Råde (2014) discuss the tensions between goals associated with an academic orientation and a professional orientation in students’ final thesis. In academic oriented thesis, students often find it difficult to transfer their new knowledge to practice, while in professional oriented thesis, students find it difficult to live up to academic standards. One way to address this tension is to argue that didaktik is teachers' professional science and that an academic orientation should simultaneously be a professional orientation. In this study, I argue that the concept of professional experimentation and didactic models, can contribute to a synthesis between the two orientations. The purpose of this study is therefore to present a theoretical framework based on pragmatism that can make the two orientations in agreement in teacher students’ final thesis. 

The concept of professional experimentation is based on pragmatist ideas of educators as investigators and educational inquiry as the main way to professional growth and knew educational knowledge (Biesta & Burbules, 2003). The Interconnected Model of Professional Growth introduced by Clarke & Hollingsworth (2002) recognizes the complexity of professional growth and its non-linear nature. The model suggests that change occurs through the mediating processes of ‘reflection’ and ‘enactment’ in four distinct domains: Personal Domain, Domain of Practice, Domain of Consequence and External Domain. It take into account the importance of external sources of information to support professional growth. In this paper the external source is conceptualized as didactic models. 

The concept of didactic models is taken from Wickman et al. (2018). Didactic models help teachers make decisions when planning, implementing and evaluating a specific content by supporting didactic analysis and design. A central task for didactic research thus becomes to produce, develop and exemplify didactic models. This is referred to as didactic modeling and can be seen as a research program that aims to build a professional knowledge base. In didactic modelling, the exemplification of how a didactic model has been used for didactic analysis and design is an important task for didactic research.

Based on this framework I argue that teacher students can do didactic modelling in their final thesis by doing exemplification of how a didactic model can support analysis and design of teaching during professional experimentation to address problems the student have identified in practise. This will contribute to the students’ professional growth. Hence, the academic orientation simultaneously becomes a professional orientation. Authentic examples from primary teacher students’ thesis from science education will be presented to give empirical examples. This framework is a contribution to the discussion of the role of didaktik in teacher education and didaktik as the teachers’ professional science and how we can understand the role of students’ final thesis in teacher education in light of this.