The development of didactic pedagogical thinking over the past 50 years

The development of didactic pedagogical thinking over the past 50 years

1. First phase

   • From the establishment of the Department of Education (1912-1937)
   • According to Cronje
     • Teaching was seen as the accumulation of knowledge without it really contributing to a child's education.
     • The idea of material forming was very prominent.
     • School important principles of teaching had not been arrived at.
   • Knowledge was very encyclopedic and it was based mainly on the British and American literature.
   • J. J. N. Kruger in his study of teaching environmental geography
     • "The what and why of such teaching are at the moment more important than the how..."
   • Didactic is hardly mentioned in the researches.
   • Research of J. F. E. Havinga
     • He gradually would prescribe methods that simultaneously make teaching history interesting and successful.
     • There is a greater emphasis on the didactic, still there is no indication of a didactic structure.

2. Second phase

   • Establishment of the Faculty of Education (1937-1960's)
     • Didactics and the General History Education
   • B. F. Nael (head of the Department of Educational Psychology and Sociology)
     • His ideal was to extend to the faculty the Wurzburg Shool of the Psychology of Thought and its didactic application by the Amsterdam school of Kohnstamm.
   • Oswald Kulpe
     • The psychology of thought
       • In contrast to the association psychology of Locke and the presentation theory of Herbart, the essentials of thinking indeed are imageless.
       • Conscious activity
       • Thought is actualized by a determining tendency that springs from the thinking task.
   • Cologne School
     • Three levels of consciousness
       • Concrete-visual (individual images), Schematic (ideas), Abstract level (concepts) of thinking.
   • Mannheim School - Otto Selz
     • Emphasized that thinking is teleological and goal-directed and is propelled and directed by the task.
   • Kohnstamm
     • In agreement with the psychology of thinking, he viewed thinking as a central didactic problem.
     • By presenting methods of solution a child can learn to elevate his achievement scores.
   • Cronje
     • The school educates an independent, responsible personality.
     • The school strives for harmonious development.
     • The school stimulates a child to self-activity.
     • The school and its activities are more linked up with life itself.
     • Intellectual educability is recognized.
   • Jonges
     • Doubts there was really an accountable didactics at this time because the accountability was placed in psychology.

3. Third phase

   • Begins with the appointmet of Prof. F. van der Stoep as head of the Department of Didactics and History of Education (1960's)
   • Stoep identified the immediate problem of didactics as being ensnared in the grip of traditionalism.
   • German formative theory
     • "Forming"
       • On the one hand, it refers to an inner change that occurs in a person on the basis of a power emanating from the learning content
       • On the other hand, forming refers to an inner change in disposition that becomes evident in the ways a person participates in life and reality.
   • Stoep
     • First searched for the original fundamental structure of teaching than can be pointed to as a universal phenomenon.
     • In order to disclose the original structure of teaching it is required that the thinker proceed from the fact that persons are always involved with structures of reality.
   • A person's educative intervention cannot be reduced to anything else.
     • Has to occur regarding something such as values, norms, skills.
       • These contents are derived from a person's life world.
         • A child has to be taught in terms of these contents.
           • The close connection between educating and teaching arises.
   • Ways of participating
     • In teaching, this form manifests itself specially as didactic form.
   • Tertiary didactics
     • Didactic theory is particularized for a triary teaching situation.