
the world. By the same token, in leaving didactisation to teachers and disci-
plinary didacticians, they seem almost powerless to suggest, describe, differ-
entiate, and evaluate school content. Here the two differ. Curriculum theory
has historically paid less attention to content, while didactics has traditionally
focused content, though often as a mere box for anything and everything. As a
contrast, ever more self-conscious disciplinary didactics has, through discursive
self-reflection with language as explicit means, improved its understanding of
subject differences and of the role L&C can play in this recognition.
Disciplinary didactic ethos

In Norway, disciplinary didactics has established itself in teacher education.
It obtained its power partly by gradually squeezing out the traditional field
methods (common up till the late 1980s) and partly even pedagogy (and thus
didactics) owing to a certain reluctance to deal with specificities of educational
knowledge (Ongstad, 2017). Yet, advanced disciplinary didactics now seems
to be in a similar position to general didactics earlier. Both fields have fled
into thinking (‘reflection’ and ‘theory’). Both have become academic fields
by distancing themselves from doing (practice as acting). Professionalisation of
traditional professions has contributed to a split between research and teaching,
both in schools and in teacher education. Within research, theoretical orienta-
tion has got the upper hand over a more practical orientation.
In the Introduction, Krogh et al. raise the issue of the ethos of didactics.
They point to two risks among several hinted at by Hopmann. First, there is
a danger of letting down the teachers and their students to whom didacticians
are accountable in the first place. Second, Hopmann appeals to scholars to look
for options for acting in a didactically responsible manner. To initiate dialogues
between didactics and curriculum theory risks ending on the highest abstract
level and may challenge such expectations. An ethical solution could there-
fore be to help researchers finding paths back to practice. Krogh and Qvortrup
(this volume), partly inspired by Foucault, suggest there is a need to develop a

disciplinary didactic ethos. They see the core of that ethos as an inseparable dual-
ity of acting and reflection. However, as they make clear, different communica-
tional theories such as ‘systems theory’ and ‘theory of communicative disciplinary
didactics’ offer different perspectives, and in the next round, different didactics,
for instance for acting and thinking (Krogh and Qvortrup, this volume).
Content: and thus, knowledge and Bildung

If pedagogy, general didactics, and curriculum theory could make the effort to
look over the fence into disciplinary didactics all over Western Europe, they
might find that content has been a key issue for 30 years. It is rather within these
three fields that a differentiated understanding of content has been missing and
missed (Friesen, this volume; Deng, this volume). What pedagogy, general didac-
tics, curriculum theory, disciplinary didactics, comparative disciplinary didactics,
and general disciplinary didactics all mostly seem to miss is not to describe,
criticise, or suggest content or content elements. It is to get into dialogue with
subject didactics about what particular school-subject content does (or does
not). In such an enterprise L&C is needed, but a sufficient awareness of L&C is
still not in place. A bridge is shared concepts. At a minimum, the fairly idealistic
idea of Bildung cannot be achieved without knowing what impact different
kinds of content have on students (if any), especially in the long run. Further, as
underlined, content does not come as a stream of separate utterances. Content
will always be discoursed by certain kinds of communication, by genres. The
discursive set of disciplinary genres defines the disciplinarity of school subjects
and of academic disciplines. A field that only knows its own discursive set has
blinkers on, and in that sense is still blind. Hence, in the educational sciences,
each should be aware of the others’ fields. Such insight is only available through
L&C. Yet L&C is itself blind without a dialogue with subjects and disciplines.
Although this chapter is critical of the low awareness of L&C in educational
sciences, and therefore has a somewhat different scope than most of the other
chapters, it nevertheless has aimed to connect to the overall project. It should
be admitted that many of the initiatives for increased understanding of the role
of L&C in education and research stem from scholars in L&C – for example, as
mentioned, Christie, Green, Gundem, Krogh, Langer, Martin, Smidt, Vollmer,
and myself. In the Scandinavian context, this ‘movement’ has spread from L1 to
disciplinary didactics. It has also slowly established scattered contact points with
scholars of didactics and pedagogy, as demonstrated in this volume’s introduction.
From (self-)critical L&C towards integration

of L&C in educational sciences?
The key issue in this chapter has been concurrences claimed between L&C and
education, in most extreme form claiming that education is communication.
250 Sigmund Ongstad
Hence, if educational disciplinarity and L&C (discursivity), partly paradoxically,

