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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
This book offers an overview of the research carried out in didactics on the teaching and learning of science at university from the perspective of university pedagogy. The first part sheds light on the links between university pedagogy and didactics, by studying the nature and place of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge at university and the training of academics through the prism of professionalization. The second part questions the teaching practices of academics from a disciplinary approach, from the point of view of the impact of the research discipline on the declared practices, or that of the links between the resources mobilized in research and teaching activities. The third part proposes a sociological look at these practices, in terms of the analysis of the discourses of institutional actors or of practices in situ. The book concludes with a synthesis that develops the main issues, challenges and difficulties that remain at the end of this book.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
References
About the Authors
Part 1: The Links Between University Pedagogy and Didactics
1 Why and How has Anglophone University Pedagogy Moved Closer to Francophone Subject Didactics?
1.1. Introduction
1.2. Some contextual elements: pedagogy versus didactics
1.3. English-speaking university pedagogy
1.4. An approach to the disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of university teachers
1.5. Conclusion
1.6. References
2 Teacher Training at University through the Prism of Disciplines
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Difficulties of taking into account disciplines in the training of higher education teachers
2.3 Resources available for taking into account disciplines in higher education
2.4. How should we take into account disciplines in training in higher education?
2.5. Conclusion
2.6. References
3 Transforming Higher Education and Professional Learning for Academics
3.1. Changes and increasing complexity within university education
3.2. The heart of a problem: little recognition and training for teaching
3.3. Theoretical framework: competence building practices
3.4. Methodology: the questionnaire survey
3.5. Presentation and discussion of the survey results
3.6. Conclusion
3.7. References
Part 2: The Teaching Practices of University Teachers with a Disciplinary Approach
4 Academic Territory and Professional Identity: Toward a Differentiation of Teaching Practices at University
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Academic territory and professional identity: a theoretical environment to approach the pedagogical practices of lecturers and researchers
4.3. The field survey
4.4. Results
4.5. Returning to the questions of each discipline
4.6. Conclusion and implications for university pedagogy
4.7. Acknowledgements
4.8. References
5 The Relationship Between Research Activity and the Design of Resources for Teaching – The Case of Mathematics at the University Level
5.1. General introduction
5.2. The relationship between teaching and research in higher education
5.3. The articulation of two approaches: the documentary work of a university professor in teaching and research institutions
5.4. Methodology
5.5. Forms of the relationship between research and teaching in terms of resources
5.6. Conclusions and perspectives
5.7. References
Part 3: A Sociological Perspective of the Practices of Lecturers and Researchers
6 Beyond the Disciplinary Approach: Toward a Socio-historical and Critical Reflexivity of its Teaching Practices
6.1. Introduction
6.2. The content of the common discursive fund on “higher education pedagogy”
6.3. Deconstruction, denaturalization: the political under the obvious
6.4. Teaching practices in sociology in reverse
6.5. Conclusion
6.6. References
6.7. Appendices
7 Transmitting Knowledge in the First Year of University: A Sociology of Work Perspective
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Conventions in content and teaching methods
7.3. Knowledge markers
7.4. Conclusion
7.5. References
8 Postface: Synthesis and Perspectives
8.1. University pedagogy: fields of research and fields of practice
8.2. Research and expertise
8.3. A disciplinary approach to university pedagogy
8.4. The professional identity of lecturers and researchers and their practices
8.5. Conclusion
8.6. References
List of Authors
Index
Other titles from in Innovations in Learning Sciences
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1.
Houssaye’s (2014) educational triangle. For a color version of t
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Figure 1.2.
Disciplinary pedagogical knowledge at the intersection between t
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Figure 1.3.
Disciplinary pedagogical knowledge at the intersection of the co
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Figure 1.4.
Disciplinary pedagogical knowledge at the intersection of the co
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Chapter 2
Figure 2.1.
Proportion of articles in the Revue Internationale de l’Enseigne
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Figure 2.2.
“The field of university pedagogy: a system with multiple intera
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Figure 2.3.
Current environment for higher education training. For a color v
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Figure 2.4.
Proposed evolution of the higher education training environment
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Chapter 3
Figure 3.1.
A competence and its constituent skills. For a color version of
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Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
About the Authors
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
List of Authors
Index
Other titles from in Innovations in Learning Sciences
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Series EditorJean-Marc Labat and Cécile de Hosson
Research in University Pedagogy
Towards a Discipline-based Approach?
