Lecture 1 (Part 1)

Didactics and Pedagogy

 1. Didactics

 The term 'didactic‘, etymologically adjective,

has long characterized all "that is specific to
teaching".
 It originates from the Greek verb Didaskein,
which means to teach, to educate.
 1. Didactics

 However, the term can also mean: having the

ability to teach, the content taught, teaching
aids, including methods and media, the school
and the classroom where learning takes place,
and learning as the main activity of students.
 1. Didactics

 One of the important landmarks here was the

publication of John Amos Comenius’ book The
Great Didactics [Didactica Magna] (first
published in Czech in 1648, in Latin in 1657,
and in English in 1896).
 1. Didactics

 Comenius is a Czech educator of the

seventeenth century who was the first to
develop language textbooks; his goal was to
structure explicitly the teaching of languages.
 Today, more than 360 years after the
publication of The Great Didactics the noun,
didactics, has two meanings:
 1. Didactics

 1. In its common meaning, the terms "language

didactics", "didactics of mathematics",
"didactics of mechanics" etc., refer to the use
of teaching techniques and methods specific to
each discipline. The techniques used are, of
course, different depending on subject-matter,
since they depend directly on the content to be
taught.
 1. Didactics

 For example, language teaching uses audio-

oral techniques, teaching the physical sciences
requires the experimental approach, teaching
economics focuses on case studies.
 1. Didactics

 The selected teaching techniques, their

adaptation to the characteristics of the subject-
matter, are the didactics of the discipline (i.e
subject-matter); so the term is not specific only
to languages.
 1. Didactics

 2. In its modern sense, didactics studies the

interactions that can establish themselves in a
teaching/learning situation between an
identified content, a provider of this
knowledge and a receiver.
 1. Didactics

 The concept of language didactics has

particularly been used in the seventies, since
the Dictionnaire de Didactique des Langues
got published by Robert Galisson and Daniel
Coste in 1976, and this helped to spread the
term "language didactics" in France and in
some francophone countries.
 1. Didactics

 Language didactics is a research discipline that

analyzes content (knowledge, skills,...) and its
concomitant learning processes as object of
teaching.

 It consists of all the procedures used to select,

analyze, organize knowledge (content) and
adapt it to the type of students i.e the
conditions for its selection.
 1. Didactics
 As a discipline, language didactics is not only about
knowledge acquisition but also the acquisition of a
'know-how': the expertise or the ability to
communicate with others i.e. to understand and be
understood.

 Since teaching is to mobilize means to ensure the

transmission and appropriation of content, teaching
results from the interactive combination of didactics
and pedagogy.
 2. Pedagogy: Art,
science or craft?

 Of Greek origin, the word 'pedagogy' is said to

have appeared in 1485.

 Broadly, just like didactics, while there are

many who argue that pedagogy can be
approached as a science (see, for example, the
discussions in Kornbeck and Jensen 2009),
others look at it more as an art or craft.
 2. Pedagogy: Art,
science or craft?

 theart of teaching – the responsive, creative,

intuitive part

 the craft of teaching – skills and practice

 the
science of teaching – research-informed
decision making and the theoretical
underpinning.
 To be continued…