are seen as both amalgamated and separable, future research could investigate
whether they mainly differ or mainly coincide in different fields. Such con-
trasting could in turn lead to more principled, self-critical questions: to what
degree can L&C theories really describe school subjects? Is it helpful to describe
disciplines/school subjects from a purely discursive perspective? What is a neces-
sary knowledge of L&C for teachers and educational researchers? Should L&C
be kept separate from, or be integrated in, school subjects and disciplines?
Such questions cannot be answered in the context of this chapter. In my
case, they are rather (self-)critical outcomes of more than three decades of
problematising how disciplinary knowledge can be constructed semiotically:
in other words, how signs, utterances, genres, and communicational ideologies
can be seen as crucial parts of different disciplinarities. Many contributions are
collected in the volume Ongstad (2014a), Disciplinarity and/as Communication:
Discursive and Semiotic Perspectives on Education.
Nevertheless, this present chapter concludes that questions and critique based
on L&C should, in the spirit of Morris (1946), Bakhtin (1986), and Habermas
(1987), be part of the sub-study in master’s and doctoral studies within the
educational sciences that is called general theory of knowledge (‘Wissenchaft-
stheorie’). Such integration of L&C in educational studies could establish fora
for further dialogues, both between theory and practice and between the edu-
cational sciences.
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Index
Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on
the corresponding page. Page numbers followed by ‘n’ indicate a note.
Abraham, U. 157n1 Association for Curriculum Studies of

academic: anglophone 157; disciplines China 209
28, 31–34, 146, 157; discourses 26, Association for Fachdidaktik 146
34–35; education community 25, 31, 34; Autio, T. 1
general didactics 128; knowledge 27, 33
Academic Society for Civic Education 103 Bakhtin, M. 129, 191, 240–241, 250
access disciplines 32–33 Bateson, G. 65
accountability movement 34 Baumert, J. 142–143
Acta Didactica Norden 121 Bayrhuber, H. 157n1
action competence 107–108 Becher, T. 165
actualisations 122–123 behaviourism 15, 66
aesthetic-expressive encounters 142 Bengtsson, J. 194
aesthetics 244 Benner, D. 92
After Virtue (MacIntyre) 47 Bereiter, C. 86–87, 90–91, 95–96
alienation 77 Bereiter’s forms of knowledge 96,
Allais, S 104 97; see also forms of knowledge;
Allgemeinbildung (Bildung for all) 28 Wagenschein’s forms of
Almqvist, J. 2, 124 knowledge 89, 97
American curriculum theory (Wang) 212 Bernstein, B. 26
American educational discourse: didactics Biesta, G. 5, 8, 10
69–74; exemplarity 74–76; learning, Biggs, J. 83, 88
curriculum, and knowledge 65–69 Bildsamkeit 197
Anglo-American: curriculum 207–208, Bildung 9–10, 12, 14, 17, 41, 120, 150,
214–215; educational theories 209; 243; components 77; defined 28;
learning theories 216; teaching department 180n10; Didaktik narratives
theory 216 49; discourse 85; gehalt 73–74; inhalt 73;
anglophone: curriculum 3, 85–86; notion of education 10–11, 29;
educational context 84; educational subject-oriented facets of 154
paradigms 119 Bildung-centred Didaktik 10, 26, 28–30,
Anglo-Saxon: curriculum tradition 4; 33, 35, 84, 91, 98, 137
education 12; traditions 165 Bildung-centred theory of education 185
anthropological dimensions 154 Bildung: Europas kulturelle Identität
Araya-Chacón, A. M. 177 (Fuhrmann) 10
art of eclectic approaches 133 Bildung-oriented teaching 10
arts education 167 Blankertz, H. 144
Index 255
Bloom, B. 83; cognitive taxonomy 88; content: analysis 210; of education 28–29;
subordination of knowledge 86–87; oriented Didaktik 85; sensitivity 93
taxonomy 86–88 content knowledge 16, 25–26,
Bourdieu, P. 174 67–68; Bildung-centred Didaktik
brain science 46, 53h 28–30; bringing knowledge back
Brousseau’s theory of didactic situations 170 in 26–28; comparison and contrast
Bruner, J. 214 33–34; educational content 28; Schwab’s
Buber, M. 191 curriculum thinking 26, 30–33
Bühler, K. 129, 240 contingency management 6, 17, 127–128,
130–131, 134n6
Cameron, D. 68 Coriand, R. 140
categorical learning 91–94 critical thinking 32
chemistry curriculum 217 cross-culturally relevant operation 65
Chevallard’s theory of anthropological cultivation of human powers 31–32, 33
didactics 170 cultural constructions 3
China: educational culture 215; educational cultural content, and exemplarity 69–74
policymaking 207; harmonism 219, Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 18,
220n1 207, 212
China, Didaktik and curriculum studies curriculum 71, 180n7, 223; analysis 46;
within 207–208; Chinese general competence-based 10–11; concept of
didactics textbooks 211–215; Chinese 3; content knowledge 25; control 6;
subject didactics textbooks 215–217; decision-making processes 103; designers
historical background and context 29; and Didactics 210, 218; -Didaktik
208–210; methodological considerations framework 229; EQF 109; formats
210–211; research questions 217–219 of 222; framework 29; institutional
Christensen, A. S. 16 curriculum making 27; knowledge-
chronogenesis 176–178 based approach 68; maker 37; making
classroom: management 51, 55; relevant 28; narratives 48; planning 26–27, 30,
decisions 57; teaching 26, 28–30, 32, 34 32–34; political and social order of
cognitive architecture 65, 70, 71 curriculum making 47; reform of 2015
cognitive-instrumental modelling 142 85; reforms 4, 43–44, 85, 166, 167,
cognitive levels, Bloom’s 83, 84, 87 238; Scandinavian teacher education 41;
Collins, C. 6 school 41; systematic process 66; teacher
Collis, K. 83 education in Scandinavia 41, 48; theory
Comenius, J. A. 26, 140, 180n12, 211 and didactics 6, 27–28, 52, 66, 78, 214,
communication 129–132, 147, 235; cross- 236, 248; thinking 26, 36
cultural 157n2; forms of 92; narration as curriculum development 66, 103–104;
47; scientific 155; syntactical 30; teacher- democracy and international decision
student 218; writing as 78; see also process 110–112; educational policy
language and communication (L&C) 104–105; German pedagogical discourse
communicational theory 126, 142, 238 107–108; international influences on
communicative turn 167 policymaking in education 105–106;
competencies 6–7, 107, 164; canon policy political education in Germany 106–107;
189; curriculum 10; framework 11; politische Bildung in Germany 106–107;
German pedagogical discourse 107–108; social science curriculum in Denmark
models 164; notion of 11; study 108–110
regulations 4; training 190
conceptual knowledge 98n3, 107, 193 decision-making processes 103–105, 110,
Condorcet 170 112
Confucianism 18, 220n1 deep learning 84–85, 88–89, 91, 94, 95,
constitutive rationality, tackling problems 98n4
of 142 democracy 7, 16, 56, 79, 104–105,
contemporarisation of historical events 87 110–112, 170
256 Index
Deng, Z. 7, 10, 15 Didascalia treatise 48