Edited by
Stéphanie BridouxNicolas Grenier-BoleyCaroline Leininger-Frézal
First published 2023 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
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© ISTE Ltd 2023The rights of Stéphanie Bridoux, Nicolas Grenier-Boley and Caroline Leininger-Frézal to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Introduction
University teaching practices have been the target of lively and varied interest since the beginning of the 2000s. As an institutional object, the teaching practices of academics are perceived as an object to be transformed, with this transformation aimed at the (seemingly inescapable) consideration of evolutions of the modes of knowledge appropriation by students and the modes of mediation (Albero 2015). Thus, for more than a decade, French higher education has been confronted with the need for "pedagogical innovations" supported, among other things, by the promotion of "digital technology". This is evidenced by the numerous calls for projects (IDEX, IDEFI, etc.) aimed at deploying specific digital training offers, developing and reinforcing the use of technological tools for teaching, or implementing innovative pedagogical devices (ICTE, e-learning, flipped classroom, etc.).
Considered as an object of research, the teaching practices of academics become an object to understand. In a collective work published in 2004, Emmanuelle Annoot and Marie-Françoise Fave-Bonnet presented the first summary of the questions associated with the study of teaching practices at the university. The aim was to shed new light on the daily practices of teachers and students, as well as on teachers' perceptions and the scope of their actions. The contributions structuring this synthesis paved the way for the development of further work; the exploration of the practices of lecturers and researchers was one of these avenues and aimed to question the idea of a common culture through the study of questions associated, for example, with the treatment of student heterogeneity (Altet 2004), with the gaps between the planned course and the actual course (Trinquier and Terrisse 2004), or with the elements that constrain practices (Clanet 2004; Langevin 2008; Rege-Collet and Berthiaume 2009). On this point, and among the elements that constrain practices, while some are "institutional" in nature, others appear to be more related to the perceptions that lecturers and researchers have of teaching, learning and science.
Although a great deal of Francophone research in the wake of these pioneering works has since taken up the pedagogical practices of academics as its subject, few of them take on, or have taken on, the disciplinary dimension of these practices. In his survey of French articles published in the FRANCIS database on university pedagogy (1991-2005), Adangnifou (2008) indicates that the vast majority of articles published during this period focus on teaching and teacher training practices, information and communication technologies, student learning, as well as the evaluation of teachers and student learning, without intentionally targeting one or more disciplines. However, he points to five articles that specifically address issues of language and French learning and teaching but does not identify any articles that target a discipline in the fields of mathematics, the sciences or nature. It should be noted that the observation appears identical on a more international scale. Over the last 10 years, articles on disciplinary teaching practices at university have increased in number but are still relatively few in number.
However, some studies emphasize that the community of university teachers, particularly that of lecturers and researchers, is "shaped" by the academic discipline to which it belongs, and that it therefore shares "the same set of intellectual values, the same cognitive territory" (Becher 1994, p. 3). For Becher (1994), the sense of disciplinary belonging of lecturers and researchers is an essential (even primary) component of their identity and expertise as teachers; it includes a set of certainties about both what should be taught and how it should be taught. This leads him (and other researchers following him; Trede et al. 2012; Poteaux 2013) to advocate for the development of research on academic practices that take as their input the disciplinary specificity of actors and knowledge.
The objective of this book is to propose a panorama of the research carried out in didactics on the teaching and learning of sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, life sciences, earth sciences, geography) at university through the lens of university pedagogy. It will be structured in three parts. The different chapters will all be based on research on the teaching and learning of scientific disciplines at university. They will therefore be based on an explicit methodology and specific corpora.
The first part of this book questions the links between university pedagogy and didactics. In Chapter 1, Denis Berthiaume examines how and why English-language university pedagogy has come closer to French-language discipline didactics. He describes the nature and composition of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge and its role in higher education. This knowledge is at the intersection of the components of the pedagogical knowledge base, disciplinary specificity, and personal epistemology. In Chapter 2, Caroline Leininger-Frezal explores the place of this disciplinary pedagogical knowledge in higher education. This questioning is investigated on the basis of a participant observation carried out over 4 years at the University of Paris Diderot. In Chapter 3, Sacha Kiffer and Richard Wittorski approach the training of lecturers and researchers from the perspective of professionalization and its challenges.
