Danish Didactics: an outline of history and research

Abstract

Since didactical thinking has very long historical roots within European education, Nordic didactical research from the post‐war period has to be presented against the historical back‐ground. The three articles in this section from Denmark, Finland and Norway, demonstrate different national historical trends and their influences on research and theorizing. The Danish contribution gives in its first section some figures concerning research positions in general didactics in Denmark, followed in the second section by remarks on the application of the concept of didactics before presenting in the third section the past Danish implicit didactic forms and past Danish implicit didactic forms and past contributions to explicit Danish didactics. In the fourth section the contribution of Carl Aage Larsen in the 1960s is discussed as is the criticism of this contribution that arose in the 1970s and 1980s. In the last section an attempt is made to characterize developmental trends in Danish didactics during the last twenty years. The Finnish article shows a different historical perspective, containing a university and a teacher‐training‐college line of development. Further, it presents an overview of Finnish research during the last four decades on didactics, first large projects are discussed then didactics in teacher education and in curriculum research, and it finishes by discussing current questions and future perspectives. The Norwegian article starts with a discussion of historical and contemporary understandings of the concept didactics, thus framing the main dimensions of the concept. In correspondence with this structuring, Norwegian didactical research from the last four decades is grouped into research related to general didactics, to the didactics of particular institutions and settings, and to the didactics of particular subjects, and a survey of research within each group is presented.