Conference Agenda

The concept didactic analysis was introduced by Klafki (1995) as a central activity of teachers’ work. Klafki’s didactic analysis is made through five questions that a teacher should consider to determine the educative value (Bildungsinhalte) of the content. In that sense, the five questions may be thought of as a didactic model for teachers to use in didactic analysis (Jank & Meyer, 2006, p. 163; Wickman, 2014). Today, the concept didactic analysis is used generally to refer to the analytic work teachers do by recruiting a wide variety of different frameworks and models depending on the purpose of their analysis (Wickman et al, 2020). At the same time, researchers in didactics engage in scientific analysis of teaching. This analytic work is commonly performed with the aid of an analytic framework or tool which, moreover, usually needs to be explicitly described in detail in the communication of the research. To be able to conduct scientific analyses of teaching, didactics researchers need formalized and agreed upon models and frameworks for making sense of their data. Likewise, to be able to compare and discuss didactic analyses of teaching, teachers need formalized and agreed upon models and frameworks for making sense of their teaching (Jank & Meyer, 2006, p. 37). Thus, although analysis has a central function in both didactic research and in didactic practice (i.e., teaching), both didactics research and practice should benefit from a further exploration of the different meanings and uses of the concept.

In this symposium, we are interested in the intersection of these two notions of analysis, didactic and scientific. The presentations in the symposium explore the roles of didactic and scientific analysis and how they take on different meanings in four European contexts of teacher-researcher collaborations and teacher education. The presentations raise questions as to what constitutes analysis, who conducts the analysis, and for what purpose. Joffredo-Le Brun demonstrates how teachers and researchers may jointly analyze a mathematics teaching device through the establishment of a so-called engineering dialogue, and investigates what analytic tools they use. Lidar and Lundqvist discuss the differential contributions made by teachers and researchers, respectively, in a collaborative, practice-close research project, and raise the issue of what level of systematic rigor that is required for something to be recognized as an analysis. In the context of teacher education, Hofmeister and Lenzen explore two kinds of didactic models – existing and emerging – that are invoked as tools for analysis in supervision interviews in physical education. Also in teacher education, Ligozat, Sales Cordeiro and Sudriès study the transposition practice of didactic analysis in the context of pre-service teachers’ (PTs’) work with lesson plans, by analyzing the work needed by PTs to take ownership over and adapt a didactic model provided by the teacher educators in order to be able to use it for didactic analysis.

Considering the conference theme, “Education in an Age of Uncertainty”, with reforms such as shorter teacher education programs and the contested trust in teachers as professionals (Purinton, 2012), the status of the scientific base of the teaching profession may indeed be said to be uncertain. To establish a shared conceptual space and develop a common and international language of teachers, didactics has a significant role to play as a basis for teachers’ analytic work. In the symposium we extend our understanding of the role of analysis in two contexts in which didactics research and practice meet, and reach for a shared conceptual space between researchers, teachers and teacher educators.

Sub-paper had to be withdrawn.

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This presentation seeks to illuminate various levels of analysis and explore the potential opportunities and challenges associated with analyses conducted in teacher-researcher collaborations. We will rapport on experiences from a collaborative project with the overarching goal of generating knowledge about how biology education could support the development of students' knowledge and action competence in the context of antibiotic resistance. In the project, we undertook planning, implementation, and analysis of teaching and student learning in two iterations (Eriksson, Lidar & Lundqvist, in review). The teachers brought their practical experiences of science teaching, while researchers contributed with didactic theories and models. Insights gained from the initial round were utilized to refine instructional materials to enhance the learning conditions for students. The intention was to analyse students' learning using the method Practical Epistemological Analysis (PEA), a detailed approach for analyzing individuals' actions during the learning process (e.g., Wickman & Östman 2002). While analyses using PEA seemed viable, time constraints often hindered the analysis process, e.g. because the transcription of classroom interactions took too long time. The collaborative analysis with teachers was essential in the project, to enable adjustments before subsequent teaching sessions. Unable to sustain the PEA approach properly, we adopted what we termed ‘hybrid analyses’, involving the examination of video or audio recordings. Our discussions, though simplified and not consistently systematic, focused on identifying the problematic situations students encountered and how they proceeded in their learning processes. In the iterative process, modifications were made based on the hybrid analyses and the teachers performed the adjusted teaching in other classes. Throughout this endeavor, we posed questions concerning whether our analyses were thorough enough or if we were merely engaging in reflections on teaching and learning. In the latter scenario, our efforts mirrored the continuous adjustments teachers routinely make in response to ongoing reflections in action. Additionally, we considered the specific contributions we, as researchers, brought to the overall process. As we navigated through this stage, we discovered that both parties, with our distinct competencies, significantly contributed to the analyses. In this presentation, we will explore the various contributions made in this project and explore the level of systematic rigor required for the work to be recognized as an analysis.