The second part questions the teaching practices of university teachers with a disciplinary approach. In Chapter 4, Bridoux et al. present a piece of interdisciplinary research (chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics), which aims to study the impact of the research discipline of lecturers and researchers on their teaching practices. This question is approached by mobilizing the sociological concept of professional identity specified with regard to the relationship that lecturers and researchers have with the discipline from which they come (epistemological relationship), on the one hand, and with the way in which this discipline must be taught (pedagogical relationship), on the other hand. These two relationships are then characterized from interviews conducted with lecturers and researchers. The results show regularities between disciplines but also variabilities that may be linked to the disciplinary specificities of the lecturers and researchers interviewed. The question of the links between research activity and the practices of university teachers is also at the heart of the second chapter, written by Sabra Hussein (Chapter 5). It is approached here from the angle of the interactions between the resources mobilized by lecturers and researchers in their activity as researchers and in their activity as teachers. This question is studied by articulating concepts from the documentary approach to didactics and the anthropological theory of didactics. The results of interviews conducted with mathematics lecturers and researchers allow us to develop research avenues to shed light on the relationship between the two activities of research and teaching.
The third part offers a sociological perspective of the practices of lecturers and researchers. In Chapter 6, Stéphanie Tralongo analyzes the discourse on "higher education pedagogy" constructed by them in a set of various kinds of texts (regulatory texts, articles, scientific works, calls for projects, etc.). This analysis highlights a common discursive background on "higher education pedagogy" that the author then sets out to deconstruct. Stéphanie Tralongo shows that these discourses have a naturalizing dimension based in particular on the imperative need for change. Chapter 7 sheds light on higher education from another angle. Through an analysis of in situ teaching practices in several disciplines (physics, sociology, chemistry), Marie David shows that, beyond the discourses, teaching practices are based on teaching conventions that are partly disciplinary and concern the ways of teaching and presenting knowledge. These conventions are distinct from those used in research.
References
Adangnifou, N. (2008). Peut-on parler de recherche en pédagogie universitaire, aujourd'hui, en France ?
Revue des sciences de l'éducation,
34(3), 601–621.
Altet, M. (2004). Enseigner en premier cycle universitaire : des formes émergentes d'adaptation ou de la "métis" enseignante. In
Pratiques pédagogiques dans l'enseignement supérieur : enseigner, apprendre, évaluer,
Annoot, E., Fave-Bonnet, M.-F. (eds). L'Harmattan, Paris.
Annoot, E. and Fave-Bonnet M.-F. (eds) (2004).
Pratiques pédagogiques dans l'enseignement supérieur : enseigner, apprendre, évaluer.
L'Harmattan, Paris.
Becher, T. (1994). The significance of disciplinary differences.
Studies in Higher Education,
19(2), 151–161.
Clanet, J. (2004). “Que se passe-t-il en cours ?” Éléments de description des pratiques enseignantes à l'université. In
Pratiques pédagogiques dans l'enseignement supérieur : enseigner, apprendre, évaluer,
Annoot, E., Fave-Bonnet, M.-F. (eds). L'Harmattan, Paris.
Poteaux, N. (2013). Pédagogie de l'enseignement supérieur en France : État de la question.
Distances et Médiations des Savoirs,
4 [Online]. Available at:
http://dms.revues.org/362
[Accessed 27 June 2016].
Rege Colet, N. and Berthiaume, D. (2009). Savoir ou être ? Savoirs et identités professionnels chez les enseignants universitaires. In
Savoirs en (trans)formation : au coeur des professions de l'enseignement et de la formation,
Hofstetter, R., Schneuwly, B. (eds). De Boeck, Brussels.
Trede, F., Macklin, R., Bridges, D. (2012). Professional identity development: A review of the higher education literature.
Studies in Higher Education,
37(3), 365–384.
Trinquier, M.P. and Terrisse, A. (2004). Entre prévisions et réalité du cours : regards croisés sur les pratiques et les représentations des enseignants de DEUG. In
Les pratiques dans l'enseignement supérieur,
Annoot, E., Fave-Bonnet, M.-F. (eds). L'Harmattan, Paris.
Note
Introduction written by Stéphanie Bridoux, Nicolas Grenier-Boley and Caroline Leininger-Frézal.
