School education - an introduction to the study of the field

The professional background for all that is discussed in this subject is provided by pedagogy, more precisely by school pedagogy, or rather didactics. 

Pedagogy occurs wherever one offers a helping hand to another. It grows out of interpersonal care and manifests itself as helping to work on a person or in the development of humanity. Its basic means is agogia - guiding or accompanying, supporting or directing the development of others, originally children (paidos).
People have certainly reflected on pedagogical practice since ancient times. They have stored the results of their reflections, observations and experiences in folk wisdom, in which pedagogical themes are quite widely represented. Such winged sayings as - do not teach an eagle to fly; he who is not given from above will not buy in apathy; what you learn in youth you will find in old age - are proof of this. 
Efforts to capture and interpret folk wisdom related to education and upbringing can be regarded as a pre-scientific stage of pedagogy - a field that in its further development is heading towards developing into a scientific discipline. The prerequisite for this is the systematization of basic pedagogical categories and their deeper (theoretical) interpretation. A fundamental contribution in this respect is attributed to J. A. Comenius. In his time - but also later, but not to the extent of today - pedagogy developed as a part of theology and philosophy. This inclination is reflected in the conception of pedagogy as a value-based theory of guidance to the good life.
In parallel, the conception of pedagogy as a natural and social science is being promoted. This has a history of about two centuries and has led to the establishment of departments of pedagogy in universities, especially in German-speaking countries. The first chair of pedagogy was founded in 1779 by Ernst Christian Trapp at the University of Halle. 
Pedagogy absorbed impulses from psychology in the work of J.F. Herbart and then at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when pedagogy's turn to experimental psychology was an expression of its quest for scientific enquiry. Thus, the orientation towards empirical research in an originally science-oriented discipline strengthens, often to the extent that there is a clash of paradigms (science vs. empirical/experimental). 
After the Second World War, pedagogy in this country fell under the sway of the ruling ideology and only after 1989 did the prospects for its development on a global scale open up. In the last three decades, pedagogy in our country has absorbed the impulses of foreign developments and has become an interesting field that attracts many students.   
(according to Janík, 2021, pp. 100-102)

What is School Education? 

It is not possible to explain the events taking place in school teaching without taking into account its content. Conversely, the content of teaching cannot be properly understood without its integration into the teaching and learning process and, above all, without reference to the school as an educational institution. In order to understand the teaching process properly, it is necessary to see the problems, to ask questions, to critically analyse and evaluate one's own and others' experiences of the practice of teaching. School pedagogy helps us to do this.

However, the nature of the curriculum and the characteristics of schools, pupils and teachers can vary greatly. Nevertheless, school pedagogy aims to provide a body of general knowledge that can help teachers to achieve success in practical teaching under certain conditions. As a professional science for teachers, school pedagogy can also provide support for solving everyday problems in teaching. With the above in mind, we define school pedagogy as a pedagogical discipline that seeks to (a) reflect scientifically on the school as an institution and organization, (b) study the curriculum, and (c) elucidate the processes of teaching and learning. It follows that school pedagogy encompasses knowledge of school theory and practice, curriculum theory and practice, and teaching theory and practice. 

If we were to ask where school pedagogy fits within a broader disciplinary framework, we might say that it belongs within the sciences of education and learning, as expressed in the diagram below (Figure 1). As can be seen, the sciences of education and schooling include, in addition to pedagogy itself, the philosophy of education, the sociology of education and educational psychology. 

Pedagogy is further subdivided mainly into general pedagogy, historiographical pedagogy and comparative pedagogy. School pedagogy is a pedagogy that focuses on a particular educational and training environment, which is the school. In addition to school pedagogy, there is also non-school pedagogy. 

To a certain extent, pre-school pedagogy is also school pedagogy, insofar as it focuses on institutionalised education, e.g. in kindergarten. If school pedagogy is the pedagogy of educational environments of the 'school' type, a distinction can be made between pre-primary/maternal pedagogy (schools), primary pedagogy (schools), secondary pedagogy (schools), etc.

Normative or descriptive pedagogy? 

The dispute as to whether pedagogy should be more of a normative discipline, determining what goals education and training should aim for, or a research and descriptive science has not been resolved yet.

Normative pedagogy often prescribes what teaching should look like or focuses on systematizing pedagogical categories and concepts. Its mode of interpretation tends to be prescriptive to normative, less often explanatory and justificatory (in relation to theory). For example, it asks questions about the (ideal) goals and contents of education and the means to achieve them. It is abstract - it works mostly with concepts of broad meaning (school functions, didactic principles/principles, teaching methods/forms, etc.) with unspecified links to the teacher's didactic thinking and action. This conception of pedagogy then appears to have little relevance to practice.

