Didaktik and/or Curriculum

With the increasing interdependence and harmonization of educational systems and achievement expectations, the necessity to cooperate across national borders and differences is becoming more evident. A serious problem that has not received sufficient attention arises from different concepts of the planning and implementation of teaching. Two basic models predominate internationally: the Anglo-Saxon tradition of curriculum and the Continental European tradition of Didaktik. Didaktik and/or Curriculum presents core issues of an international dialogue aiming at a comparative analysis of both traditions as an indispensable precondition for mutual understanding and successful cooperation.

The Editors: Bjørg B. Gundem, Ph.D., is Professor of Education at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has published widely in Scandinavia as well as internationally. Recent books are Curriculum Practice and Curriculum Theory: An Introduction to the Field; Aims and Content of Schooling; and Towards a New Reality of Schooling: Curriculum and the Local-National Dilemma. Stefan Hopmann received his Ph.D. from the University of Kiel, Germany, and teaches curriculum studies at the universities of Potsdam, Germany, Oslo, and Trondheim, Norway. He has published widely in Germany as well as internationally. His recent publications deal with comparative research, curriculum theory and curriculum-making, school history, and the theory of schooling, including a reader on Didaktik and/or curriculum.

Contents: Bjørg B. Gundem / Stefan Hopmann: Introduction: Didaktik Meets Curriculum - William A. Reid: Systems and Structures or Myths and Fables? A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Curriculum Content - Rudolf Künzli: The Common Frame and the Places of Didaktik - Ian Westbury: Didaktik and Curriculum Studies - David Hamilton: Didaktik, Deliberation, Reflection (In Search of the Commonplaces) - O. L. Davis, Jr.: The Theoretic Meets the Practical: The Practical Wins - Ewald Terhart: Changing Concepts of Curriculum: From 'Bildung' to 'Learning' to 'Experience' Developments in (West)Germany from the 1960s to 1990 - Erik Wallin: Changing Paradigms of Curriculum and/or Didaktik? - Ulf P. Lundgren: The Making of Curriculum Making: Reflections on Educational Research and the Use of Educational Research - M. Frances Klein: Approaches to Curriculum Development in the United States - Carlo Jenzer: Dealing with Change: The Making of Curriculum Making - Lars Løvlie: Paradoxes of Educational Reform: The Case of Norway in the 1990s - Tomas Englund: Teaching as an Offer of (Discursive?) Meaning - Peter Menck: The Formation of Conscience: A Lost Topic of Didaktik - Erling Lars Dale: The Essence of Teaching - William F. Pinar / William M. Reynolds / Patrick Slattery / Peter M. Taubman: Understanding Curriculum: A Postscript for the Next Generation - Wolfgang Klafki: Characteristics of Critical-Constructive Didaktik - Stefan Hopmann / Bjørg B. Gundem: Conclusion - Didaktik Meets Curriculum: Towards a New Agenda.