Denmark: curriculum reform in 85, 110; Dilthey, W. 26
didactic research communities 126; Ding, B. 9, 14, 18, 219
didactics 119; disciplinary didactics 13, disciplinarities 126, 236, 238–239, 240–241,
83; Folkeskole Education 16, 83, 103, 243, 244, 245, 246, 250
108, 109; goal-oriented curriculum disciplinary didactics 119–120, 123, 126,
83; K–10 curriculum reform of 2015 157n2, 157n9, 164, 166, 168, 171; as
85, 87; School of Education 133n3–4; didactisation 129–130; fragmentation
social science curriculum in 108–110; 124; disciplinary didactic ethos 130;
taxonomies in, reappearance of 85–86; 248–249; see also didactics
Teachers High School 121 disciplinary knowledge 26–28, 31, 34, 77
Depape, F. 68 disciplines of education tradition 34
DeSeCo project 105, 107 discursive institutionalism 104, 188
desyncretisation 172 domain-independence 65, 78, 87, 88, 91
Deutschschweiz 164 Dorier, J.-L. 179n3
Dewey, J. 26, 66, 70, 208, 209, 234–235 Doyle, W. 36
didactic: literature 133n1; memory 177; Durkheim, E. 26
transposition 171, 172, 173
Didactica Magna (Great Didactic) 211 economisation 9, 11
Didactic Modelling (Jank and Meyer) 142 Educated Subject and the German Concept of
didactics 12, 52, 157n2; content-/subject- Bildung, The (Horlacher) 150
specificity 137; and curriculum theory education/educational: foundational
234; defined 119; disciplinary 13–14, 17; thinking 52; intervention 36; material
double reflectiveness of 124–126, 127; 73; planning 54; policies 104–105;
knowledge of 125; modification of 8; potential 29, 33; programmes 46;
non-affirmative school didactics 14; of psychology 6–7, 52, 141; reform 42;
religious education 148; school didactics substance 28; theorising 34; traditions of
14; specialised school-subject didactics Didaktik 3
13; subject didactics 13; system as object educational systems: conceptualisation
of research 175; systems-theoretical 14, of 8; didaktik and didactics 12–14;
127; time 176; triad 245–246; see also dualities and developments 5–14; global
meta-reflective didactics; non-affirmative trends 9; knowledge and content 8–12;
school didactics learnification 5, 8; teaching and learning
Didactics (Li) 211 5–8; transnational shifts 3, 7
didactiques disciplinaires 164, 170; defined Education and Democracy (Dewey) 234–235
167–169; driving forces 166–167; educative teaching 186
instruction 169–171 Elbow, P. 247
didactisation 6, 13, 17, 129, 246–248 elemental, the 28–29
Didaktik 12, 60n1, 70, 157n2, Elevens verden (Imsen) 236
223–224; Bildung-centred Didaktik empathy 87
15; competence 7; curricula of Englund, T. 189
teacher education in Scandinavia enracinement 95
41; -curriculum continuum 231; and episodic knowledge 90
curriculum theory 2–3, 5; and didactics epistemic knowledge 151
12–14; knowledge domain 41; language European education 2, 26
of Pedagogikk 41; narratives 49–50, 57–58; European Educational Research
place and space 49–50; pre-scientific Association (EERA) 2, 132
discipline 46; Scandinavian tradition 26; European Educational Research Journal 2
and teacher education 48–52, 57, 58; European Qualifications Framework (EQF)
teaching 25; thinking 26; triangle 25, 7, 103, 108, 110
49, 71, 72 evidence-based: knowledge 45, 122;
Didaktikers 34 practices 35, 70; teaching 50, 123
Didaktikk for grunnskolen (Halvorsen) 237 example knowledge 96
Index 257
exemplarity 74–76; knowledge 94, 94–95; in 106–107; politische Bildung in