 The notion of descriptive and explanatory pedagogy is often opposed to the normative conception of pedagogy. The latter is based largely on knowledge of everyday practice and seeks to explain why something works and does not work in teaching, and under what conditions. It is more often embedded in specific content areas and in specific teaching situations. This conception often captures the problems a teacher faces and proposes research-validated solutions to them. However, the concept of didactics as an empirical science has its pitfalls. For example, there is a marked shift away from spiritual-scientific principles and questions towards the educational potential of issues of human values, culture and life.

 Both conceptions of pedagogy in their distinct form do not benefit school pedagogy. If we abandon the attempt to investigate the phenomena taking place in school education or to discover their interconnections, it would be impossible to speak of school pedagogy as a scientific discipline. But there are questions of assessment and norms that science, with its resources, is not able to answer. Yet it is the resolution of these questions that is of great urgency for humanity. On the other hand, a purely scientific research approach that rejects anything that has not been accurately and objectively ascertained or quantified would lead school pedagogy away from the search for the goals towards which teaching should be directed. For these reasons, it is desirable to emphasize the informative and controlling role of descriptive explanatory research vis-à-vis normative research.

Didactics and Field Didactics

Didactics is applied alongside pedagogy wherever there is to be a fruitful encounter between pupils and teachers and content. In the case of didactics, helping manifests itself as mediation. Teachers try to make what there is to learn accessible to pupils, to bring it closer, to illustrate it. Collectively, these efforts are referred to as didaskein - teaching or didactics. Didactics has developed within the broader framework of pedagogy by focusing attention on teaching and learning - typically in schools.

The formation of the teaching profession gave rise to didactics as a professional discipline with academic anchoring. This means that teachers should find in didactics a deeper (academic) underpinning for their pedagogical action. Didactics is more than just a mere collection of possibilities for pedagogical action. It also encompasses the deeper theoretical contexts of this action and enables it to be explained and justified. Didactics is therefore also more than methodology. This was also noted by the aforementioned Comenius.  

He pointed out that the need for didactics arises wherever the question of the relationship between knowledge and those who want to master it arises. To bring knowledge and people into relationship - this is the idea that echoes Comenius' "to teach all things to all men". Comenius's didactics is a theory of three strongly interrelated aspects: docere (to teach) - discere (to learn) - scire (knowledge). By linking these three aspects, the general laws necessary to create a methodology are defined. In Comenius, for example, this is his method of language teaching.

We also know from the preceding that teaching is anchored in disciplines. This means that a teacher is a teacher of something and not of nothing or anything. Based on this idea, disciplinary didactics as professional disciplines for teachers of specific subjects in school have been developed. Subject didactics function as intermediary instances between disciplines (science, art, technology, etc.) and their corresponding teaching subjects. In this respect, the teacher is the representative of the discipline that he or she mediates to the pupils - thus creating the conditions for the preservation and development of the disciplines in the future.  

While the aim of school pedagogy is to clarify the generally valid pedagogical terms, laws and principles that overarch the various disciplines of school education, the aim of disciplinary didactics is to deal with the processes of teaching and learning with regard to their disciplinary affiliation and specificity (e.g. didactics of mathematics). 

Educational research: the basis of modern pedagogy

Both novice and experienced teachers may ask themselves quite serious questions in practice: what are the best teaching strategies? Why did my teacher training require me to know methods that don't work in my teaching at all? What am I doing wrong? What is better? That students enjoy learning or that they get results? 

Answers to the above questions can be sought using different modes of reasoning, most often based on tradition, authority and intuition.

When teachers argue on the basis of tradition, they repeatedly believe something because what is often repeated is sometimes taken to be true. This truth can be constantly repeated and asserted regardless of the fact that it has long since been proven invalid. This is why teachers often confuse common practice with best practice.

Another possibility is argument from authority. This concept is based on appealing to the fixed views of expert teachers and other people regarded as authorities in the field. Here too, however, doubts may arise as to the veracity of the authorities' claims.

The third approach is argumentation based on intuition. Intuition is assumed to be in accord with reason, but often goes directly against our everyday experience. However, it is not possible to find a solution to a problem through intuition, or to rationally explain its cause.

