Didactics: Why Telling Isn't Teaching
The craft of teaching itself: objectives, lesson plans, explicit instruction, group work, inquiry, differentiation and how expert knowledge becomes school knowledge.
Try 3 questions
1. The 'didactic triangle' describes teaching as a relationship among which three poles?
- Teacher, learner and content
- Teacher, parent and school
- Learner, method and assessment
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Answer: Teacher, learner and content
Didactics studies how teacher and learner relate to each other through a specific piece of knowledge; changing any pole changes the whole situation.
2. Jean Houssaye argued that every teaching situation privileges two poles of the triangle. What happens to the third?
- It is pushed into a 'dead' position
- It takes control of the lesson
- It merges with one of the others
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Answer: It is pushed into a 'dead' position
In Houssaye's model, for example, a lecture links teacher and knowledge while the learner is sidelined; each method sacrifices one relationship.
3. In much of Europe and Latin America, didactics is distinguished from pedagogy by focusing on what?
- The laws governing school systems
- The history of school buildings
- How specific content is taught
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Answer: How specific content is taught
Pedagogy addresses education as a whole, including its aims and values; didactics focuses on the teaching and learning of particular content.
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