The Semantic Structure of the Fact in Subject Didactics

The article is concerned with the question of contents in general education. The author starts from a semantically based understanding of the didactic concepts „content“ and „knowledge“. This approach renders the notion of content dynamic by seeing the pupil‘s knowledge as the consequence of a neverending active process of engagement with the meanings of real expressions in a corresponding field of interpretation. For subject didactics this premise raises new demands, in the sense of the need to find a common theoretical basis for the identification and interpretation of the facts of the field taught conceived as specific semantic structures created in the course of communication. The authors refer to the paradigm of this approach the „communication concept of subject didactics“ to which in their view a substantial proportion of current research in subject didactics may be assigned. They regard the fact in the didactics of a subject as the central analytical unit of the communication conception. They argue that the testing of the correctness of the fact in the didactics of a subject is one of the most important functions of subject didactic theory and practice. With an eye to the dynamically understood concept of correctness the authors characterise the semantic structure of the fact in the didactics of a subject and clarify a number of its connections with an innovated Bloom taxonomy of educational goals. On the basis of this analyse they argue that a subject orientated approach is essential to research projects on universal educational practice.