Teaching as a pedagogical responsibility: an introduction

ABSTRACT

In this special issue, the research interest is focused on classroom activities. To adequately understand and examine the classroom situation, the wholeness and complexity of the teaching situation should be maintained and paid attention as much as possible throughout the research process. In dialogues and comparisons between the German concept of Didaktik and the American concepts of curriculum theory and pedagogy, the differences between a European, continental, and Anglo-Saxon conceptualization of education often have been emphasized. Inspired by both the German tradition of Bildung and the American philosophy of pragmatism, we here understand classroom activity as communication on selected parts of collective knowledge and social culture, shaping the conditions for both the continuity and renewal of society. Furthermore, the concept of didactics is viewed as the conceptualization of empirically based pedagogical problems in classrooms. Even if both the traditions of Bildung and pragmatism embrace a reflective approach, Dewey’s pragmatism places more emphasis on freedom and openness in terms of communication across social boundaries and on a mutual dependency between education and democracy. In terms of democracy, a Deweyan view of pragmatism could thus contribute to the German didactic tradition and the meanings of the concepts of didactics and pedagogical responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Bildung
• pragmatism
• Didaktik
• didactics
• curriculum theory

In this special issue, the research interest is focused on classroom activities. The classroom is the arena for formally initiated teaching; thus, it is a place for social interactions in terms of teaching and learning. Although classroom activities take place in separate rooms at a local school level, what goes on in one classroom cannot be understood as completely independent of what goes on in other classrooms and arenas in the school system. Instead, classroom activities take place at local arenas connected to each other through changes and challenges in society, a common or similar curriculum, and shared and contested ideas about the meaning of the concepts of teaching and learning. Classroom activities must be understood as a whole. Thus, classroom activities comprise the ongoing social and communicative interactions, the educational ideas forming the basis for the lesson, the human and non-human factors influencing the specific teaching situation, the composition of a particular group of students, the individual teacher, and the structural and practical factors constraining the teaching situation in different ways. To adequately understand and examine the classroom situation, the wholeness and complexity of the teaching situation should be maintained and paid attention as much as possible throughout the research process.

The classroom as a pedagogical problem

In the German Didaktik tradition, on the basis of Bildung as a philosophical idea, the teacher’s professional responsibility towards their students can be understood as a ‘pedagogical responsibility’. Teachers make their own independent, didactic decisions within the framework of this responsibility to support children or students as they strive to expand their understanding of the world (Menck, 2000). The term pedagogical responsibility also constitutes a basic concept for a contemporary understanding of German Didaktik, as it has been developed by Wolfgang Klafki during the second half of the 20th century. The Bildung-oriented concept of Didaktik understands classroom research as ‘empirically founded didactics’ and the classroom as ‘a pedagogical problem’ generating critical reflections for research (Menck, 2000, p. 7). Here, the term didactics refers to the classroom as a whole, where the didactic researcher from a position outside the classroom tries to understand what goes on inside the classroom. Thus, the German Didaktik tradition draws together two parallel research fields comprised of both a theory of teaching and learning and a conceptualization of the practice of teaching.

Classroom work is about offering younger generations insights on knowledge and social culture developed by previous generations (Dewey, 2008; Menck, 2000). From an American pragmatic tradition, Dewey understands this continuity of social life between generations as ‘the re-creation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery, and practices’ (Dewey, 2008, p. 5) because ‘life is a self-renewing process’ (p. 129). In a broad sense, education is about the communication of humans’ achieved experiences. Through communication, experience becomes shared and modified until it becomes a common possession.

Inspired by both the German tradition of Bildung and the American philosophy of pragmatism, we understand classroom activity as communication on selected parts of collective knowledge and social culture, shaping the conditions for both the continuity and renewal of society. Furthermore, the concept of didactics is viewed as the conceptualization of empirically based pedagogical problems in classrooms.