About the Authors
Emmanuelle Annoot is a professor of education and training sciences. She is a member of the Cirnef laboratory (Université de Rouen Normandie France). She is currently vice-president of the academic council of the Université de Rouen in charge of the field “Humanities, Culture, Societies”. Her research focuses on university pedagogy, coaching practices and the professional development of university lecturers and researchers (especially those just starting out).
Denis Berthiaume is a university professor in educational psychology. His research and intervention work focuses on university pedagogy, quality approaches in higher education, strategic planning and educational leadership. He is currently Vice-Rector, Academic and Research, at the Université de l'Ontario français, Canada, a new higher education institution focused on transdisciplinarity and research intervention in the broad field of humanities and social sciences.
Stéphanie Bridoux is a lecturer in mathematics at the Université de Mons (Belgium). She is a member of the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (EA 4434) where she is co-leader (with Nicolas Grenier-Boley) of the working group “teachers in higher education”. Her current research is in the field of mathematics didactics and focuses on the study of teachers' discourse during moments in the course (moments of demonstrating knowledge) by focusing on how the notion of limit is taught.
Marie David is a lecturer insociology and a social science associate. She is a member of the Centre nantais de sociologie (UMR 6025) and teaches at the Institut national supérieur du professorat et de l'éducation in Nantes, France. Her current research interests are the sociology of work, the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of school, and focus on the production of knowledge in secondary and higher education. Her latest publication is: David M. (2020). “Travailler à l'université. La définition étudiante du niveau et de la direction des efforts à fournir”, Revue française de pédagogie, no. 209.
Martine De Vleeschouwer is a lecturer in mathematics at the Université de Namur (Belgium). She is a member of the Institut de Recherche en Didactiques et Éducation of the Université de Namur (IRDENa). Her research interests are in the field of mathematics didactics, and more particularly in the area of the transition from secondary school to university.
Nicolas Grenier Boley is a professor in mathematics didactics and mathematics at the Université de Rouen Normandie. He is a member of the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (EA 4434) where he is co-leader (with Stéphanie Bridoux) of the working group "teachers in higher education". His current research is in the field of mathematics didactics. On the one hand, he studies moments of the course and the in situ practices of mathematics teachers in secondary and higher education. On the other hand, he is interested in the transition between university academic mathematics and mathematics taught in secondary schools for future teachers or new teachers.
Cécile de Hosson is a university professor at the Université de Paris and a researcher in didactics of physics at the Laboratoire de didactique André Revuz, a research unit she directed from 2013 to 2018. Her research themes are structured around one objective: to identify the way in which physics knowledge circulates and is transformed when it moves from a "scholarly" space of enunciation to a space of reception. Since 2012, this objective has been embodied in the study of the discourse of physics lecturers and researchers, on the one hand, and in the analysis of popular science comics, on the other hand.
Rita Khanfour-Armalé is a lecturer in chemistry at CYU cergy Paris université and a researcher in chemistry didactics at the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (LDAR). She is a science teacher at the Inspé de l'académie de Versailles for primary and secondary schools. Her main research interests are as follows: the professional identity of lecturers and researchers in chemistry, the practices of secondary school teachers in chemistry (conversational and didactic analysis) and within an interdisciplinary science project, and recently the practices of primary school teachers (scientific challenges and the investigative approach).
Sacha Kiffer is a pedagogical advisor at HEC Montréal (Canada). He holds a PhD in Education and Training Sciences and is a research associate at CREAD (Centre de recherches sur l'éducation, les apprentissages et la didactique) at Rennes 2 University (France). His research focuses on the professional development of university teachers and, in particular, the construction of their pedagogical skills.
Nathalie Lebrun has been a lecturer in physics at the Université de Lille since 1996 and has been on research assignment since 2013 at the Université de Paris at the André Revuz didactics laboratory (EA4434) following the completion of a master's degree in the didactics of experimental sciences in 2013 at the Université de Paris Diderot. She focuses on two research axes in the exploration of the practices of lecturers and researchers in physics: the comparative approach and mobilization of an approach using professional identity and the integration of the results of the research in physics teaching (taking into account the conceptions of students) in the teaching practices.
Caroline Leininger-Frézal is a senior lecturer in geography didactics at the University of Paris, attached to the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (LDAR). Her research interests include the teaching of geography in higher education, particularly the curriculum, the use of cases and examples, the professionalization of students and the professional identity of higher education teachers. Her accreditation to supervise research is on the teaching of geography through experience from primary school to university.
