Representing a fundamental theoretical and empirical challenge the gap between teaching and learning as well as the bridging necessity have become central issues of classroom research in the last decade (Oser/Baeriswhyl 2001). With regard to the question of how teaching and learning can be related current approaches of educational research emphasize a theoretical shift from causal assumptions informed by the process-product-model of instructional effectiveness to user-oriented models nowadays. As an instance, the concept of “opportunities to learn” plays a key role in the new explanation of effectiveness on the classroom level. Accordingly, teaching should be performed in a way that pupils can profit from the learning opportunities offered by instructional arrangements/environments. From a didactical perspective this concept stresses the individual steering competence of the teaching professionals to organize and to arrange those conditions which make seizing the opportunities to learn more probable. Especially, classroom management strategies and the cognitive activation und motivation of the pupils are central features of this individualistic kind of teaching competence. This perspective, however, has been criticized as a revival of didactic illusions for it systematically underestimates the complexity and contingency of communication-based teaching and learning processes (Helsper 2007). Against the background of this controversy the presentation will focus on the question of how teaching and learning processes are embedded in institutionalized forms of pedagogical practise, which make learning possible. The assumption tested in an empirical research project is that these forms are the bridging link between teaching and learning. Emerging in a in a specific organisational, cultural and pedagogical framework and adopted by both teachers and pupils pedagogical forms can be observed as “solutions” for the difference between teaching and learning that arise in the praxis. Forms of pedagogical practise are structuring but not determining individual teaching and learning strategies. They can be identified on different levels in the educational field: In an organisational dimension classroom instruction in itself can be described as such a form. In a didactical dimension different types of learning arrangements/choreographies can be distinguished (especially with regard to their concern for participative or instruction-centred elements). The presentation will give answers to following questions: In how far does it make sense to speak of pedagogical forms instead of individual pedagogical competences? How do these pedagogical forms structure the teaching and learning processes in the classroom? In how far do teachers and pupils participate in establishing these forms? Is it possible to estimate the outcomes of these forms with regard to learning processes of the pupils?

The presentation is based on empirical findings of a research study funded by the German Research Association (DFG) and conducted at Frankfurt Universities Department of Education. The study refers to an audio-based documentation and ethnographic observation of nine instructional units of history and ethics lessons in different secondary schools (with a length between four and twelve weeks). Methodologically the study does not focus on estimations about the classroom processes given by the involved actors, but on the communication process in the classroom in itself. This classroom discourse with regard to its organisational, cultural, and pedagogical framework was interpreted by a qualitative interaction analysis.

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