School Didactics And Learning: a school Didactic Model Framing An Analysis of Pedagogical Implication of Learning Theory

Teaching as Success—the Perspective of the Collective Level.
In the teaching as success model, the
pedagogical process is understood as a factor explaining learning results. Teaching is reduced to a predictor
variable in a process-product paradigm. In this view teaching is seen as the primary cause affecting
learning. Accordingly, evaluation of the learning results is assumed to reflect the quality of teaching.
While the view of teaching as intentional activity is suitable from the perspective of the individual
teacher, the model of teaching as success is primarily designed to serve the interests of educational planning
and administration on the collective level and reveals something about teacher effectiveness (Fenstermacher
& Soltis, 1986, p. 17).
Teaching as Intentional Activity—Focus on Classroom Processes.
The role of evaluation is different in
the teaching as intentional activity model. According to this view, teaching does not necessarily lead to
intended learning results. Or to put it differently: teaching does not guarantee that learning will occur. If
teaching does not automatically lead to learning, the motive of including evaluation is different from that of
the teaching as success model. Evaluation is now motivated precisely because teaching as such cannot
guarantee learning. To accept evaluation as a fundamental feature of pedagogical activity does not mean that
attention is diverted from the process. On the contrary—one form of the teacher’s reflection during the TSL
process is reflection on the teacher’s own experience of the students’ intentional efforts to learn as well on
the results of learning. This was thought to lead to situated didactic experience.
Evaluative reflection is thus primarily aimed at regulating the process in relation to the intentions. To see
teaching as intentional activity is most natural from the perspective of the individual teacher working in the
classroom. As this model admits that teaching does not guarantee learning outcomes, the role of evaluation
is to give the teacher information about the respects in which intentional efforts to support the learner’s
intentional study process have succeeded.
The School Didactic Model Covers both Teaching as Success and
Teaching as Intentional Activity.
In the
model of teaching as intentional activity, attention is directed towards understanding and explaining the
pedagogical process as such. In the model of teaching as success, the purpose is not to explain the process
but to use the process in order to explain the results, as something like a causal relation is assumed between
teaching and learning. Even though we have shown that there are severe contradictions between the models
discussed, it is possible to handle both of these analytically within the school didactic model presented.
The solution is that the model of teaching as success may be considered attractive from the perspective of
decision-making concerning planning and evaluation on the collective level, as the effectiveness of both
schools and teachers is measured by students’ achievements. From the perspective of the individual teacher,
the model of teaching as success is of less use. As pointed out earlier, the intentional model of teaching does
not see only the teacher but also the student as an intentional subject in the classroom. This allows us to
explain variation in learning outcomes not only in terms of teacher activities and students’ studying but also
in terms of interaction between these intentional subjects. Thus, the school didactic model offers a
conceptual structure by which we may handle the movement from a testing culture to an assessment culture
in education (Nisbet, 1992).
8. CLOSING THOUGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES
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TEACHERS’ INTENTIONS, THE CURRICULUM AND STUDENTS’ INTERESTS
Intentionality is a complex term. Sometimes it is used to denote human goal-orientation, meaning that an
individual has intentions and is aiming at something that is not present. On other occasions again, primarily
within the phenomenological tradition, it refers to the nature of human consciousness. Human
consciousness is claimed to be intentional, since it is always directed towards an object or some content.
Here, only the goal-oriented aspect of the concept will be discussed.
In the presented model, teaching is seen as a conscious, deliberate activity; teaching cannot generally be
characterized as being unintentional or non-intentional.
A specific feature of teaching in schools compared with teaching outside schools is that a curriculum
frames the teaching process. A consequence previously discussed is that the goals explicated in the
curriculum are realized in the schools only to the extent that the individual teacher accepts them. We may
thus identify intentionality as goal-orientation on several levels of the school system. As this is one of the
fundamental problems in trying to understand the TSL process in the institutionalized schools, the
discussion on intentionality is here limited to this issue.
A model of didactics which, like the present one, takes intentionality as its point of departure, is not
automatically a rationalist model in the sense that it would claim that all educational activity takes the goals
of education as its point of departure. As far as I understand, such a rationalist model presupposes that the
teacher plans on the basis of the goals, i.e. that the content and form of instruction are deduced from the
goals. To accept intentionality or purposiveness as a starting point does not mean accepting this sense of
rationality. Even though planning is a fundamental category, it is easy to accept that a teacher may let the
available resources affect the goal-setting, since there is seldom any point in setting goals that cannot be
attained.