Zoé Mesnil is a lecturer in didactics of mathematics at the Université de Paris, within the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (LDAR). The theme of her thesis, the teaching of logic in high school, led her to focus on the transition from high school to higher education, in which a conceptual leap requires knowledge of logic that is not always built in high school or taken on in higher education. She is notably co-leader of the Logic and Reasoning group of the GDR DEMIPS (Didactics and Epistemology of Mathematics, links with Computer Science and Physics, in Higher Education).
Céline Nihoul has been a doctor in the Didactics of Mathematics at the Université de Mons (Belgium) since January 2021. Her thesis focuses on the teaching of equations of lines and planes in Belgian secondary education. She is a member of the Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (EA4434) and has been part of the "higher education" group since 2013.
Hussein Sabra is an associate professor in mathematics education at the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne. His work focuses on the documentational work of mathematics teachers. He develops methodological tools to address the issue of teachers' interactions with resources. His research considers the individual and collective processes of designing resources for teaching. His research is currently focused on two themes: the relationship between the research activities and teaching practice of mathematics lecturers and researchers, and resources for teaching mathematics in engineering education.
Stéphanie Tralongo is a senior lecturer in sociology in the Modes, Spaces and Processes of Socialization (MEPS) team at the Centre Max Weber in Lyon. From an approach of socialization, and particularly of the notion of appropriation, her work is deployed in the fields of sociology of culture, education, work and sciences. The effects of public policies on higher education training programs, teaching and research practices, and the knowledge produced, are at the heart of her most recent work.
Richard Wittorski is a professor at the Université de Rouen Normandie and director of the CIRNEF (centre interdisciplinaire de recherche normand en éducation et formation). His work focuses on work-training relationships and professionalization in the field of adult education and in various sectors (industry, labor inspection, educational work, adult education, etc.). He has produced more than 150 publications on these issues.
Part 1The Links Between University Pedagogy and Didactics
1Why and How has Anglophone University Pedagogy Moved Closer to Francophone Subject Didactics?
1.1. Introduction
Anyone working at the crossroads of different intellectual traditions has become aware of the “cultural specificity” of certain scientific knowledge. In the field of educational sciences, this is the case with the relationship between teaching and learning. If one examines it by looking at the Anglophone literature on the subject, one discovers an object of study that focuses mainly on the relationship between the teacher and the learner and on the psychological dimensions of this relationship (Shuell 1993; Andrews et al. 1996; Palincsar 1998; D’Andrea and Gosling 2005). If we examine the latter from the French-speaking literature, we discover a subject of study that focuses mainly on knowledge taught and knowledge learned (Chevallard 1991; Jonnaert and Lenoir 1993; Jonnaert and Laurin 2001; Terrisse 2001). On the Anglophone side, we opt for “pedagogy”, whereas on the Francophone side, we opt for “didactics”. However, the difference between pedagogy and didactics is not always very clear (Tochon 1991; Bertrand and Houssaye 1999).
In higher education, one would think that the didactic approach would dominate because of the prominence of taught knowledge – university teachers are first and foremost specialists in a discipline or profession which they have been assigned to teach (Menges and Austin 2001; Kreber 2009).
Their own training rarely focuses on pedagogy or didactics, but rather on the discipline or profession they have been assigned to teach. Yet, in the French-speaking world of higher education, the notion of “university didactics” is very rarely mentioned as it is in German-speaking countries (Hochschuledidaktik). This can be explained in two ways. On the one hand, as Develay (1992, 1997) points out, the notion of “general didactics”, that is, detached from a particular discipline, does not exist, unlike pedagogy, which is rather generic. On the other hand, the field was quickly occupied by English-speaking concepts from university teaching and learning (Beard and Hartley 1987; Cranton 1998; Lazerson et al. 2000; Fry et al. 2008). In fact, university pedagogy or higher education pedagogy is now used to describe anything that deals with teaching and learning at the tertiary level (Langevin and Bruneau 2000; Langevin 2007; Berthiaume and Rege Colet 2013; Rege Colet and Berthiaume 2015). The transposition of the concept took place in part in Quebec, a French-speaking island in the middle of an English-speaking ocean, since English-language university pedagogy developed in North America in the 1960s and in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. It appeared roughly in the French-speaking universities of Quebec in the 1970s and was imported into Belgium in the 1980s, Switzerland in the 1990s and France in the 2000s.
