Research area Didactics

Didactics is the art and science of teaching and learning. It is a field within education that seeks to answer three central questions: What should be taught, how should it be taught, and why should it be taught?

Didactics encompasses questions about the selection of knowledge, teaching methods, and how learning takes place in different contexts. It can be seen as the planning, implementation, and analysis of teaching, with a particular focus on why certain goals, content, and methods are chosen. The well-known didactic triangle – what, how, why – is often used as a tool for analyzing and planning teaching and learning. Thus, didactics concerns the relationships between the teacher’s choice of content and methods, and what students actually learn. 

At Stockholm University, didactic research is divided into general didactics and subject didactics, which concerns specific school subjects.

Didactics for responsible and sustainable societies

Central to the subject is how teaching, learning and abilities develop in the encounter between people in different environments and contexts. We investigate didactic issues from a broad, societal perspective, which does not necessarily take its starting point in school with its subject division.

Language Education

The research area Language Education includes Swedish, English and modern languages with an educational focus. Swedish as a second language is also included in the research area.

Life-Long Learning, Knowledge Acquistion, and the Development of Civil Society

Researchers within life-long learning, knowledge acquisition, and the development of civil society are interested in learning as a life-long process, which is not exclusive to formal education. 

Mathematics Education

Research in mathematics education is the systematic study of the many facets of mathematics as a subject of teaching and learning in current society. The research covers all the levels of the educational system.

Research in Higher Education

Research within higher education has the ambition to understand and analyse learning processes and their result on both students, university teachers, and groups or higher education organisations.

Science Education

The research in science education is focused on teaching and learning of science at different levels within the educational system as well as in informal learning contexts.

Swedish as a second language

Swedish as a second language is a multifaceted research area with high social relevance. Within this area, we conduct research on the multilingualism of children, young people and adults, language development and language use in school and other formal and informal educational contexts, in workplaces and in society.

Teaching and Learning in Arts

Teaching and Learning in Arts is a field of knowledge and research that deals with questions about teaching and learning within the aesthetic subject area, both in and outside the school system.

Teaching and Learning in Humanities

Teaching and Learning in Humanities are based on humanistic school subjects such as history, religious studies and philosophy. The interest focus towards what the subjects are in relation to what it could or should be in school, society, higher education and professional training.

Teaching and Learning in Social Sciences

Teaching and Learning in Social Sciences are based on social science subjects such as social studies, geography, economic subjects and psychology. In a broad sense, the interest is focused on what the subjects are in relation to what they could or should be in school, society, higher education and professional training.

Vocation, Vocational Education, and Professional Development

Within this theme, we are interested in how people learn their vocation and how they develop in various vocational fields. Central to vocational education is both upper secondary and municipal adult education (komvux).