Subject teaching and its didactics
Sachunterricht can be studied as a third subject in the primary school teaching degree. This is an interdisciplinary subject in which chemistry, biology, geography, history, physics, technology and the social sciencesare combined at the University of Siegen.
and the educational sciences
are involved.
In the four years of primary school, subject teaching is a central learning area in which children are given the opportunity to develop basic factual knowledge about the world. The starting point is children's exploration of the world. This means that the specific educational aim of subject teaching is to support pupils in exploring their questions and problems in the real world.
In preparation for this demanding teaching task, introductory lectures are held at the beginning of the Bachelor's degree course, which lay the subject-specific foundations in the reference disciplines (biology, chemistry, history, geography, physics, social sciences and technology). In the extension courses, which take into account both the natural sciences and the humanities perspective, the subject-specific foundations are deepened with school-related experiments and questions and didactically reflected upon.
Cross-cutting modules are also offered in order to demonstrate the diverse connections and interrelationships between the individual related disciplines of subject teaching. The aim of these is to convey the basic principles of integrated, multi-perspective subject teaching. The content focuses on the aspects of "sustainable development" and "extracurricular places of learning".
The University of Siegen also encourages children - and students - to learn through research and discovery in the Science Forum, the FLEX open-air laboratory
and various learning workshops, such as the OASE
for example.
Study advice for subject teaching
Prof. Dr. phil. Jochen Lange
Contact
Information on the recognition of study and examination achievements
Are you looking to change subject, degree course or university and would like to have credits for the subject of general studies recognized? Then please note the following information.
Sachunterricht and its didactics as a scientific discipline process educational and (pre-)technical knowledge in discourses about the connections between children, objects and the world. This triad, which can become relevant in school and extracurricular, formal and informal learning environments, is the basis of Sachunterricht didactics. Following the principle of multi-perspectivity, references are made to the subjects of biology, chemistry, geography, history, physics, technology and the social sciences, and everyday theories, subjective experiences and assessments of school and pre-school children are included.
The Didactics of Sachunterricht is responsible for the general introductory module (2SUBA03LAGs) in the Bachelor's degree course, is involved in the optional in-depth course (2SUBA04LAGs) and runs the courses on teaching and learning in Sachunterricht (2SUMA01LAGs) and professionalization (2SUMA02LAGs & 2SUMA03LAGs) in the Master's degree course. Special emphasis is placed on the examination of current research fields as well as ethnographic learning and teaching research and childhood research.
Current research priorities
- Materiality and mediality of school and teaching
- Digitalization and elementary school in a culture of digitality
- Historical educational research: ideas and images about starting school
- Education for sustainable development
Current research projects
The use of digital technologies in school lessons has now become a matter of course. While this has long been empirically demonstrated primarily by the digitally modified presentation, processing and teaching of school material, there are now also significant, digitally enabled forms of presence and representation of people: Today, students are not only at a (their) place in class, but also, for example, as customizable avatars in classroom management apps, as telepresence robots in the classroom that can be controlled from home or as a callable (performance) data corpus on learning platforms. The project addresses this distribution by focusing on being a student not as a role of the physically delimited person, but as a specific practice of execution in which presence and representation technologies participate. Data corpora, avatars and telepresence robots seem to be insufficiently contoured and typified by traditional, fixed entity boundaries, as they overlap sign-like, physical, artefact- and person-related facets. The guiding question of the ethnographic project is how these shares of the distributed student:in being are proceduralized and proceduralizingly involved in its execution. The analyses connect to current discourses on the dissolution of boundaries and the digitalization of schooling, but relate these developments to the participants themselves. By addressing this desideratum, the resources and challenges of being a distributed student are clarified and the entanglements of digital and analog worlds are explored. Furthermore, it will be possible to re-examine being a student in relation to being in the classroom (body-centered and spatio-temporally defined).
Funded by: German Research Foundation(DFG)
Duration: 36 months
Against the backdrop of increasing socio-ecological crises, the concept of "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) is currently considered to be of great importance in overcoming the transformation associated with these crises. However, ESD programs in schools are still relatively rare. The practice of ESD is rather characterized by cooperation between schools and extracurricular ESD learning locations. In terms of content, the offers are often characterized by a focus on ecological aspects of the concept of sustainability, which are primarily addressed from a scientific perspective. The focus is often on biological and physical topics, which are perceived as apolitical. Political, social and sociological dimensions and contexts, on the other hand, tend to remain marginally integrated and the role of human practices, socio-cultural processes, lifestyles, norms, values and dilemmas in shaping a (non-)sustainable present and future often remains insufficiently addressed. If the role of human actions is addressed in educational institutions, this is primarily aimed at a simplistic assumption of behavioural changes in everyday life and the assumed sovereignty and agency of consuming individuals. There is a need for development here, because if sustainable development is to succeed, a multi-perspective understanding of the environment, technology, society, politics and economics is required. Against this background, the aim of the project is to increase the necessary and educationally required interdisciplinarity of ESD by contributing to the integrative strengthening of social science perspectives. To this end, the project builds on the networked, interdisciplinary and life-world-oriented educational aspirations of school-based subject teaching with the aim of doing justice to this in practical implementation. It focuses on the concrete practice of ESD in order to develop innovative new perspectives, approaches and approaches to strengthen a reflexive awareness of sustainability in children, as well as their ability to make political judgments and take action. The project observes and describes the current and concrete practice of ESD offers at several extracurricular learning locations, reflects on it with the actors involved and makes it compatible with the educational requirements of subject teaching by developing didactic materials with a decidedly multi-perspective approach. The social science implications that can be docked onto typical science-oriented ESD offerings will be identified and addressed thematically and methodologically and didactically over the course of the project.
Project management: Prof. Dr. Jochen Lange and Prof. Dr. Alexander Wohnig (University of Siegen)
Funded by: German Federal Environmental Foundation(DBU)
Duration: 01.04.2024 - 31.03.2027