Over the years, researchers and practitioners in the field of higher education pedagogy have realized that the generic concepts of Anglophone pedagogy required some adaptation to the cultural and/or disciplinary context in which they were used (Alexander and Dochy 1995; Ghosh 1996; Gardiner et al. 1998). On the Francophone side, the object of study of “knowledge taught and learned” focused mainly on the primary and secondary levels of education, sometimes on the professionalizing tertiary sector (Chevallard 1991; Jonnaert and Laurin 2001; Terrisse 2001). The two intellectual traditions began to come together in the 1990s when English-speaking university pedagogy began to focus on “disciplinary specificity” (Becher 1994; Hativa and Marincovich 1995) and, at the same time, the French-speaking world of higher education began to question “university pedagogy”, that is, the conditions of study and the future of university graduates (Dupont and Ossandon 1994).
In this chapter, we will explain how the two intellectual traditions came together, giving rise to the concept of “discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge”. We will describe this form of knowledge, which is essential for all higher education teachers, whether they work in academic or professional higher education. We will highlight the different components of this knowledge and how they interact with each other to form what is known as “discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge”.
1.2. Some contextual elements: pedagogy versus didactics
As a French-speaking Canadian (Quebecer), I have had the opportunity to pursue my university studies in both French and English higher education institutions. Montreal lends itself well to this as there are two French-speaking universities (Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal) and two English-speaking universities (McGill University and Concordia University). For a number of years, students registered at one of these universities have been able to take courses at any of the four universities, which I did during my graduate studies. I had the opportunity to study the same phenomena from the field of education from both the Anglophone and Francophone literature.
As early as my graduate studies in education, I became interested in the question of teaching and learning specific to each disciplinary or professional field taught at university. Drawing from both English and French sources, I discovered two parallel universes that seemed to have little contact with each other. This situation is paradoxical: on the one hand, one becomes aware of the potential richness of pooling the knowledge generated by these two intellectual traditions; on the other hand, one is surprised that this has not been done to date. My work has therefore addressed this situation and I have begun to examine the scientific literature from both intellectual traditions. To explain the difference between the two traditions, I will take a two-step approach. First, I will discuss the constituent disciplines of educational science according to each tradition, and then I will discuss the angle of observation favored by each tradition.
The field of educational sciences is constituted differently according to one or the other approach. In the Anglophone literature, psychology seems to dominate the disciplinary configuration. It is impossible to study the teaching-learning relationship without studying the underlying psychological processes (e.g. cognitive structures of the teacher or the learner, group dynamics, developmental stages of the actors). The subject matter (what is being taught) seems to be relegated to the background. Disciplinary specialization around blocks of disciplines such as social studies or natural sciences comes after having assimilated a set of generic concepts stemming mainly from educational psychology. In the Francophone literature, discipline didactics seems to dominate the disciplinary configuration. It is impossible to study the teaching–learning relationship without looking at the knowledge to be taught and to be learned (e.g. scholarly knowledge versus academic knowledge, didactic transposition, disciplinary structure, conceptual complexity). Psychological processes are present but seem secondary to the understanding of the observed phenomena.
To describe the difference in perspectives between the Anglophone and Francophone traditions, I will use Houssaye’s (2014) pedagogical triangle (reproduced in Figure 1.1). Houssaye describes the relationship between teacher, learner (student), and knowledge using this triangle. The teacher’s mission is ultimately to help the student learn the knowledge presented. However, the way to achieve this seems to differ according to each intellectual tradition. On the Francophone side, it is clear that the teacher seeks to “organize” the knowledge in such a way as to help the learner acquire it and then transform it into skills. For example, this is done through the establishment of a sequence of teaching concepts and the more or less present accompaniment of the teacher according to the level of complexity of the subject being taught. On the English side, the teacher’s main objective is to support the learner’s psychological processes so that the learner acquires the knowledge and develops the skills related to it. For example, the teacher seeks to support the learner’s motivation, collaboration with other learners or participation in a discussion on the subject presented.