Modern pedagogy is opposed to the aforementioned ways of reasoning and proposes to favour reasoning based on the findings of science and research (the so-called evidence-based approach). The latest findings of pedagogical science and research are easily accessible, for example, on the websites of professional journals (e.g. Komenský) - the Komenský journal website is available here: http://www.ped.muni.cz/komensky/

Evidence-base pedagogy

Evidence-based pedagogy is based on the premise that all available evidence must first be known so that teachers can make clear decisions in practice. This conception of pedagogy recommends that one should always look critically at one's own teaching activities in the light of research. This will enable teachers to gain information not only about what works, but also why it works. Often it is a matter of knowing the factors that play a role in a particular case - taking into account the personal characteristics of the teacher and the characteristics of the pupils and the environment where you teach.

An evidence-based approach allows you to answer questions such as:

How to didactically construct content into learning tasks for pupils?

How is content-meaning shaped through pupils' action and communication in learning tasks?

What cognitive obstacles do pupils solve and what typical or specific errors do they make?

How to support pupils' cognitive and learning processes?

How to construct adaptive learning environments?

It happens that pedagogy or didactics appeals to some people to such an extent that they begin to devote themselves to it more intensively, even professionally. Interest in these fields can be explained by the fact that they concern something familiar and imaginable to us. Something that we all do a little bit of, and here and there succeed in doing. We confirm this when we are successful, for example, in our efforts to explain something to someone, to support someone in something, to teach someone something, and so on. 

It is desirable to have and further develop certain prerequisites for a certain profession. It is good if candidates for training for the teaching profession show an interest in working with children and in their field of study, good intellectual aptitude and expressive skills, readiness for contact with people and openness to outside stimuli, psychological stability and the ability to control oneself, empathy and natural authority. These qualities can be further developed during the course of their studies and practice of the profession, enabling them to practise their profession in the long term and with satisfaction. This is important.     

Pedagogy can be practiced, so to speak, recreationally (leading scouts, coaching amateur athletes) or professionally (teaching in schools, conducting educational research). For the former, a degree in pedagogy is desirable, for the latter it is essential. Yes, pedagogy can, or should, be studied. There are many opportunities to do so. In secondary schools, it is possible to study pre-school and/or after-school pedagogy or education; in universities, pedagogy can be studied as a subject, both as a bachelor's degree and especially as a master's degree. 

In addition, in many different forms, pedagogy underpins the preparation for the teaching profession, from teaching in kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, through special and social pedagogy and andragogy, to foreign language teaching and sports coaching. In the case of teaching, it is pedagogy for teachers. This is determined by the selection of topics whose mastery is intended to help (future) teachers to know what they are doing in practice. Pedagogy for teachers is often what is known as school pedagogy, which includes topics related to schools, curriculum and teaching and learning - i.e. like this book. School pedagogy is a key part of teacher education, alongside the study of subject areas and their didactics.  

There are a number of other disciplines that are related to pedagogy, judge for yourself: special/inclusive pedagogy (focused on helping people with specific learning needs), social pedagogy (focused on helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds), leisure pedagogy (focused on educational or educational work with people in out-of-school time), andragogy (focused on adult education), and many more.

(according to Janík, 2021, pp. 107-109)

Current challenges and perspectives

Pedagogy and didactics, and with them education and training, as well as school, curriculum, teaching and learning, are closely related to the way or style of life that is led in society. Pedagogy and didactics should therefore study the subject of their interest in the context of a way of life whose changes seem to be back on the agenda. 

Society is globalising, the nature of human work is changing, the influence of information technology is increasing, the concept of work and leisure time is changing, the human lifespan is increasing, people are learning to function in a more complex environment, and so on. All this is a reason to rethink pedagogy and didactics again and again.      

What is fascinating is that each of us comes into contact with both of these disciplines directly and indirectly, and quite often at that. All pedagogy and didactics should therefore be developed in the best interests of the child, society and culture. After all, all those conveniences like school, curriculum, education, teaching, learning, teachers and so on are there for the sake of the child/person and his/her development. It is in this sense that the commitment must be understood: everything for education. 

Conclusion

Pedagogy is about guidance, didactics is about mediation. Pedagogy and didactics is a practice - a profession - a science. Pedagogy and didactics are at the heart of the teaching professions.

We define school pedagogy as a pedagogical discipline that includes knowledge of (a) the theory and practice of school, (b) the theory and practice of curriculum, and (c) the theory and practice of teaching. 

To date, the controversy has not been resolved as to whether pedagogy should be a normative discipline, determining the goals towards which education should be directed, or a science of research, description and explanation.

The definition of the term didactics is not yet settled. Its interpretations range from a rather narrow conception of methodology (rules for the correct teaching of certain subject content) to a comprehensive conception of subject didactics as an applied science based on research.

Modern pedagogy is defined against the notion of practice based on tradition, authority and intuition. It proposes to solve problems of practice with the support of the findings of science and research (the so-called evidence-based approach).