This paper presents a systematic literature review being carried out at the University of Salerno that aims to map the transdisciplinary research paths being pursued in the field of didactics in the last two decades, and their influence on teacher education course programming and school practices. In Italy, the field of didactics has become a broad area of study in education with its distinct epistemology and ontology. However, until the 1950s, didactics was considered as the practical application of pedagogical theory. The second half of the 20^th Century was a very significant period for its transformation from a mere art to an independent branch of educational science. This has naturally had a profound influence on the research carried out within this discipline and, more broadly, on educational research. In fact, Italian studies in didactics have not only reached out to and gained insight from the developments in other countries but have also borrowed the findings and the reflections in other fields of research, spanning from information technology to neurosciences, biology and phenomenology.

Over time, this process has led to a further distinction between areas of interest which led to the attribution of adjectives spanning from “general” and “disciplinary” to “special” and “inclusive”. As a result, an array of theoretical underpinnings have also been proposed as frameworks of reference which have led to other research branches of didactics. Among these is bio-education (Frauenfelder, 1994; Frauenfelder & Santoianni, 1997; Frauenfelder & Santoianni, 2002; Frauenfelder, Santoianni & Striano, 2004). According to Frauenfelder (1994), through further investigation of the widely-acknowledged relationship between nature and culture, by supporting the hypothesis that biological constraints legitimise the cultural component, and that the latter is viewed as an indispensable variable in development, bio-education places the identification of possible significant relationships between pedagogy, biological sciences and neurosciences as the focus of its research. Its meaning is expressed in the synergistic construction of the concept of “educability” understood as every individual’s biological and cultural predisposition to develop cognitively. The development is different between one individual and the other both quantitatively and qualitatively due to genetic, epigenetic and environmental variability. Thus, this leads to the assumption that the cognitive potential is distinct from one adaptive system to the other and is related to individual experience.

Based on this theoretical background, other research strands have flourished since the second decade of the 21st century. These include: neurodidactics (Rivoltella,2012) which focuses on the development of cognitive neuroscience and how it can provide useful suggestions to teachers for effective teaching; enactive didactics (Rossi, 2011), according to which knowledge is “enaction”, extrapolation of meanings and of a world during a sensory-motor interaction with the environment and with others; and simplex didactics (Sibilio, 2014, 2015), which is based on the adoption of Alain Berthoz’s (2012) theory of simplexity as a possible operational strategy to decipher and to cope with the complexity of school contexts. Although these approaches may seem that they have taken divergent routes, there are common threads joining them together (Frauenfelder, Rivoltella, Rossi & Sibilio, 2013). They all take biological and neuroscientific discoveries into consideration in their analyses. Moreover, they are all rooted within an ecological perspective where the interaction among the teacher, the student and the environment is central to understanding the efficacy and effectiveness of teaching. In fact, didactics is understood as a complex adaptive system within which a unique and unrepeatable combination of different processes inevitably interact in order to produce a situated (or authentic) teaching-learning episode (or event). The emergent result is an experience that brings about change in all three elements – the teacher, the student, and the environment.

Following a literature search on the evolution of the development of didactics as a discipline in Italy which has aided in tracing the main theoretical orientations, a systematic review is being conducted to identify and map the latest trends in the field of didactics in teacher education course curricula and practices in schools. The aim of this research is to create an online database where scholars and teachers can share their knowledge and experiences while keeping up to date on latest research and innovative tried-and-tested approaches in schools and higher education in teacher education programmes. Apt to “draw together all known knowledge on a topic area” (Grant & Booth, 2009, p. 102), the systematic review includes searches for documents published in Italian and English from 1999 to 2019. Electronic databases publishing articles on education such as including ERIC, EBSCO, Education Research Complete and Academic Search Complete and PsycINFO are being searched. The subject terms chosen are a combination of the keywords “Italy”, “Italian”, “didactics”, “teacher education”, “school”, “teaching strategy”, “teaching approach” in the titles and/or abstracts. Taking into account that practically all the literature published in Italian is not available in electronic databases, high-profile scientific journals published online are being consulted. The choice of journals is based on the most recent lists issued by ANVUR (the National Italian Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research). Official websites of Italian national agencies will also be searched for innovative projects and initiatives taking place in universities and schools. In addition, prominent scholars in the field of didactics will be consulted to orient the search and gain insight on innovative didactic approaches that are being experimented in universities and schools. To keep track of the work carried out, collate, summarise and report the results, Garrard’s Matrix Method (2017) is being used to guide the different phases of the study.

Considering that the theoretical reflections in the field of didactics in Italy have proved invaluable in orienting research and practice, it is timely that a study is carried out to explore their influence on practice levels. The literature review being carried out will provide the basis for further research to explore how research in the field of didactics has informed curriculum design, provided scientific grounds for the choice of specific teaching methods to suit different learning needs and styles, and stimulated further research to provide the much-needed evidence-base. It will also help in analysing what extent the role of the teacher within the triadic interaction has evolved and may raise the need to rethink teacher education course programming and delivery. Attention may be directed on the importance of maintaining pedagogical knowledge and the specialisation in content areas in teacher education, but also provide strategies on how to instil reflective practice, encourage lifelong learning and the use of evidence-based approaches in schools. It is hoped that through this work cognisance is gained on how teachers can make better use of their innate resources and capabilities to feel better prepared and more efficacious in dealing with the complexities they are faced with in their day-to-day encounters with their students in a heterogenic inclusive school environment.

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