This is obviously not a dichotomous situation: one approach does not prevent the other. Focusing primarily on the organization of knowledge (what Houssaye calls the “teaching” process) does not mean avoiding consideration of the learner’s development (what Houssaye calls the “training” process). The difference between the two intellectual traditions seems to lie rather in the angle of observation of the teaching–learning relationship, in the door that is used to enter this relationship. In the English-language literature, one enters through the door that corresponds to the “training” process, whereas in the French-language literature, one enters through the door that corresponds to the “teaching” process.
Figure 1.1.Houssaye’s (2014) educational triangle. For a color version of this figure, seewww.iste.co.uk/bridoux/research.zip
Studying the teaching–learning relationship from both intellectual traditions simultaneously thus allows for a much richer and more promising look at the notion of disciplinary specificity in this relationship. This is what I sought to do and what led me to develop a conceptualization, which I later empirically tested, of the disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of university teachers. If we take up Houssaye’s triangle (see Figure 1.1), disciplinary pedagogical knowledge allows the teacher to help the learner by focusing on both the knowledge taught and the psychological processes underlying their relationship. Thus, we find ourselves drawing from both elements of didactics and elements of pedagogy.
1.3. English-speaking university pedagogy
University-based centers for teaching and learning began to emerge in North America (Canada and the United States) in the 1960s at the request of teachers who wanted to develop their knowledge and skills in teaching. The majority of them had a doctorate in a disciplinary and/or professional field but felt powerless to “teach” the elements of their discipline and/or profession to students. For example, the Centre for University Teaching and Learning at McGill University in Canada was established in 1969 with the mission, among others, of organizing training workshops for newly hired teachers (McAlpine and Cowan 2000). Such centers, although working in the field of teaching and learning, were generally located outside of faculties of education to avoid their activities being perceived as equivalent to pre-service training for primary and secondary teachers. Indeed, the audience for new university teachers is quite different from the audience for elementary and secondary teachers (Dunkin and Precians 1992; Menges and Austin 2001; Martin et al. 2002). Thus, newly hired university teachers do not necessarily see themselves as teachers but rather as:
specialists in a discipline and/or profession that is broader and often more important to them than the institution by which they were recruited;
highly qualified professionals with research, teaching and service responsibilities, with a strong emphasis on research;
intellectuals who have the freedom to choose what they teach, ideally in connection with their research activities.
Thus, the training activities organized by the English-language university pedagogy centers focused very little in the early years of their existence on issues of disciplinary specificity. Training activities were based primarily on three conceptual areas:
teacher education (e.g. learning theories, teaching expertise, pedagogical knowledge base, reflective practice);
adult education (e.g. the needs of adult learners, professional development, experiential learning, conceptual change);
instructional design (e.g. clarification of content and learning objectives, choice of teaching strategies and assessment methods, sequencing).
The choice and contribution of these rather generic conceptual domains was obvious, since they included specialists from all disciplines and/or professions taught at the university. The participants in the training activities shared a common need:
to develop as a teacher of a discipline or profession, related to their research responsibilities;
use conceptual tools to build training activities for students based on their own disciplinary and/or professional knowledge and skills;
to integrate these new inputs into their previous and future professional experiences.
For example, early professional development activities for university teachers focused on learning, teaching strategies, assessment methods and the use of information and communication technologies for education (ICTE). These activities were considered “generic” as they applied to all disciplinary and/or professional areas. Teachers developing their knowledge and skills through these resources were then expected to work on adapting them to their disciplinary reality once the training was completed. For example, once the generic learnings about discussion as a form of teaching were completed, each teacher had to think about how to implement discussion as a teaching strategy in their own field (e.g. law, medicine, engineering, art history).
In the 1980s, researchers in English-speaking countries became interested in the link between pedagogical knowledge and the nature of the content taught. In the context of research on the pedagogical knowledge base of teachers, they began to question pedagogical content knowledge, that is, pedagogical knowledge related to the subject taught (Gudmundsdottir and Shulman 1987; Shulman 1986, 1987; Grossman et al. 1989). In this area of research, a set of essential knowledge for teaching (e.g. pedagogical knowledge, knowledge about learning, subject-specific knowledge) was identified. It was at this point that it was realized that knowledge at the intersection of pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge was central to the professional development of the teacher. In teacher education programs for elementary and secondary schools, there were generic elements that were the same for all students (e.g. elements of psychology, philosophy, sociology of education) and subject-specific elements (e.g. mathematics, social studies, natural sciences, language and culture). Shulman’s work in particular highlighted the difficulty novice teachers had in linking these two categories of knowledge. Interest in pedagogical content knowledge was born.
