Editing Didactic method (section)

==Nature of didactics and difference with pedagogy==
The discipline of didactics is interested in both theoretical knowledge and practical activities related to teaching, learning and their conditions. It is concerned with the content of teaching (the "what"), the method of teaching (the "how") and the historical, cultural and social justifications of curricular choices (the "why"). It focuses on the individual learner, their cognitive characteristics and functioning when they learn a given content and become a knowing subject. The perspective of educational reality in didactics is drawn extensively from cognitive psychology and the theory of teaching, and sometimes from social psychology. Didactics is descriptive and diachronic ("what is" and "what was"), as opposed to pedagogy, the other discipline related to educational theorizing, which is normative or prescriptive and synchronic ("what should or ought to be") in nature. Didactics can be said to provide the descriptive foundation for pedagogy, which is more concerned with educational goal-setting and with the learner's becoming a social subject and their future role in society.<ref>{{Cite conference |author=Stavros Melissinopoulos |year=2013 |title=From Pedagogy to Didactics: Clarifying the Discussion on Architectural Education |conference=International Conference on Architectural Education}}</ref>

In continental Europe, as opposed to English-speaking research cultures, pedagogy and didactics are distinct areas of study. Didactics is a knowledge-based discipline concerned with the descriptive and rational study of all teaching-related activities before, during and after the teaching of content in the classroom, which includes the "planning, control and regulation of the teaching context" and its objective is to analyze how teaching leads to learning.<ref>{{Citation |title= Dictionnaire actuel de l'éducation |page=403 |edition=3rd |place=Montréal, Québec |publisher=Guérin |year=2005 }}</ref><ref name=shona>{{Citation |chapter=Introduction to new developments in ESP teaching and learning research |date=December 2017 |author1=Shona Whyte |author2=Cédric Sarré |title=New developments in ESP teaching and learning research |pages=1–12 |publisher=Research-publishing.net}}</ref> On the other hand, pedagogy is a practice-oriented discipline concerned with the normative study of the applied aspects of teaching in real teaching contexts, i.e., inside the classroom.<ref>{{Citation |title= Dictionnaire actuel de l'éducation |page=1007 |edition=3rd |place=Montréal, Québec |publisher=Guérin |year=2005 }}</ref><ref name=shona/> Pedagogy draws from didactic research and can be seen as an applied component of didactics.<ref name=shona/>

===Didactic transposition===
In France, didactics refers to the science that takes the teaching of disciplined knowledge as its object of study. In other words, didactics is concerned with the teaching of specific disciplines to students. One of the central concepts studied in didactics of a specific discipline in France is the concept of  "didactic transposition" (''La transposition didactique'' in French). French philosopher and sociologist Michel Verret introduced this concept in 1975, which was borrowed and elaborated further in the 1980s by the French didactician of Mathematics Yves Chevallard.<ref>{{Citation |chapter=Didactic Transposition in Mathematics Education |author1=Yves Chevallard |author2=Marianna Bosch |title=Encyclopedia of Mathematics Education |editor=Lerman S. |publisher=Springer |place=Dordrecht |year=2014}}</ref><ref>Chevallard Y (1985) La Transposition Didactique. Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné, 2nd edn 1991, La Pensée sauvage, Grenoble</ref> Although Chevallard initially presented this concept regarding the didactics of mathematics, it has since been generalized for other disciplines as well.<ref name=Fatma/>

Didactic transposition is composed of multiple steps. The first step, called the "external transposition" (''transposition externe''), is about how the "scholarly knowledge" (''savoir savant'') produced by the scholars, scientists or specialists of a certain discipline in a research context, i.e., at universities and other academic institutions is transformed into "knowledge to teach" (''savoir à enseigner'') by precisely selecting, rearranging and defining the knowledge which will be taught (the official [[curriculum]] for each discipline) and how it will be taught, so that it becomes an object of learning accessible to the learner. This external didactic transposition is a socio-political construction made possible by different actors working within various educational institutions: education specialists, political authorities, teachers and their associations define the issues of teaching and choose what should be taught under which form. Chevallard called this socio-political context of institutional organization the “[[noosphere]]”, which defines the limits, redefines and reorganizes the knowledge in socially, historically or culturally determined contexts.{{ref|name=unige}}<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://ardm.eu/who-are-we/yves-chevallard-english/|title=Yves Chevallard (En) &#124; ARDM|date=10 October 2008}}</ref>

The second step, called the "internal transposition" (''transposition interne'') is about how the knowledge to teach is transformed into "taught knowledge" (''savoir enseigné''), which is the knowledge actually taught through the day-to-day concrete practices of a teacher in a teaching context, e.g. in a classroom, and which depends on their students and the constraints imposed on them (time, exams, conformity to prevailing school rules, etc.).{{ref|name=unige|Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. Quand un savoir savant, c'est à dire le savoir des spécialistes du domaine, devient un savoir à enseigner, il faut, pour qu'il devienne un objet d'apprentissage, qu'il subisse des transformations afin de le rendre accessible aux élèves."<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://tecfaetu.unige.ch/staf/staf-h/fdubou/staf11/ex2/transposition.html |title=Transposition didactique |access-date=24 June 2021}}</ref>}}

In the third and final step, the taught knowledge is transformed into "acquired knowledge" (''savoir acquis''), which is the knowledge as it is actually acquired by students in a learning context.<ref name=Fatma>{{Citation |title=Evaluation of the Knowledge of Science Teachers with Didactic Transposition Theory |journal=Universal Journal of Educational Research |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=298–307 |year=2018 |author1=Fatma Bulut Atalar |author2=Mustafa Ergun}}</ref> The acquired knowledge can be used as a feedback to the didactic system. Didactic research has to account for all the aforementioned steps of didactic transposition.