In dialogues and comparisons between the German concept of Didaktik and the American concepts of curriculum theory and pedagogy, the differences between a European, continental, and Anglo-Saxon conceptualization of education have been emphasized (Gundem & Hopmann, 1998; Hudson, 2002, 2003; Westbury et al., 2000). The American curriculum theory tradition has focused on the organizational aspects of curriculum in terms of guidelines that are comprised of the selection of content and methods expected to guide the teacher’s work at an everyday level. It is the responsibility of each school to decide what the wider framework of curriculum means more precisely for this particular place or school. The teacher’s role can be understood as that of a certified employee with the task of implementing the locally guided curriculum (Westbury, 2000). This contrasts with the position of teachers in the German tradition. From a historical perspective, German teachers have had a high degree of professional self-determination. The curriculum frames but does not control the teacher’s work. Instead, the teacher’s role is to select adequate content from their own judgement based on being licenced through the licensure examination for teachers (Elde Mølstad & Karseth, 2016; Hopmann, 2007; Hudson, 2002). Another difference between the German and Anglo-Saxon traditions of education concerns the teaching subject. In the American curriculum tradition, the subject matter is closely linked to the knowledge developed within the academic disciplines. The pedagogical problem mainly lies in the ‘how question’, that is, how to pass on a specific knowledge content to the students. In the Bildung tradition of Didaktik, the factual parts differ between ‘the matter’ of the subject and the inner, formative ‘meaning’ of the subject in relation to the student. The central question is what meaning, if any, the student derives from the subject matter. Thus, it is the responsibility of the teacher to choose and introduce a teaching content that widens the individual student’s personal understanding of the world, with a focus on the ‘what question’ (Westbury, 2000).

Didactics: the conceptualisation of pedagogical problems

Questions related to how classrooms as communicative arenas matter for young people’s learning and personal development and how the things that are learned matter for society are hardly new and have therefore been a long-standing topic of professional and scholarly reflections on education. However, while the didactical core questions might remain as such, the emphases change depending on the path of history, the imagined futures, and the societal changes and challenges related to these processes. What counts as valuable knowledge and what is to be taught, what the purposes of schooling are, what it means to be an educated person, and how teaching and learning should be realized at all always reflect and respond to a certain kind of socio-historically rooted contexts.

From a pedagogical point of view, one thing with a lasting impact on the contemporary understanding of teaching, its content, forms, aims, and organization is the tremendous focus on learning results and the related trends to measure, quantify, and compare the outcomes of what is happening in classrooms (e.Biesta, 2009; Smith, 2016). As shown in countless publications over the past two decades or so, this strong emphasis on results entails a multitude of consequences for teaching and learning. This has profoundly changed not only the conditional frames for teaching and the pedagogical micro-processes of schools’ inner works but also the ideas of what education is or should be about in more general terms.

For instance, the standard- and result-oriented curricula that have been introduced in many educational contexts worldwide have characteristics that undoubtedly impact the classroom and change its pedagogical and didactical architecture. These characteristics include a set of prescribed knowledge expectations, a developed and calibrated system for controlling and assessing the achievement of the set standards, and the coordinated alignment of different elements of the curriculum (Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). Consequently, the hereto related ideas of teaching and learning thought of as something that can and should be monitored and effectively steered towards higher goal achievement also make schools and, their smaller entities, classrooms subject to different kinds of performance pressures (Wahlström & Sundberg, 2018). Overall, the serious point here is that such one-sided focus on results overemphasizes the qualification function of schooling (and this in a quite narrow and instrumental way, where qualification is mainly understood as the transfer of easily measurable knowledge), while the two other functions, which are about young people’s subjectification and socialization, only play subordinated roles (Biesta, 2015).

However, against the background of the serious challenges society is facing, ranging from issues concerning peace, democracy, and sustainability to issues on social justice, education must relate to and handle a far more complex and multi-faceted reality than what the aforementioned view of education reduced to measurable academic knowledge outcomes, efficiency, and raised standards can be supposed to provide a sufficient basis. Here, didactics as empirically founded pedagogical problems in classrooms can provide fruitful conceptual tools and valuable perspectives to sort out the complexity of teaching and learning and the moral dimensions of education, without lapsing into instrumentalism and simplification. In spite of the differences between the traditions of German Didaktik and Anglo-Saxon pedagogy, the educational challenges are the same and must be met with a shared responsibility from both research fields. For this reason, scholarly arenas for a dialogue between these two traditions are of great value. They make it possible not only to shed light on the different ways of how teaching and learning can be understood and how the classroom as a pedagogical problem can be conceptualized. In addition, they also provide opportunities to carve out certain key concepts to address the ways teachers matter regarding the complex and urgent questions of students’ knowing and reflecting on social issues that concern all of us and go beyond the response of ‘learning outcomes’.