teaching 94; teaching and learning 88 106–107; subject didactics 13
explication de texte 174 globalisation 104–105, 119
Global Leadership and Organizational
Fichte, J. G. 191 Behaviour Effectiveness Research Project
Finland 231 (GLOBE) 227
Fischer, G. 52 goal-oriented teaching 109
Fisher, W. R. 48 Gove, M. 68
Flitner, W. 144 governmentality (Foucault) 107
Folkeskole Education, Danish 16, 83, 103, Graf, S. T. 10, 16, 60n1, 157n2
108, 109 Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin)
forms of knowledge 31, 84, 85, 86, 90–91, 153–154
98, 126; see also Bereiter’s forms of Gruschka, A. 89
knowledge; Wagenschein’s forms of GSD see general subject didactics (GSD)
knowledge Guile, D. 158n11
France, didactics 120 Gundem, B. B. 12, 60n1, 84, 120, 122–124,
francophone disciplinary didactics 166, 126, 235
168, 179, 179n6
Frederking, V. 157n1 Habermas, J. 240, 250
freedom 42, 76, 199; in schooling 6, Halliday, M. A. K. 240
185; of teachers 106, 108–109, 201; of Hamilton, D. 27, 60n1
thought 32 Handbook of Curriculum Studies (Pinar) 2
French disciplinary didactics: didactic harmonism 219, 220n1
system 171–173; didactic Hastrup, K. 125
transposition 171–173; external Hattie, J. 85, 98n4, 122
didactic transposition 173–175; Helmke, A. 85, 122
first-language 180n8; internal didactic Hentig, Hartmut von 9
transposition 175–178 Herbart, J. F. 26, 42, 49, 211
Friesen, N. 7, 10, 15, 35, 80n2 hermeneutics 10, 75; pedagogy 186;
Fuhrmann, M. 9–10 project 125–126; theory of knowledge
Fullan, M. 86, 88 transmission 67
Heursen, G. 142
Gadamer, H. G. 78–79 hierarchical linear modelling (HLM)
Galileo, G. 95 224–225
general (disciplinary) didactics 119, Hirsch, E. D. 9
137, 139–140, 179; as contingency Hopmann, S. T. 2, 12, 41, 49, 60n1, 127
management 127–128; curricular Horlacher, R. 3, 10, 84, 150, 158n14
perspectives 143–144; didactic modelling Hudson, B. 2
140–141; future of 141–143 human: capital 6, 9; formation 31, 34
general education 144 humanistic science 125–126
General Methods of Instruction Derived from the Humboldt, W. von 26, 170
Purpose of Education (Herbart) 49 HuSoEd (Research Community for
general pedagogic knowledge (GPK) 51 Humanities and Social Sciences
General Pedagogy (Herbart) 211 Education) 158n13
general subject didactics (GSD) 145, 147–149; Husserl 191, 192–193, 194
as developmental project 152–154;
foundations of 149–150; subject-based implicit understanding 90
education as Bildung 150–153 impressionistic knowledge 90–91
Germany: Association for Fachdidaktik Imsen, G. 236
152; Didaktik 106–107; Didaktikers institutional curriculum 27, 36
28–29, 31; educational theory 83; institutional visibility 177
knowledge society 9; pedagogical instruction/instructional 170; objectives 71;
discourse 107–108; political education planning 33; system 67
258 Index
instrumental knowledge 93 didactic triad 245–246; didactisation

