1. ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’ and
the World Education Research
Association
Professor Brian Hudson
University of Sussex
Radio Edutalk
8th
May 2014

2. Structure of input overall
Short overview of my background of the development of
the World Education Research Association
My role on the WERA Council and the forthcoming
WERA Focal Meeting in Edinburgh, 19-21 Nov 2014
My roles in leading the establishment of the EERA
Network (2006-) and the WERA International Research
Network (2014-) on ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’
My interests in ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’

3. The World Education Research
Association (WERA)
WERA was established in 2009 as an association of
national, regional, and international research
associations aimed at advancing education research as
a scientific and scholarly field. Individual membership
has been introduced from 2014.
The next WERA Focal Meeting will be held in co-
operation with the SERA Annual Conference at the
University of Edinburgh, 19-21 November 2014. The
Call for Papers is still open.
http://www.weraonline.org

4. EERA Network on ‘Didactics –
Learning and Teaching’ – milestones
Grew out of TNTEE Network on Didactics (1996-99)
Curriculum Symposium on Didaktik: an International
Perspective, ECER 2000, Edinburgh, September 2000.
Hudson, B. (2002) Holding complexity and searching for
meaning - teaching as reflective practice, Journal of
Curriculum Studies, 34, 1, 43-57.
Network 27 established at ECER 2006 in Geneva.
http://www.eera-ecer.de/networks/didactics/

5. WERA International Research NW:
Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Arose as a natural development of the EERA Network
on ‘Didactics – Learning and Teaching’
Established in 2014 - web site: http
://www.weraonline.org/?DidacticsIRN
Includes initial participants from Sweden, Ghana, Brazil,
Canada, France, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland,
Germany, Niger, Benin, Thailand, Japan, UK and the
United States.

6. My interests in ‘Didactics – Learning and
Teaching’
Two key questions:
What has the study of Didactics offered me in terms of
the development my own research, theories and
practice?
What key issues have emerged from my search to
derive meaning from this tradition in a way that makes
sense to my own experience and practice?

7. Some key issues to emerge
Meaning making and intentionality
Recognising and holding complexity
Where attention is focused
Tools for holding complexity
The role of the teacher

8. Meaning making and intentionality
If we adopt the term Didaktik as a subsumption of all the
mental effort directed at aspects of content, at the “what”
of instruction and education (Allgemeinbildung) (as
distinguished from the “how”, a topic of a theory of
teaching and learning methods i.e. Methodik), the first
task of a teacher engaged in preparation can be termed
Didaktik Analysis.
(Klafki, 2000)

9. Klafki’s 5 questions for Didactic
Analysis (What, What and How?)
1. What wider or general sense or reality do these contents
exemplify and open up for the learner? …
2. What significance does the content in question or the
experience, knowledge, ability or skill to be acquired through this
topic already possess in the minds of the children in my class? ...
3. What constitutes the topic's significance for the children's future?
4. How is the content structured?
5. What are the special cases, phenomena, situations,
experiments, persons, elements of aesthetic experience, ...

10. Recognising and holding complexity
Teaching as learning in practice (Lave)
Teaching and learning or teaching-learning ?
Obuchenie in Russian
Unterrichtfach in German
Opetus in Finnish as teaching-studying-learning

11. In Chinese ...
• First character - to study
("I accumulate knowledge"/"a doorway")
•Second character - to practice constantly
("A bird flying"/"youth")

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

13. Tools for holding complexity -
pedagogical relation
The Didaktik triangle
CONTENT
TEACHER pedagogical relation STUDENT
Figure 1 Pedagogical relation in the didactic triangle

14. Tools for holding complexity – the
didactic relation
TEACHER
CONTENT didaktik relation STUDENT
Figure 2 The didaktik relation in the Didaktik triangle
Kansanen and Meri (1999)

15. Tools for holding complexity – the
core of a teacher’s professionalism
Professional judgement or technical rules?
In view of the complexity of this aspect, it is observed
that it is difficult to think that the didactic relation could
be organised universally or according to some technical
rules. Consequently teachers’ own practical theories and
pedagogical thinking are seen to be of vital importance.

16. The role of the teacher (i)
Curriculum
Managerial framework of
curriculum technologies
(Tyler Rationale)
Invisible agents of the
system, animated and
directed by the system
A/the major brake on
innovation, reform and
change of the system
Didactics
Teacher at the heart of
the teaching-studying-
learning process
Sources of animation for
the system
Teacher’s practice as the
source of innovation,
reform and change

17. The role of the teacher (ii)
Didactics provides a framework which places the
teacher at the heart of the teaching/studying/learning
process for teachers’ thinking about the most basic how,
what and why questions around their work.
This follows from the emphasis that is placed upon
Didactic analysis and from the relative professional
autonomy of the teacher within this tradition.

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

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

20. References
Hudson, B. (2002) Holding complexity and searching for meaning -
teaching as reflective practice, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 34, 1, 43-57.
Klafki, W. (2000) Didaktik analysis as the core of preparation for instruction.
In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann and K. Riquarts (eds), Teaching as a Reflective
Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates), 197-206.
Künzli, R. (2000) German Didaktik: models of re-presentation, of
intercourse, and of experience. In I. Westbury, S. Hopmann and K. Riquarts
(eds), Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 41-54.