Classroom discourse: a pedagogical responsibility

To understand how the practice of teaching and classroom activities, which are comprised of ongoing social and communicative interactions, matter for students’ learning and identity, the transfer and transformation of achieved experiences, and the development of shared understanding, it is important to pay attention to the nature and function of classroom discourse. Decades of research have provided profound knowledge of the typical organization of classroom discourse, and the results portray classroom discourse dominated by teacher-led turn-taking, interspersed to varying degrees with student-student interactions (Howe & Abedin, 2013).

In line with the currently dominating understanding of learning and socialization as situated and constituted in interactions, there has been a growing research interest in the forms, meaning, and significance of student participation in classroom interaction. This research has been facilitated by the sophisticated technology available today to generate and display data. It has contributed to our understanding of the classroom as a whole and challenged the established view of classroom interaction as solely dominated and regulated by the teacher. It has highlighted the role that students play as co-producers of classroom discourse that shape the specific teaching situation. For example, multimodal analyses have provided insights into the ways in which smartphone use affects patterns of classroom participation by increasing students’ opportunities for interaction and expanding the interactional space beyond the classroom walls (Sahlström et al., 2019). Another example is data generated from video designs that have provided opportunities for analysing classroom processes at different levels, from teachers’ instructional formats and features of classroom discourse to characteristics of the language used. By taking account of the different levels of classroom discourse, a more nuanced picture of the activity in the classroom has emerged in which teachers and students may be co-authors of teaching, while teachers still appear to play the primary role in passing on culture in terms of disciplinary discourse in the classroom (Ødegaard & Klette, 2012).

Along the increased number of typically small-scale studies focusing on students’ participation in classroom discourse, there has been a growing interest in large-scale international comparative classroom studies (e.g. Klette et al., 2016). This development is in line with the overall increased focus on international comparisons in education. Such comparative classroom studies have enhanced our understanding of how classrooms as local arenas are connected to each other as context-dependent and culturally situated practices shaped by both policy and local norms (Emanuelsson & Sahlström, 2022). Recent research in which teaching and learning in classrooms is understood as a recontextualisation of the prescribed curriculum (Wahlström & Sundberg, 2018; Wahlström, 2022a) adds to the current understanding in this area. By interpreting classroom discourse through a theoretical framework of curriculum theory that elicits teaching as the formation of ‘curriculum events’ (Doyle, 1992), this research brings potential to shed light on, for example, how current standard- and result-oriented curricula impact teaching and learning in classrooms.

In summary, there is a steadily growing empirically based knowledge of different forms and levels of interaction in classrooms, which allow teachers to reflect on and cater aspects of teaching that matter for students’ participation and learning. However, there is still a need for more critical analyses of classroom discourse to scrutinize the ways in which classroom discourse is tied to structures of power, ideology, and social justice. As highlighted by articles in this special issue, such analyses may contribute to our understanding of how inequity and marginalization may manifest in classrooms.

Democracy as a pedagogical responsibility

Even if basic concepts in Didaktik and American curriculum theory mean different things, the actual curriculum and classroom practices may exhibit greater similarities. As argued by Miyamoto (2022), German scholars in educational science seldom discuss Bildung-centred Didaktik because they think that the philosophical Bildung tradition is outside the domains of schooling. In Sweden, for example, the ideal curriculum has been rapidly displaced from a content-based curriculum as part of a German Didaktik tradition to a performance-based curriculum formed as standards in line with an Anglo-Saxon curriculum theory ideal. While the dialogue between the German and American traditions primarily has emphasized what the curriculum theory tradition can learn from the Didaktik tradition based on Bildung (Westbury et al., 2000), the American tradition of pragmatism may have certain qualities that can contribute to Didaktik.

A perspective of democracy constitutes such a potential opportunity to widen and enrich both the understanding of the German Bildung and American pragmatism traditions (Wahlström, 2022b). Within pragmatism, John Dewey has clearly and convincingly linked school education to a democratic society. Dewey characterized democracy as the ‘widening of the area of shared concerns, and the liberation of a greater diversity of personal capacities’ (Dewey, 2008, p. 93) in a world characterized by social changes due to increased trade, travel, migration, and communication, that is, the kind of changes that are relevant also today, a hundred years later. The social changes led to both a greater individualization and a broader community of interest that must be maintained and developed. Thus, Dewey (2008, p. 93) argued that a society ‘must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equably and easy terms’. In addition, a society in constant change must educate its citizens to take individual initiatives and adjust to new conditions. According to Dewey (2008), education should emphasize what binds people together in common matters across geographical and social boundaries, with the aim of developing a rich and free communication about common interests within and between different social groups.

