Reconceptualizing Didactics as a Scientific Discipline: Theoretical Foundations, Conceptual Evolution, and Contemporary Perspectives for Twenty-First Century Education
Didactics has evolved from being regarded primarily as the art of teaching into a multidisciplinary scientific discipline concerned with the systematic investigation of the relationships among knowledge, teaching, learning, and educational contexts. Despite its growing importance within educational research, conceptual inconsistencies across different academic traditions continue to hinder the establishment of a unified theoretical framework. While Continental European scholarship recognizes didactics as an autonomous scientific discipline, Anglo-American educational literature frequently associates its concepts with pedagogy, curriculum studies, or instructional methodology, resulting in fragmented theoretical interpretations.This study aims to reconceptualize didactics by synthesizing its principal theoretical foundations and proposing an integrated conceptual framework suitable for contemporary educational research and practice. Employing a conceptual research design based on critical literature analysis and theoretical synthesis, the study examines major didactic traditions, including constructivism, sociocultural theory, didactic transposition, the Theory of Didactical Situations, the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, Joint Action Theory in Didactics, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. These complementary perspectives are analyzed to identify their common principles and contributions to understanding educational processes.Based on this synthesis, the article develops a comprehensive conceptual model consisting of four interdependent dimensions: knowledge transformation, teaching mediation, learning processes, and educational context. The proposed framework demonstrates that didactics should be understood as a scientific discipline integrating cognitive, social, disciplinary, institutional, and technological dimensions of education rather than merely a collection of instructional techniques.The study further discusses the implications of this integrated perspective for curriculum development, teacher professional education, competency-based learning, digital pedagogy, and the educational applications of artificial intelligence. By clarifying the epistemological foundations of didactics and presenting a coherent conceptual framework, the article contributes to strengthening the scientific identity of didactics and provides a theoretical basis for future interdisciplinary research in educational sciences.
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