The interdependence between intention, content, method and media, as well as the context-relatedness of
these concepts, has already been discussed. The present model accepts the thesis of interdependence but
argues that the question of intention is different in character compared, for example, with methods.
A further reason why this model is not a rationalist model in the narrow sense, is that the choice of goals
and the relating of them to the teacher’s own personal educational philosophy is done both before an actual
pedagogical situation and within it. The goal-setting may thus be parallel to, for example, the choice of
content and of form of representation. And the goal-setting is naturally closely related to the students’
intentions and activities.
Intentionality as Purposiveness
When the school didactic model of this study was presented, it was claimed that the teachers’ planning (P2)
may transcend planning on the collective level (P1). This relation contains a wide spectrum of problems and
only a few principal questions can be touched upon here. One important problem is how teachers follow the
collective curriculum. In other words, how can we conceptually deal with the tension between the collective
intentions and the individual teacher’s intentions?
Applying a teleological mode of discussing goal-orientation and intentionality, Kansanen and Uusikylä
(1983, pp. 73 ff.) make a distinction between purposive and intentional pedagogical activity; pedagogical
activity is always intentional when the teacher’s intentions are based on the teacher’s own goals. But it may
be called purposive if the teacher’s intentions are based on the predetermined goals and if the teacher is aware
that this is the case. Again, if the teacher were to pursue a predetermined goal without being aware of doing
this, it would be a quasi-teleological activity and not purposive in the sense described above. Thus,
awareness is required in order for some activity to be purposive.
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SCHOOL DIDACTICS AND LEARNING

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In order to handle the relation between the intentions of the curriculum and the teacher, Kansanen
(1993b) has suggested how the notions of deontological and teleological ethics may be used in solving this
problem. Deontological ethics is generally seen as dealing with the intention of an act when it is evaluated
while the act itself is considered as a duty to be performed. Teleological ethics again stresses the
consequences of an act when it is valued. In Kansanen’s (1993b) interpretation the deontological dimension
is present when the teacher internalizes the goals and intentions of a curriculum. He claims that when “the
teacher knows the curriculum, its purposes, aims and goals, it is possible for [the teacher] gradually to make
them become a part of [their] thinking and internalize its content as part of [their] responsibility” (p. 58).
When external values are internalized by the teacher these values and norms become a kind of internalized
intention with moral obligations: “With the internalized purposes as [the teachers’] intentions, the aims and
goals gradually receive the character of some kind of a deontological theory with moral responsibilities”
(ibid., p. 58). Having reached this point the teachers’ intentions are “identical” with the aims and intentions
of the curriculum. This is one of the cornerstones of Kansanen’s (1993b) model of teachers’ pedagogical
thinking.
According to Kansanen’s (1993b) interpretation of deontological ethics, we are offered an instrument by
which we can handle the relation between norms and goals on the collective level and the teacher’s
individual intentions. The teleological aspect again makes it possible to discuss the already internalized
intentions of the teacher and to focus on the effects of teaching, i.e. the students’ achievements. This model
offers the possibility of analysing how an individual teacher’s intentions function as the mediation between
collective goals and their effects. To limit ourselves to one of these perspectives severely restricts our
possibilities of understanding the process as a whole, it is argued. As such the deontological dimension
seems to be close to traditional normative positions in didactics and offers as such no possibilities of
discussing the results of the teaching process.
To Kansanen the described process is a constitutive element of pedagogical awareness: “combining the
deontological aspect with the teleological aspect reflects the teacher’s conscious understanding of the
totality of the instructional process inside the curricular frame” (1993b, p. 58). Further, Kansanen argues
that “if the teacher knows the curriculum “it is possible” for teachers to internalize the collective goals. We
agree with this but we also note the open nature of the assumption; teachers do not necessarily internalize the
goals of the curriculum because they only know the curriculum and know what is expected. In order to
understand why certain collective goals are internalized while others are not, we must investigate under
what circumstances and conditions an individual acts as a teacher. Thus, as was said before, it is important
to understand