Looking at Teaching and Learning from a Cross-Curricular Comparative Perspective
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Since 1995, the TIMSS project has aimed to compare the teaching of Mathematics and Science in different countries around the world. Such comparisons help to "reveal one’s own practices more clearly, discover new alternatives, stimulate discussion about choices within each country and deepen educators’ understanding of teaching (Hiebert et al. 2003, p. 3). In the TIMSS projects, teaching is seen as a „cultural activity“. Stigler & Hiebert (1998, p. 5) note that cultural activities, such as teaching, “evolve over long periods of time in ways that are consistent with the stable web of beliefs and assumptions that are part of the culture. The scripts for teaching in each country appear to rest on a relatively small and tacit set of core beliefs about the nature of the subject, how students learn, and the role that a teacher should play in the classroom“. This poster will present parallels between cross-national research in education (such as TIMSS) and cross-curricular (inter-subject) comparative research. We claim that in a sense, we may see different domains of human endeavour as different “cultures“ with specific sets of beliefs, assumptions, ways of knowing, procedures of constructing knowledge. The “languages” of the fields are rooted in the ways of thinking within the fields. Field didactics (didactics of chemistry, didactics of history) and their interpretations are thus domain-specific and so they build a field-specific understanding of the processes of teaching and learning. Just as it is interesting to look at the teaching of a subject across national borders, we think it is interesting and inspiring to look at teaching and instruction from a transdisciplinary perspective. Clarke et al. (2006, p. 18) state that "if teaching is conceived in culturally specific terms, then a research strategy is required which documents local practice in a form that permits legitimate comparison" and go on to show that a shared language is missing for such comparison. We think that there is a similar limitation in inter-subject comparisons, because a shared language is missing between expert didacticians in different fields. The poster will draw on the findings of the CPV Video Study project that employed a shared perspective to look at the teaching of physics, geography, English as a second language, and physical education at lower-secondary Czech schools. Parallels between TIMSS (Video Study) findings and CPV Video Study findings will be discussed. |
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