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

Lectures on Education
in
1826: What is the object of a theory of education and who needs this theory? Why do we participate in the
educational project?
Naturally there are several ways of dealing with this problem. In this study the point of departure is that
research on teaching, both conceptual and empirical, should aim at contributing to the development of a
conceptual language which enables us to analyse and understand pedagogical reality in a coherent way. In
this respect scientific theory is understood in a quite ordinary way. Yet it may be interesting to reflect more
precisely on why such a theory is needed. Here two limited perspectives are indicated, i.e. how educational
theory is related to teacher education and the practitioners’ reflection.
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Educational Theory and Teacher Education
In discussing the shaping of a conceptual system it is useful to keep in mind that like so many phenomena,
the essence or meaning of the pedagogical reality is partly constituted by our description of it.
Educational theory is thus not a copy or picture of pedagogical reality. Precisely because pedagogical reality
is constituted of the descriptive activity itself, it is important whose description is counted as normative.
Further, when something is valid, it is always valid for somebody for some reason. Thus, in order to decide
which model is relevant and which is not, we must also ask for what reason and for whom a model is
developed. A common answer is that we want to create knowledge both for active teachers, for the
education of teachers and for the administration of schooling. However, it seems that pedagogical theory is
sometimes developed more in relation to the needs of teacher education and less in relation to the reality it
is thought to describe and explain.
Even though having a developed theory of teaching makes it easier to educate teachers, we should not
forget that it is interesting to develop pedagogical theory even if this theory is not used in teacher education.
Understanding how a new generation is socialized in a culture by activities within and outside
institutionalized schools is of general interest, and should not necessarily be related to the education of
teachers.
The relation between pedagogical reality, educational theory and education of teachers may therefore be
visualized as follows (
Fig. 2.1
).
The following points should be noted: (1) The double-ended arrow between Pedagogical Reality and
Educational Theory means:
• that educational theory is about pedagogical reality;
• that our way of structuring private and theoretical models partly constitutes what educational reality is,
thus making the construction of educational theory important as a process in itself; and
• that educational theory can be developed regardless of teacher education.
(2) The one-headed arrow from Educational Theory to Education of Teachers means two things.
First, the theory of education may be used as content in teacher education. The role of educational theory
within the education of teachers is partly dependent on how we define the relation between theory of
teaching and reality, since teachers are expected to work within pedagogical reality using educational
theory. Therefore the question of how educational theory should be dealt with in teacher education is a
separate question; it is the pedagogics of educational theory.
FIG. 2.1. The relations between pedagogical reality, educational theory and teacher education.
2. DIDACTICS AND THE TSL PROCESS
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Second, as stated above, our conception of the theory and its relation to practice regulates our way of
educating teachers, but the education itself does not necessarily influence our formulation of educational
theory.
However, we are naturally free to devote ourselves to the development of the kind of educational theory
that is especially useful in teacher education. Indeed much of the theory of didactics seems to have been
developed with teacher education in mind.
(3) It is generally assumed that teachers with insight into educational theory are better equipped for
pedagogical practice than teachers without such insight.
Educational Theory and the Practitioner’s Reflection
A central task for educational theory is to create knowledge of the teaching process from what we could call
an ordinary teacher’s perspective. Given that this reality is often most complex, it is surprising that many
efforts to understand teaching have oversimplified this complexity. I think here of models that address only
content and method questions (the what and how questions) as well as of such interpretations of the
traditional “didactic triangle” (Diederich, 1988, p. 256) which disregard the context or the intentionality of
the TSL process. Every effort to structure the pedagogical process raises the question of how the complexity
of educational reality should be handled in a non-reductionist way.
An important aim of educational theory is to provide teachers with a conceptual instrument enabling them
to reflect on and communicate their pedagogical experiences in a consistent manner. The advantage of
scientific language lies in its systematic nature, which makes it an effective tool in communication. And we
must not forget that there are several ways of understanding what a scientific theory is and what it allows.
A third role for educational (or didactic) theory is naturally that it should function as a framework for
research on teaching. However, if educational theory should be used both as a research model and as an
instrument for teachers’ pedagogical reflection, we must state under what conditions this is possible. This is
an issue to which we will return later. 
An obvious additional problem for educational theory is its relation to the value-related dimension of
teaching. The question is how a scientific theory handles values. Kansanen (1993b) reminds us of the
problem concerning the extent to which a theory of teaching allows for normativity. The question is not
whether teaching as such is normative or not; it always is normative and cannot avoid being so. But can a
theory
on teaching be normative? We will return to this question later.
In sum: even though the theory of didactics has been developed to a large extent with a view to educating
teachers, we must not forget that didactic theory should do justice to the reality it tries to explicate. The
primary problem of a theory of didactics lies in what questions should be posed, and how these questions
should be answered in order that the theory is a useful instrument for understanding pedagogical practice.
However, since the validity of a theory depends on why and for whom it is developed, it must be said that
the model to be presented in this study is a contribution to the development of a theory ultimately aimed at
practitioners and researchers in the field.
QUESTIONS TO BE POSED WITHIN A THEORY OF DIDACTICS
In order to move one step forward it is now time to say something about what we are developing a theory
about. This is somewhat paradoxical, in that our very way of constructing a theory is partly to define what
teaching is. Further, if we say 
what
we are going to construct a theory about, then we have already partly
constructed that theory. The solution to this problem seems to be to approach the problem stepwise.
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We will first pay attention to the concepts of teaching and learning open-mindedly, and start by a
speculative discussion on how these concepts might be understood and related to each other. Having done
this, we will define the concept of didactics as it offers a conceptual framework and tradition within and in
relation to which the ideas of this study have been developed.
Normativity and Prescriptivity as Problems
Some approaches to teaching and education are normative, in the sense that they try to pose questions to be
answered in order to support and guide teaching practice. The three main groups of normative approaches
are those starting from (a) the content of teaching (subject matter, content theory), (b) the psychology of
learning, motivation and development and (c) philosophy of education (the view of man and the world). In
the psychologically based theories of instruction it is usually stated that instructional practice must be based
on the nature of human learning. In various content-oriented approaches to didactics