Eriksson, C., Lidar, M. & Lundqvist, E. (in review). Teaching development through analysis of students' learning of action competencies regarding antibiotic resistance. Nordina. Wickman, P.-O. and Östman, L. (2002), Learning as discourse change: A sociocultural mechanism. Sci. Ed., 86: 601-623. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.10036

The supervision interview (SI) is a key training technique in teacher training, described as complex and rich where much is at stake for the professional development of future teachers (Vial & Caparros-Mencacci, 2007). Despite this marked importance in the literature, Brau-Antony (2010) points out that the SI is still a relatively unexplored subject of research, in physical education (PE) as in other disciplines. By approaching the SI in physical education from a comparative angle (Leutenegger, Schubauer-Leoni & Amade-Escot, 2014) in our doctoral thesis work, we observe and question the co-construction of professional knowledge objects between cooperating teachers (CTs) and pre-service teachers (PSTs). This approach has enabled us to observe that the SI is a particular moment of training in the sense that it is both the place of use (transmission) and of construction of didactic models (Wickman, Hamza & Lundegard, 2020), in response to the various difficulties encountered by PSTs. Didactic models are defined by these authors as conceptual frameworks that can be used directly by teachers to reflect on didactic questions concerning learners and content. These models are diverse but commonly linked by the idea that they address a specific teaching-learning question. In this presentation, we describe this double movement by carrying the descriptors of the joint action framework in didactics (Ligozat, 2023) on twenty SI involving four CTs and four PSTs. On the one hand, we observe that CTs use existing didactic models to support the analysis and/or the organization of their trainee’s teaching. In this first movement, the CTs put forward and discuss these existing didactic models with the PSTs, with the aim of getting the trainees to integrate them and use their dual function of analysis and design for their own practice. This is for instance the case with the double-loop intervention model in PE (Ubaldi & Olinger, 2006). On the other hand, we also observe that exchanges between CTs and PSTs sometimes result in the (re)construction of emerging models that have no equivalent in the existing literature. This is for instance the case of social roles in PE (observer, choreographer, coach, etc.) as key elements in student learning. Whether they already exist and are transmitted by the CTs, or are co-constructed during SI, didactic models are an aid for future teachers, in case they are used for reflecting on learning content, planning or teaching (Tiberghien, 2000).

Brau-Antony, S. (2010). Analyse de l’activité d’un conseiller d’EPS. In D. Loizon (Ed.) Le conseil en formation : regards pluriels (pp.59-75). Canop, CRDP de Dijon. Leutenegger, F., Amade-Escot, C. & Schubauer-Leoni, M. L. (Eds.). (2014). Interactions entre recherches en didactique (s) et formation des enseignants : Questions de didactique comparée. Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté. Ligozat, F. (2023). Comparative didactics. A reconstructive move from subject didactics in French-speaking educational research. In F. Ligozat, K. Klette & J. Almqvist (Eds.) Didactics in a changing world: European perspectives on teaching, learning and the curriculum (pp. 1-14). Springer International Publishing. Tiberghien, A. (2000) Designing teaching situations in the secondary school. In R. Millar, J. Leach, & J. Osborne (Eds). Improving science education: The contribution of research (pp. 27-47). Open University Press. Ubaldi, J.-L., & Olinger, J.-P. (2006). Des options collectives. In J.-L. Ubaldi (Ed.), L’EPS dans les classes difficiles (pp. 24-34). Éditions Revue EP.S. Vial, M. & Caparros-Mencacci, N. (2007). L’accompagnement professionnel. Méthode à l’usage des praticiens exerçant une fonction éducative. De Boeck. Wickman, P-O., Hamza, K. & Lundegård, I. (2020). Didactics and didactic models. Methodological approaches to STEM education research, 1, 34-49.