During the 1990s, two developments paved the way for the emergence of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge. On the one hand, research on pedagogical content knowledge was increasing (Grossman and Yerian 1992; Baxter and Lederman 1999; Gess-Newsome and Lederman 1999; Magnusson et al. 1999). How it was formed, how it was used in various disciplinary fields (e.g. mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, physical education and sports) and how it could be evaluated was studied. The aim was to study what was sometimes called the “psychologization of subject matter”, a form of “applied epistemology” very close to the didactics of disciplines. On the other hand, researchers were beginning to take an interest in the notion of disciplinary specificity in higher education. Various works on the epistemological nature of disciplines and the similarities and differences between them emerged (Smeby 1996; Neumann 2001; Donald 2002; Neumann and Becher 2002; Lueddeke 2003). This work has reminded researchers – and university teachers – that it is not possible to ignore the specificities of each discipline when implementing new pedagogical strategies. One example is problem-based learning in medicine (Bligh 1995). This approach is very appropriate in medicine because it is based on the notion of the clinical case. But how can it be imported into disciplines that are close to it, such as biology, or further away from it, such as ethics?
There was a growing awareness among various stakeholders in higher education of the importance of considering discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge in the professional development of higher education teachers. However, it was not until 1995 that the concept of discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge emerged (Lenze 1995, 1996). At that time, Lenze used it to refer to pedagogical content knowledge but applied it to higher education. The transfer of the concept from the primary and secondary levels to the tertiary level had taken place. However, the situation was very particular since Lenze used the field of language teaching to transform pedagogical content knowledge into discipline-specific pedagogical knowledge. Yet, learning to use English at the primary, secondary or tertiary level does not seem quite equivalent to learning social studies at the primary level, history and geography at the secondary level and ancient history at the tertiary level. In fact, Lenze has simply transposed the concept of pedagogical content knowledge developed by Shulman for the primary and secondary levels to higher education. However, with the reality of tertiary education being more complex, the work on the disciplinary specificity of each field taught in higher education showed that the concept needed to be further explored in order to make it operational and representative of the reality. This is where the notion of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge specific to higher education emerged (Berthiaume 2007).
1.4. An approach to the disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of university teachers
It is in this context that I chose to focus on the operationalization of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge among university teachers. Since disciplinary specificity was becoming an inescapable part of thinking about university pedagogy, and since the notion of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge as conceptualized by Lenze was not entirely representative of the complexity of the knowledge taught in higher education, it was necessary to start again from scratch and to examine various areas of research in the educational sciences – mainly Anglophone, but also Francophone – in order to better define the outline of disciplinary pedagogical knowledge. According to Shulman’s (and Lenze’s) work, the starting point was simple: disciplinary pedagogical knowledge corresponds to a set of pedagogical resources (e.g. knowledge, beliefs, intentions) available to a teacher that allow him or her to better understand how to teach and “make known” the various concepts of his or her discipline (Berthiaume 2007). On the one hand, the university teacher draws on his or her knowledge base for teaching and, on the other hand, adjusts this pedagogical knowledge to the disciplinary specificity. It was therefore necessary to re-examine these notions and see how the two could be related to each other.
Figure 1.2.Disciplinary pedagogical knowledge at the intersection between the pedagogical knowledge base and disciplinary specificity (Berthiaume 2007). For a color version of this figure, seewww.iste.co.uk/bridoux/research.zip
1.4.1. The pedagogical knowledge base of university teachers
Research on the pedagogical knowledge base of teachers has identified three main components (Donmoyer 1986; Reynolds 1989; Pajares 1992; Pratt 1992; Turner-Bisset 1999; Hiebert et al. 2002):
Aims: elements that guide the teacher’s action or implementation of decisions (e.g. wanting to engage students during instruction or seeking to develop autonomy).
Teacher knowledge structures: elements that inform the teacher’s action or the implementation of decisions (e.g. his or her understanding of a pedagogical principle or method, his or her understanding of a theoretical notion to be introduced in his or her teaching).
Teacher beliefs: elements that also inform teacher action or decision making; however, unlike knowledge, beliefs are generally very non-consensual and rarely proven (e.g. the view that handwritten notetaking is absolutely essential to learning or that students must memorize definitions of certain concepts before learning anything else).