intended curriculum 84, 222, 228 246–248; educational sciences 245–250;
Interessenbildung 91 language awareness 234–235; points
International Handbook of Curricular Research of tangency 245; positioning L&C in
(IHCR) (Pinar) 236 educational texts 242–245; utterances
and genres as disciplinaries 240–242
Jank, W. 157n1 law of free fall (Galileo) 94, 94–95
Journal of Curriculum Studies 1 learners 6–8, 25, 33, 50, 69, 120–121, 139,
144, 150–151, 157n9–12, 185–186, 190,
K–10 curriculum 85, 87, 98n1 195–197, 200–201, 224
Kansane, P. 60n1 learnification 5, 8, 10, 86; agenda 14;
Kant, I. 26 discourses 8–9
Keiding, T. B. 127 learning: defined 65; discourses of 6–7,
Keiner, E. 179n2 8, 65; knowledge 57; and learners 6;
Kelchtermans, G. 68 narrative 57–60; theory 55; universal
Kivelä, A. 2, 156 human process 65
Klafki, W. 10, 14, 16, 26, 28, 30, 67, 70–71, learning sciences 42, 45–46, 52–55;
73, 78, 85, 91–96, 144, 157n4, 210 content 42; disciplines and subdisciplines
knowledge 179n4; academic 27, 33; 53; knowledge 56; narrative 54; new
conceptual 98n3, 107, 193; and content curriculum 55–57; teacher education
8–12; disciplinary 26–28, 31, 34, 77; 54–55
episodic 90; epistemic 151; evidence- Lehrpläne 3, 106, 173, 178, 180n7
based 45, 122; example 96; exemplarity Leutenegger, F. 179n3
94, 94–95; general pedagogic (GPK) 51; Levine, D. N. 31
impressionistic 90–91; instrumental 93; life-world phenomenology 17, 185–201, 245
narrative 48; promotion 238; learning Ligozat, F. 2, 124
knowledge 57; learning sciences 56; local Litt, T. 92
knowledge 94, 94–95; metacognitive Liu, Z. 215
98n3; neutral 86; pedagogical content local knowledge 94, 94–95
(PCK) 68–69, 156, 188; powerful Luhmann, N 134n6, 142, 148
67, 158n11; procedural 98n3; Pupil lyrical illusion 166
57–59; regulative 91; self-regulative
91; social-realist theory of 26–27; MacIntyre, A. 47
society 6–7, 9; socio-cultural 158n12; Margolinas, C. 167–168
statable 90; taxonomy of 96; see also Martin, J. 240
content knowledge; Pedagogy and Pupil Marxist didactics 212, 214
Knowledge (PPK); Wagenschein’s forms Marzano, R. 83
of knowledge massification of secondary education 13,
Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects 17, 166
and Teacher Education (KOSS) 152 mathematics didactics 167, 170, 180n8
Krathwohl, D. 83 Mellin-Olsen, S. 237
Krogh, E. 6, 8, 13, 16, 18, 60n1, 126, Meno (Plato) 185
157n2, 248 Merleau-Ponty, M. 191–192, 194
Kuhn, T. 157n6 mesogenesis 176, 178
Kullenberg, T. 6, 9–10, 14, 17–18, 89, 245 meta-language, advanced 247
Künzli, R. 127 meta-reflective didactics 17, 119–120;
actualisations 122–123; contingency
Lærerens verden (Imsen) 236 management 127–128; in Danish
Lambert, D. 158n11 context 120–122; dialogue between
language 235; awareness 234; of learning 25 general and disciplinary didactics
language and communication (L&C) 18; 123–124; disciplinary didactics as
awareness of education 237–239; classical didactisation 129–130; doubly reflective
triads in didactics 239–240; content 249; science 124–126; laboratories 130–133
Index 259
meta-theory of general didactics 157n8 diagnosis 56; linchpin 57; term 168,
Meyer, H. 141, 157n4 157n2–5
Meyer, M. 2, 122, 141–142, 157n4 Pedagogy (Kairov) 212
Meyer-Drawe, K. 199 Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge (PPK) 15,
Mezirow, J. 77 42, 45, 51, 54–57, 58–59
Morris, C. W. 250 Pepin, B. 244
Muller, J. 158n11 phenomenological learning research 190–191
multiple-regression model 225–226 philosophy: educational 50, 52, 152; of
experience 66; of mind 191–192; and
National Association of Didactics 218 phenomenology and 190–191, 193
national curriculum for Norwegian (as L1) Pinar, W. F. 2, 66, 188
242–243, 243 Plato 185
Nohl, L. 26 political education 103, 106; competence
non-affirmative school didactics 14, areas 108; in Germany 106–107
185–187; approach to education 201; politische Bildung 106–107
didactics and for phenomenological Posner, R. 240
learning research 190–191; educational potentiality of self-activity 197
challenges for life-world phenomenology powerful knowledge 26, 35, 36, 68–69, 78,
194–196; intersubjectivity-based life- 135, 151–152, 158n11
world phenomenology 192–194; professional autonomy, of teachers 29, 50
subject-centred and inter-subjectivity- professional teachers 43, 188
centred positions 191–192; subjectivity programmability 172
and intersubjectivity 196–199; teaching Programme for International Student
in context 187–190 Assessment (PISA) 44, 223; PISA
non-affirmative theory of education 192, 2015 science performance 230–231;
196–199 programme 103; reports 107; tests 105,
Nordkvelle, Y. 60n1 224; see also teacher responsibility in
normative-evaluative approaches 142 PISA
Norway: curriculum 42, 242; Didaktik- progressive educational ideas 208–209
driven teacher education 42; disciplinary Project for Enhancing Effective Learning
didactics 13; learning narrative 59; (PEEL) 7
learning sciences 46; teacher education psychopédagogie 168
15, 42, 46; teacher education curriculum public good professionalism, development
55; Work Research Institute 44 of 46
publicity 172
OECD DeSeCo project 7, 11 pupils, learning experience of 51, 55–56;
Ongstad, S. 122, 124, 126, 129, 250 see also Pedagogy and Pupil Knowledge
open method of coordination (OMC) (PPK)
110–111, 111
ordinary least square (OLS) method 225 Qvortrup, A. 6, 8, 13, 16, 18, 60n1, 127,
Organisation for Economic Co-operation 133, 157n2
and Development (OECD) 42, 46, 54,
103, 224 rationality 143–144
Reiss, M. J. 158n11
Pädagogik tradition 34 religious education 110
parliamentary involvement 111, 111 Research in Subject-Matter Teaching and
pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) 67, Learning 147
68–69, 156, 188 Reusser, K. 86
pedagogical psychology 237 Richardson, V. 8
pedagogy 15, 41–42, 45, 58, 59, 69, 75, Robinsohn, S. B. 11
119, 121, 142, 198, 212, 238; and romantic illusion 166–167
curriculum 54–56; decision-making 120; ROSE (Research on Subject-specific
and didactics 237, 246, 249; educational Education) 158n13
260 Index
Roth, H. 107 SSRG (Subject Specialism Research