This paper addresses the dual meaning of “didactic analysis” at the core of this symposium from the perspective of the lesson plans designed by primary school pre-service teachers (PTs) in Geneva, during the final year of their training at university. In the French-speaking Didactics, the notion of “didactic analysis” is related to Didactic Engineering research in which the a priori analysis of the conditions for teaching a specific content supports the elaboration and proofing of learning situations in the classroom. Didactic analysis involves the elaboration of models for teaching, which embeds a range of high content-specific to low content-specific variables (Artigue, 2015). In teacher education, we may consider that didactic analysis is transposed as a knowledge content that is jointly (re)constructed by the teacher-trainer and the PTs in training courses. This consideration relies upon the Theory of Didactic Transposition about how a piece of knowledge becomes teachable to someone who does not master it yet (Chevallard, 1985/1991) and the Joint Action framework in Didactics that clarifies how this transposition process may occur in concrete teaching and learning actions (Ligozat, 2023). In this paper, we try a characterization of the transposition of the practice of didactic analysis through the study of lesson plans elaborated by PTs. We focus on the didactic analysis carried out by primary school PTs when addressing the task of designing a co-disciplinary teaching unit, involving both scientific contents and literacy contents (reading comprehension) from a storybook for early graders. Co-disciplinary teaching challenges the usual didactic models elaborated from the perspective of a single subject because it addresses the understanding of a complex issue (Morin, 1990; also see Sudriès et al., 2023). To tackle this challenge, the teacher-trainer provided certain generic dimensions of a co-disciplinary didactic model (Llanos et al, 2021); on the other hand, the PTs had to take the ownership of the co-disciplinary model by adapting it to the specific constraints of the narrative story and the natural phenomenon involved in the storybook they have chosen. First results of the analysis of the lesson plans show that the PTs unequally use the co-disciplinary model; the balance between the two subjects is reached when respective disciplinary frames are brought in to disentangle complexity and make meanings of different components, before weaving meanings together to access to an enhanced understanding of the stakes of the storybook.

Artigue, M. (2015). Perspectives on Design Research : The Case of Didactical Engineering. In A. Bikner-Ahsbahs, C. Knipping, & N. Presmeg (Éds.), Approaches to Qualitative Research in Mathematics Education : Examples of Methodology and Methods (p. 467 496). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9181-6_17 Chevallard, Y. (1985). La transposition didactique : Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. La Pensée Sauvage, Ed. Ligozat, F. (2023). Comparative Didactics. A Reconstructive Move from Subject Didactics in French-Speaking Educational Research. In F. Ligozat, K. Klette, & J. Almqvist (Éds.), Didactics in a Changing World : European Perspectives on Teaching, Learning and the Curriculum (p. 35 54). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20810-2_3 Llanos, V. C., Otero, M. R., & Gazzola, M. P. (2021). A Co-Disciplinary Study and Research Path Within Two Groups of Pre-Service Mathematics Teacher Education. In B. Barquero, I. Florensa, P. Nicolás, & N. Ruiz-Munzón (Éds.), Extended Abstracts Spring 2019 (p. 47 57). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76413-5_6 Morin, E. (1990). Introduction à la pensée complexe. Paris : ESF éditeur. Sudriès, M., Ligozat, F., & Cross, D. (2023). Teaching and Learning the Chemical Reaction and the Global Warming Through the Carbon Cycle by a Co-Disciplinary Approach. ECER 2023 - Paper presented in Network 27 Didactic - Teaching and learning. University of Glasgow.