Syllabus
General didactics, theories of education and the selection of the core curriculum - Definition of general didactics, relationship between general didactics and subject didactics. Theory aiming at subject matter versus theory aiming at development of pupils' skills. Elementary and general education. Professional and general education. Selection of the core curriculum - didactic theories in the second half of the 20th century: overcoming of encyclopedic learning and knowledge fractioning, modernization of subject matter, curriculum theory.
Czech Curricular documents - National education program, framework education program, school education programs, evaluation standards (national upper-secondary school leaving examination, testing of pupils during their compulsory school attendance), curriculum timetable, syllabus, other curricular documents.
Teaching-learning process theories and educational goals - selected theories of teaching-learning process (Herbart's educational theory, educational progressivism of J. Dewey, constructivism and other theories). Educational goals - functions of educational goals, hierarchization of goals, Bloom's taxonomy, Niemierko's taxonomy.
Research-based effective instructional strategies - identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, reinforcing effort and providing recognition, homework and practice, nonlinguistic representations, cooperative learning (classroom organization forms - whole-class, group and individualized teaching), setting objectives and providing feedback, generating and testing hypotheses, cues, questions and advance organizers. Educational research of the strategies, their effect sizes, examples of their use in instruction.
Selected instruction models - The Direct Instruction Model, The Concept Attainment Model, The Concept Development Model, Problem-Centered Inquiry Models, The Synectics Model, The Cause-and-Effect Model, The Socratic Seminar Model, The Integrative Model, The Cooperative Learning Model. Educational research of the models, steps in the models, examples of their use in instruction.
Annotation
This course introduces students to theories of general didactics with the emphasis on their current applications. These are for example overcoming of encyclopedic learning and knowledge fractioning, modernization of subject matter and curriculum theory and their relationship to the contemporary reforms in education.
In the course, we discuss current Czech curricular documents (National education program, framework education program and school education program). From this level of generality we move to a more specific level related to the teaching-learning process.
Students are taught to work with research-based effective instructional strategies like identifying similarities and differences, summarizing and note taking, reinforcing effort and providing recognition. They learn to use selected instruction models depending on the objective of a lesson.