Rothgangel, M. 154, 157n1 Group) 158n13
Rousseauism 167 statable knowledge 90
state-based curricular formats 2
Saarinen, T. 48 storytelling 47
Saussure, F. de 240–241 student-teacher relationship 25, 71
Sawyer, R. K. 52 Su, X. 9, 14, 18
Scandinavia: education in 103; tradition subject-based education 150–152, 154–155
of Didaktik thinking in 26; see also subject-based literacies 152
Denmark; Finland; Norway; Sweden subject-didactic communities 149, 152
Scandinavian teacher education 42–43; subject-matter didactics 13, 50–51, 133n1,
narratives and teacher education 137, 140–141, 144–147, 148, 155,
curriculum 47–48; reforms in 43–45; 157n2,5,8
research problem 45–47 Sundberg, D. 104
Scardamalia, M. 86–87 Sünkel, W. 96
Schleiermacher, F. 26, 35, 75, 186, 189 surface-learning 88–89
Schmidt, L.-H. 126 Sutinen, A. 2, 156
Schneuwly, B. 17–18, 122, 179n3 Sweden 44–45, 110; curriculum 244;
Scholl, D. 157n8 National Advisory Committee 44
school: curriculum 27, 41, 57; didactics systems-theoretical didactics 14, 127–128,
14, 17, 184–201; -subject Norwegian 131
(L1) 242 systems theory 66, 67, 126, 127, 131, 249
Schriewer, J. 179n2
Schubert, W. H 222 Tact of Teaching: The Meaning of Pedagogical
Schulman, L. 77, 188 Thoughtfulness, The (Van Manen) 199
Schwab, J. 10, 14–15, 26, 30–35 Tahirsylaj, A. 14, 18, 227
Schwab’s curriculum thinking 26, 30–34 Tang, C. 88
scientification 45 taught curriculum 222, 226, 229
scolarisation 180n11 taxonomy: of affective learning 83;
secondary education, massification of 13, 166 for educational objectives 83; of
secondary virtues 93, 94, 95 knowledge 96; by Marzano 88;
sedimentation: process 174–175; of for psychomotor learning 83;
practices 174 see also SOLO taxonomy
Seel, N. M. 142 taxonomy for general Bildung 83–85, 97;
self-alienation 10, 77, 79 Bloom’s taxonomy 86–88; categorical
self-Bildung 96 understanding 91–94; deep things 90–91;
self-formation 15, 29, 36, 77 deep understanding 88–90; reappearance
self-promotion 197–198 of taxonomies in Denmark 85–86;
Seminar Notes on Didactics, A (Wang)211 taxonomy for general Bildung 95–98;
Shiller, R. J. 47 teaching and learning 93; Wagenschein’s
Shulman, L. 51, 67 forms of knowledge 94–95
Siljander, P. 2, 156 teachers 25, 33; autonomy 41, 223; didactic
Simpson, E. 83 analyses 125; discourse on 25; ethical
Singer, M. 244 responsibility 35; professionalisation
Skovmand, K. 85 45, 59, 137; social equality 43; task and
social efficiency model 224 responsibilities 27
social-realist theory of knowledge 26, 27 teacher education 17, 60, 128, 129, 147,
social science education in Denmark 6–7 166, 178–179, 248; Bildung and 138,
societal input 111, 112 139, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147; in China
socio-cultural knowledge 158n12 208–209, 215; curriculum 42, 48;
SOLO taxonomy 16, 83–86, 88–90, 92 Didaktik and 48–52, 60n1; evaluation
Soviet/Russian didactics 209 44; learning as core narrative for
Språk, kommunikasjon og didaktikk (Ongstad) 41–41; learning narrative, new 57–59;
237 learning sciences 52–56; reforms 45;
Index 261
in Scandinavia 42–48; structure 45; utterance 129–130, 238–241, 244–246,

