Introduction:Didactical theory construction has never developed in such a way that it achieved an autonomous status within the community of educational researchers (Meseth et al. 2011). It has always depended on input from philosophy, sociology, psychology et cetera; and it has always been a national endeavour. Thus, in the English speaking countries, “didactics” has no place in higher education, the term “didactical” today still arouses negative feelings, and there is a tendency to disregard work on didactics that is not published in English. Next to it, but separate, we find a discourse community in the German speaking and reading countries; we find a Scandinavian one with special status because the didacticians there often publish their research in English; we find a research discourse of the Francophone, and there is even a Chinese discourse which, however, is nearly unknown in the other communities (Hudson forthcoming, Meyer and others forthcoming). It is time then to search for common ground not only in instructional research, teacher education, curriculum research, didactics, pedagogy et cetera, but also on the differences in educational theory construction and, in particular, on theory construction in didactics (Hudson and Meyer 2011).

Prima facie, the way of arguing in our three papers and the references made provide a range of different perspectives on, and evaluations of, the present-day situation in didactics and didactical theory construction in Europe. But before the prima facie differences can be transformed into a unified theory of knowledge good for didactics, we have to get to know each other’s discourses. This then is what we present: three approaches toward the “higher“ levels of educational theorising, taking what is called Bildung in the German speaking countries as our example.

In all three discourse communities, in the English speaking mega community, in the Scandinavian and in the German language community, a common interest in the development of knowledge and competences prevails, coupled with the conviction that a “pure” theory of knowledge does not help. What we need for theorizing in didactics is a theory of didactical knowledge that includes a cognitive, a volitional and an emotional dimension of teaching and learning, parallel to the highly complex communication as it is practiced in school. When Carol Taylor refers to Barad’s “knowing in-being” (2007), when Ingrid Carlgren quotes Hirst (1993) concerning the learners’ “initiation into a complex of specific, substantive social practices with all the knowledge, attitudes, feelings, virtues, skills, dispositions and relationships that that involves”, and when Meinert Meyer combines knowledge transfer with the students’ autonomous uptake on the basis of their didactical sense constructions, we find elements of shared epistemological perspectives and constraints. We agree that knowledge transfer is not enough in didactical theorizing. The three papers in our symposium thus are an invitation to go on in the search for an autonomous didactical theory of knowledge and learning. 

Meseth, Wolfgang, Matthias Proske and Frank-Olaf Radtke, eds. (2011). Unterrichstheorien in Forschung und Lehre. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn. Hudson, Brian, and Meinert A. Meyer, eds., (2011). Beyond Fragmentation: Didactics, Learning and Teaching in Europe. Opladen and Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publisher. Hudson, Brian (forthcoming 2015). On Didactics in Europe. In: Kerry Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee: European Didactics and Chinese Curriculum: Curriculum Thoughts in Dialogue. Routledge, London and New York. Meyer, Meinert A., Hilbert Meyer, and Ping Ren (forthcoming 2015). On the German Didaktik tradition. In: Kerry Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee: European Didactics and Chinese Curriculum: Curriculum Thoughts in Dialogue. Routledge, London and New York.