This paper introduces and provides an overview of the special issue of this journal on Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Subject Didactics. It describes a perspective on Subject Didactics that draws on insights from both the long tradition of General Didactics and from more contemporary subject-specific practices. In doing so it presents the crucial bridging position of subject didactics between academic disciplines and educational sciences. An outline of the theoretical framework to curriculum research and teacher education is provided. Furthermore, the guiding research questions and overall approach are presented including a focus on the development of teachers’ powerful professional knowledge. It addresses the questions of why describe this approach as critical and what is meant by a knowledge-led approach. The approach to data collection, analysis and interpretation is outlined and the implications for curriculum planning and professional development are considered. A summary of discussions related to the focus of this special issue at the conference that gave rise to it follows. Finally, an overview of contributions to this special issue is provided. In conclusion these are reflected on in relation to the guiding research questions and the vital importance of Subject-Specific Educational Content Knowledge (SSECK) for teacher education is highlighted. 

This paper addresses the demise of subject-specific teacher education in England in recent years. In doing so it considers the national policy context and historical developments of education in the country from the late 19th century onwards. It begins by addressing the question "Why no pedagogy in England?" that was first raised by Brian Simon in his paper published over forty years ago. In turn it addresses the response to Simon by David Hamilton his paper concerning the question "Why no didactics in England?". It then addresses the development, marginalisation and subsequent demise subject-specific teacher education in England. By focussing on more recent policy changes, the paper highlights the way in which subject-specific teacher education reflects a 'blind spot' on the part of policy makers in England, especially since 2010. It also highlights the competing conceptions of both quality and professionalism and focusses on an associated clash of values about the nature of higher education and its role in the professional education of teachers. Finally, it considers the implications for the development of teachers' "powerful professional knowledge" and concludes with recommendations on the need to develop Subject-Specific Educational Content Knowledge through teacher education programmes.

This paper outlines the development of a comparative research framework in subject didactics and applies this in the process of analysing the transformations from academic disciplines across different school subjects. The theoretical framework builds on the concepts of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘transformation’ and ‘epistemic quality’ within which transformation processes from the classroom to the societal level are considered as ‘trajectories of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality’. The framework is used to analyse the findings from recent empirical studies across school subjects that have been reported on in publications arising from the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) network. 1 The paper then focuses on analysing the transformations from disciplines across school subjects, given that the first boundary in defining powerful knowledge concerns knowledge that is specialized in both how it is produced and transmitted. To analyse this boundary, the findings from the empirical studies are grouped into broad subject categories. These are then compared with the corresponding disciplines by using the widely cited Biglan classification scheme of academic disciplines in higher education. Finally, we consider the implications for curriculum planning and teacher education policy and reflect on the concept of subject-specific educational content knowledge (SSECK). 

This chapter arises from the study of a German language lesson at a primary school in Frankfurt/Main, Germany carried out in March 2017. This was one of the case studies conducted as part of the Joint Action in Didactics in Europe (JADE) project (Wegner et al. 2019) , which has cross-curricular foci on mathematics, physical education and first-language teaching in school. The theoretical framework for the study is based on the perspective of Bildungsgangforschung and -didaktik developed within the tradition of German didactics in combination with the concept of epistemic quality. The study focuses on the question of how the nature of epistemic quality in language and language use can be characterized and relates this to the three levels of interaction and co-operation in the instructional process that arises from consideration of Bildungsgangforschung and -didaktik. The analysis concentrates on the epistemic quality of the...

The study reported in this chapter was conducted in 2015 when, as part of a whole research team, we observed a dance lesson with a class in a high school in France. This was part of a case study (Loquet et al. 2017) within the Joint Action in Didactics in Europe (JADE) project which has cross-curricular foci on mathematics, physical education and first-language teaching in school. The dance lesson was one of a series of lessons in Physical Education (PE) held in November 2015 at the Rosa Parks College, which is a secondary high school that is part of a Priority Education Zone located within a Sensitive Urban Zone characterized by social, cultural and ethnic diversity. Students at the college originate from forty-seven different countries, and the particular class of twenty-five students was very diverse. Some students were studying special vocational training courses for...

This chapter builds on the idea of epistemic quality, as discussed in Hudson (2018, 2019) , which arose from the outcomes of the Developing Mathematical Thinking in the Primary Classroom (DMTPC) project (Hudson et al. 2015) . It does so by relating epistemic quality to a continuum that reflects a trajectory of epistemic ascent (Winch 2013) in the development of expertise from the novice towards that of an expert in the subject. The significance of epistemic quality stems from the need to maximize the chances that all pupils will have epistemic access (Morrow 2008; Young 2013: 115) to high-quality education in school mathematics. This is regarded as a way of making quality education visible and as a precondition for addressing the challenges of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all (UN 2015) . The idea of epistemic quality is in turn...

Drawing together an international author team from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK, this book examines how we might democratize and open up access to ‘knowledge of the powerful’ for all. This book moves beyond the narrow knowledge vs skills debate of the 20th century to interrogate the epistemic quality of education in schools, and is a valuable resource for reflecting on the design and implementation of teacher education. Based on a range of national studies by the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education network (KOSS), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-22), the chapters explore teachers’ powerful professional knowledge and the implications this has for innovation in teacher education, policy and practice in educational settings.

Drawing together an international author team from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK, this book examines how we might democratize and open up access to 'knowledge of the powerful' for all. This book moves beyond the narrow knowledge vs skills debate of the 20th century to interrogate the epistemic quality of education in schools, and is a valuable resource for reflecting on the design and implementation of teacher education. Based on a range of national studies by the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education network (KOSS), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-22), the chapters explore teachers' powerful professional knowledge and the implications this has for innovation in teacher education, policy and practice in educational settings.