tertiarisation of 13 247, 249; as communication 242;
teacher-educators 48, 49, 58 in context as combination of five
teacher responsibility in PISA 222–223, constituents 241
226; Didaktik and curriculum in 232;
methodology 224–227; results and Van Manen, M 199–200
findings 227–231; theoretical framework Vergnaud, G. 168
223–224 Verschaffel, L. 68
teaching 35, 121, 212; in context 187–188; Vollmer, H. J. 10, 13, 17–18, 154, 180n12
curriculum commonplaces 25, 47;
defined 25, 35; social and political nature Wagenschein, M. 16, 70, 73, 85, 88
of 25–26; subject-specific structure 139 Wagenschein’s forms of knowledge 89, 94,
Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German 94–95, 97; see also Bereiter’s forms of
Didaktik Tradition (Westbury, Hopmann knowledge; forms of knowledge
and Riquarts) 70 Wahlström, N. 104
teaching-learning processes 86, 145, 153, Wang, C. 211–212, 219
158n10, 213 Wang, F.-h. 213
TEDS-M model 51 Weil, S. 95
Terhart, E. 8, 141–142 Weiler, J. 105
ternary didactic system 173 Weinert, F. 86
tested curriculum 222–232, 230 Weniger, E. 26, 92
text narrative 47 Werler, T. 7, 15
theory of categorical Bildung 91 Western schooling systems, adoption in
theory of communicative disciplinary China 207
didactics 131, 249 White, H. 47
theory of content/educational content 10, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation 88
28–29, 30, 32–33, 68 writing 78–79, 164
Theory of Knowing in Teaching/Learning
(Wang) 214 Xu, J.-c. 218
Thorndike, E. 66
topogenesis 176–177, 178 Yates, L. 6
Tröhler, D. 3 Ylimaki, R. M. 35
Truth and Method (Gadamer) 78 Young, M. 10, 15–16, 26–27, 35–36,
Tyler, R. 26, 66 67–69, 77, 104, 151, 158n11
Young’s theory of educational content
Uljens, M. 6, 9–10, 14, 17–18, 35, 89, 245 68–69
universitification 45
US curriculum 25, 210; see also American Zankov, I. V. 214
educational discourse Zierer, K. 142

Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue

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Didaktik and Curriculum in

Didaktik and Curriculum in Ongoing Dialogue revives the dialogue between

Ellen Krogh is Emeritus Professor in Education Sciences in the Department

Ane Qvortrup is Professor in Education Sciences in the Department for

Stefan Ting Graf is Docent in Didactics and Pedagogy in the Faculty of

Edited by Ellen Krogh,

ISBN: 978-0-367-56808-5 (hbk)

List of figures vii

Introduction: Didaktik and curriculum in ongoing dialogue 1

1 Bringing content back in: rethinking teaching and teachers 25

2 From Didaktik to learning (sciences) 41

3 Content in American educational discourse: the missing link(s) 65

4 Outline of a taxonomy for general Bildung: deep learning in

5 Curriculum development as a complex policy process in

6 Towards laboratories for meta-reflective didactics: on

7 Bildung as the central category of education? Didactics,

8 ‘Didactiques’ is not (entirely) ‘Didaktik’: the origin and

9 Non-affirmative school didactics and life-world

10 The dialogue between Didaktik and curriculum studies

11 Teacher responsibility over intended, taught, and tested

12 Education as language and communication (L&C):

3.1 The component phases of an instructional system 67

2.1 Reform phases and reform objectives of teacher education

Anders Stig Christensen is a senior lecturer in teacher education at UCL

and Learning in Asia and Europe: A Conversation between Chinese Curriculum

Tina Kullenberg holds a doctor of philosophy in education at Kristianstad

first language in ordinary classrooms, and on Vygotskij’s theory. His last

education, and more recently subject-matter didactics (especially EFL). He

This volume aims to continue and update an international and intercultural

However hounded by globalization, the curriculum remains nationally

1 exploring how the transnational shifts of the educational systems may be

contemporary transnational discourses and to the changes and challenges of

Dualities and developments within the contemporary

Teaching and learning

In the following, we shall investigate three discourses of learning: the discourse

the concept of competence is not formulated in terms of a particular, edu-

science education in Denmark and political education in Germany, Chris-

a constructivist understanding, it was suggested that in education, “the chief

learning environments and activities are learner-centred and learner-

According to Terhart (2003) and Richardson (2003), the ‘methodiﬁcation of

Knowledge and content

Fuhrmann’s Bildung: Europas kulturelle Identität (Bildung: Europe’s Cultural Iden-

education as Bildung needs extending and redefining on both a personal and

Didaktik and didactics: translations, developments,

The cultural construction ‘Didaktik’ is too monolithic to allow us to distinguish

approaches with sophisticated models of teaching and outcome orientation. In

Didaktik and/or curriculum: future opportunities

Introduction to the individual chapters

research. Thus, there is a need for educational agents to master processes of

Ongstad, S. (2006). Fag i endring: Om didaktisering af kunnskap [Subjects in change: On

Bringing content back in

Content – knowledge selected into the curriculum – is an indispensable ele-

Bringing knowledge back in

imagining of alternatives, and enables people to move beyond their particular

Curriculum designers assume that these contents, once the children or

In other words, such contents are seen as embodying educational potential –

Schwab’s curriculum thinking

for a state called “happiness”’, an ability to ‘deliberate wisely about technolo-

[T]he place of the natural sciences in general education was determined

In this connection, Schwab argues that the contribution of an academic discipline

Consistent with this theory of knowledge, Schwab formulated a theory of con-

Informed by this theory of content, curriculum planning entails a deliberative

Theorising content, teaching and teachers: