NW 27: Teaching and learning in times of uncertainty. Didactics, societal demands and individual needs in a changing world

Network
NW 27 Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Title
Teaching and learning in times of uncertainty. Didactics, societal demands and individual needs in a changing world

Abstract
The general theme of the ECER 2025, “Charting the Way Forward: Education, Research, Potentials and Perspectives”, encourages debate and dialogue connected to education, its central role in society, the way in which educational research should shape the future of educational practice as well as promote a better understanding of the contemporary and future world of education.

This special call in Network 27 would like to explore the challenges that teachers and students face in the context of rapid societal changes and the emergence of new social and individual needs, especially with regard to times of uncertainty.

We invite contributions from scholars whose work deals with the aspects of uncertainty concerning didactics, teaching and learning. The network will highlight four dimensions of educational research: teachers’ coping with uncertainty, students’ development and the enhancement of life skills, consequences of societal change and uncertainty for didactic, its teaching and learning, and the impact of uncertainty to theoretical frameworks and research methodology.

The Call
The general theme of the ECER 2025, “Charting the Way Forward: Education, Research, Potentials and Perspectives”, encourages debate and dialogue connected to education, its central role in society, the way in which educational research should shape the future of educational practice as well as promote a better understanding of the contemporary and future world of education.

This special call in Network 27 would like to explore the challenges that teachers and students face in the context of rapid societal changes and the emergence of new social and individual needs, especially with regard to times of uncertainty.

We invite contributions from scholars whose work deals with the aspects of uncertainty concerning didactics, teaching and learning. The network will highlight four dimensions of educational research: teachers’ coping with uncertainty, students’ development and the enhancement of life skills, consequences of societal change and uncertainty for didactic, its teaching and learning, and the impact of uncertainty to theoretical frameworks and research methodology.

As didactics is concerned with the interrelation of teachers and students and their interaction on chosen content, we are especially interested in how research and intervention in didactics

• focuses on teachers and their integration of crucial issues arising from the debates in society such as war, climate change and sustainability, diversity and social, gender, ethnic inequities, wellbeing; their rethinking of contents that were previously presented as ‘subjects’ or ‘disciplines’ in order to integrate complex questions calling for several disciplinary frameworks or social sensitive questions that are dependent of historical, cultural and political contexts; their handling with new requirements in times of uncertainty, the problems they raise when it comes to select, plan and assess the curriculum contents;

• takes into account the students as developing self with their own interests and fears, their specific developmental tasks in a complex, uncertain world; the role of students’ views on individual and societal issues and challenges at school, their empowerment to participate in curriculum development and the development of democratic structures concerning classroom interaction, content, and learning objectives;
• highlights classroom research which focuses on interaction in class, the choice of topics by teachers and students, challenges of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality, joint negotiation of meaning, democratic spaces of reflexion concerning societal demands and individual challenges, beliefs and interests, an intergenerational discourse of topics that matter.

We encourage colleagues to include reflexions on the tensions due to uncertainty arising in the considered didactics context, for instance:

- tensions between the transmission of a core of subject knowledge and the requirement to address complex problems related to many subjects, and/or socially acute questions in diverse teaching and learning settings;

- tensions between what counts as school knowledge and uncertainty in education, the transformation of the students in the encounter with societal development and uncertainty;

- tensions between diverse teachers’ views and students’ standpoints, experiences and developmental tasks regarding societal challenges and an uncertain future, and the need of an intergenerational discourse on content being at stake in the classroom.

- tensions given by established theoretical frameworks and research methodology and the need to revise and innovate according to didactic contexts in times of uncertainty.

Since this topic is related to questions that are also discussed in other networks, we will organize joint sessions as far as possible for ECER 2025.

Contact Person(s)

• Marte Blikstad-Balas
• Anke Wegner