ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some elements that explain how and why ‘didactiques disciplinaires’ emerged in French-speaking countries, and what is their background. ‘Didaktik’ is one educational tradition of didactics; ‘didactique’ is another, with other roots, other cultural references, other histories. In order to give an idea of the research done in francophone disciplinary didactics – to give an idea of this ‘atmosphere’ – two central concepts used by most researchers at one or at another moment, will serve as guides: didactic transposition and didactic system. At encounters where researchers of both communities interact – and they have to do so in order to develop the academic field of ‘Fachdidaktik/didactique disciplinaire’ on a national level – it is immediately noticeable that their main research interests do not coincide. In combating for the centrality of knowledge, ‘savoirs’, in thinking about school, didacticians continue to think in the tradition of Condorcet.