From a perspective of pragmatism, the social and communicative characteristics of education form the basis of didactics (Dewey, 2008). From the perspective of Bildung, it is instead the student’s self-determination and self-realization that form the basis for Didaktik (Lüth, 2000). However, the latter ideal of the development of the individual can only be achieved through a reflective engagement with the surrounding culture. Both traditions include social interactions and the development of the individual’s inner potential, albeit with different emphasis. While pragmatism takes its starting point from the individual in society, the Bildung tradition takes its starting point from the development of the individual and humankind at large. From both a pragmatism and Bildung perspective on didactics, the mission of the school is broader than the transfer of academic knowledge. Teaching also includes a moral aspect of thinking reflectively about different aspects and consequences on questions of social and societal characteristics (Deng, 2020; Wahlström, 2022b). Even if both traditions embrace a reflective approach, Deweyan pragmatism places more emphasis on freedom and openness in terms of communication across social boundaries and on a mutual dependency between education and democracy. From that perspective, we suggest that Dewey’s perspective on democracy could contribute to the German didactic tradition and the meanings of the concepts of didactics and pedagogical responsibility.

A brief introduction of the articles in this special issue

This special issue is based on keynote speeches and symposia at the conference Teachers Matter—but how?¹ on the theme ‘Didaktik, pedagogy, and classroom research’. The authors critically reflected on and conceptualized classroom teaching as empirically founded didactics from philosophical, educational, and moral perspectives.

In the article ‘The call to teach and the ethics of care: A dynamic educational crossroads’, David T. Hansen and Yibing Quek examined the concepts of teaching as a calling and relational caring to conceptualize how dedicated teachers perceive and understand their work. The relational and moral idea of teaching as a calling has been developed by Hansen (1995, 2021) to examine how committed teachers understand their teaching as having a wider educational purpose. The concept of caring as a reciprocal relation of caring-for in an educational context was elaborated by Nel Noddings (2003). Hansen and Quek drew empirical examples to illustrate that both concepts are helpful to fully understand teachers’ considerations and aims in different teaching situations, even if the two concepts have been developed from different perspectives.

Barbara Comber and Debra Hayes address in their article ‘Classroom participation: Teachers’ work as listeners’ a pivotal aspect of teachers’ everyday practices in the classroom; an aspect that is, albeit its importance, quite underrated and under-researched. It is about teachers’ listening and the differences it makes for students’ learning when teachers master the art of really listening in their classrooms. By drawing on a wide range of data collected in schools located in low socio-economic contexts, the ethnographic study traces the listening practices of teachers, both in terms of the dangers if teachers do not listen, and what deep pedagogic listening can contribute to more equitable schools.

In her article ‘The devil’s finest trick: Routines that make teachers matter against their better judgement’, Anna Sfard explored the ways in which teachers and their teaching matter for students’ learning and their identity as learners. She illustrated in what ways the teacher’s understanding and interpretation is present in the finest details of social interactions in the classroom. The article contributes to the didactic research on classroom interaction that allows for teachers to reflect on aspects of teaching that matter for students’ learning and identity and highlights the necessity for teachers to develop critical attitudes towards their own communicative routines and interpretations of students’ actions. If teachers overlook to scrutinize their own interpretations and prejudices regarding students’ actions, they risk reinforcing inequity and the marginalization of students.

Kirsti Klette draws the attention to classroom research and the search for a common language to compare, analyse, and critically reflect on classroom activities as a pedagogical problem in her article ‘Teaching matters: Towards a shared language of teaching?’ Klette finds that the recent developments in video technology and coding manuals have contributed to a new generation of classroom studies. The classroom data enable a close analysis of both subject-specific and generic characteristics in teaching and in students’ learning. Klette suggests that the collaboration between researchers and teachers in classroom research based on video technology has significantly contributed to establishing a shared language for teachers in didactics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [F19-1530:1].

Notes

1. The conference ‘Teachers matter—but how? An international conference on didactics, pedagogy and classroom research’ at Linnaeus University 13–15 October 2021, was financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.