Author: Slavík, J., Janík, T.
Key words: content transformation, pedagogical content knowledge, quality of instruc-tion, content-focused approach, research
The article considers quality of teaching from the point of view of a content-orientated approach in didactics, and is the latest of an integrated series of articles by the authors published in Pedagogika since 2005. It aims to provide a comprehensive view of the theoretical premises of a content-orientated approach to quality of teaching. Ways to quality are understood here as a means of professionalising teachers and raising the intellectual standards of theirtraining on the basis of the integration of theory and practice. The study starts from a critique of those pedagogical approaches to teaching and its assessment that neglect the content element of education. The content-orientated approach to quality of teaching highlights the dynamics of the process of transformation of content in teaching and places the stress on the clarity, structuring and accessibility of content for pupils as the criteria of quality of teaching. The purpose of the assessment of quality of teaching is the chance it provides to improve teaching on the basis of choice of the best alternatives (alterations) relative to the real teaching situation. In order to justify choice of alteration, didactics and teachers must be furnished with an analytical and terminological apparatus enabling them to describe, analyse and assess the teaching situation. The core of this apparatus consists of two key categories: didactic knowledge of content and didactic transformation of content. Didactic analysis of quality of teaching as understood in terms of content focuses on the transformations that occur between the subjective, inter-subjective and objective levels of the existence of the content. The analysis of these is premised on the idea that the activity of the pupil tackling an assigned learning task is directed towards abstractions and the mastery of concepts and their application in the context of a specific discipline. This process is explained using examples, because the content-orientated approach is geared to making theory operational in empirical research or in reflexive analysis of own or observed teaching practice situations. Giving theoretical justifications, the article puts forward a systematic theory for an empirical-research and professionalisati-on programme in didactics, which aims to overcome the problems presented by those concepts of improvement of quality of teaching that do not take sufficient account of educational content.
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