ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as an introduction to didactics – the history, various conceptualizations and didactic models, and promising directions for further development. Shulman's notion on “content as a missing paradigm” serves as a starting point to show how didactics is viewed in different research and teacher education traditions. In continental Europe, the field has a long tradition as a discipline subdivided into general didactics and a system of individual disciplinary didactics. On the other hand, in the Anglo-American area, the concept of “pedagogical content knowledge” refers to a similar set of phenomena. Both traditions are reflected in the chapter. The point lies in the search for a novel concept of general didactics that draws on the knowledge generated by (abstracted from) disciplinary didactics. To refer to this concept, the authors coin the term transdisciplinary didactics. In this vein, didactics should be theoretically sound and, at the same time, relevant as a support for teachers. It should build on the fruitful tradition of Bildung, emphasize content as the central category in understanding education, and rely on specific case-based didactic research.
