Didaktik as the professional science of teachers - tntee

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Didaktik as the professional science of teachers
of education is made possible by a preceding and steering guidance of the student. In the Kritischkommunikative
Didaktik (Winkel 1986) a lesson is mainly looked at from an angle of intertwined
interactions. As conflicts interfere with successful teaching, conflict management is given priority.
The theory of teaching is still the core of didaktik as the professional science of teachers. On the one
hand, it deals with questions of lesson content, for example, the theoretical basis for the development
of syllabi: the justification of criteria for the selection of teaching content as well as the structure of
the teaching content in areas of life; subject disciplines; key problems or projects. It also provides
the prerequisite for the realization of the ‘didactical analysis’. In the context of the didactical analysis,
possible teaching contents are evaluated from the point of view of an assumed educational efficiency
(Klafki 1963).
With regard to procedures for the possibility for discovery, problem-oriented learning is of major
interest. This criterion steers the development of the ideal procedure structures for a lesson but also
defines the meaning of several social and action forms (lecturing, teaching conversation, group
work, individual work) during the different parts of a lesson.
When planning lessons teachers make a didactical analysis of the teaching content (educational
efficiency of the teaching contents). They also create a methodological concept (macro- and microstructure
of the learning/teaching process) for the lessons, taking into account the time factor (duration
of a lesson, time of the day when the lesson takes place, extra-curricular time for studying).
The educational efficiency of school and instruction split up into subject
matter
Nowadays, one of the characteristic features of school is a canon of discipline-oriented subject
matter and teachers specialized in subject disciplines. Will subject matter didactics be the future
professional science of teachers? This question cannot be answered in the affirmative
Besides subject dominated instruction there still exists the integrated instruction of the elementary
school. On the one hand there is the teacher for a specific subject or a few subjects and on the other
the didactical ‘decathlete’; a teacher for all, or at least many, fields of learning at elementary level.
The relationship between Didaktik (in a general, comprehensive understanding of the term) and
subject-matter didactics has to be clarified. This is not possible without reference to the development
of schools.
In the course of a long tradition, an often changing canon of subjects was developed in European
schools and stages of development ‘overlapped’: The canon of subjects and their contents in
elementary and grammar schools can only be understood when taking this development into account
(Dolch 1982). Initially, the teaching-learning areas were ‘Kunden’ (knowledge for actions and
decisions essential for life: geography/Erdkunde, biology/Naturkunde, natural history/
Naturgeschichte, history); and skills (proficiencies in communication, presentation and design:
languages, arithmetic, crafts). In the 17th and 18th centuries they were guided by societal-political
expectations (contribution of schools to the education of useful and contented subordinates).
In the course of the development of modern natural, cultural and social sciences in the 18th and
19th centuries, there was an orientation of the canon towards scientific disciplines, due to the
implications of scientific research and development in all areas of society. This was also due to the
special interest of sciences in the role of schools in preparing students for studies at university level.
The canon did not prove to be ‘historisch zwingend noch systematisch homogen oder gar universal
TNTEE Publications Volume 2, Nr 1, October 1999