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The purpose of this paper is to convey findings of how a source-based unit in history can be designed and implemented on the basis of identified critical aspects using principles from variation theory set in relation to a specific didactical framework. This paper also reports on the learning outcomes of implementing such a design.

Data were generated in the context of learning study research undertaken in collaboration with teachers within upper secondary school. The paper uses data from pre- and post-assignments and research lessons for one of the participating teachers and his class.

Findings show that if the design and implementation of a source-based unit is informed by critical aspects, teachers have improved prospects to enhance students’ ability to interpret and evaluate sources. This is achieved by applying a didactical framework consisting of orientation, template practice and dialogues, allowing these aspects to be addressed several times under different arrangements.

Few studies have considered the implications of student conceptions for the design of source-based history instruction. This paper contributes with a proposal for a design informed by critical aspects and also investigates the learning outcomes of implementing such instructions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the transdisciplinary case study (TCS) as a learning framework based on what we call functional socio‐cultural constructivism and project‐based learning (PBL). In doing so, the paper attempts to illustrate the applicability of TCS to learn competencies and skills necessary to research problems of sustainable development.

TCS is considered a learning framework based on the principle of self‐regulated learning; i.e. students must actively deal with the requirements as well as plan and execute their project work within their own worldviews and goals. TCS methods are essential as we tackle complex real‐world problems.

The paper discusses challenges and obstacles of such an approach and present lessons learned since 1994, on both the viewpoints of students and of teachers. It conclude that case study learning is a demanding task, especially in a transdisciplinary context where more challenges emerge than in PBL, since goals of teachers, case agents, and students have to be balanced.

TCS or courses like it are important for universities at the present time. Under present budget restrictions and a wide‐ranging mistrust of society toward universities, there is a necessity for a new contract between society and research: students should learn to take over responsibility in societal contexts and be able to communicate beyond the “ivory tower”.

The learning goals of TCS differ from the goals of most university courses. They are more comprehensive and include complex problem solving, societal context, and group processes. The ambitious goal is that students become enabled to tackle complex, real‐world problems.

This paper describes and discusses aspects that affect research questions in a practice-based research study, where learning study is used as a framework. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understanding of the process where teachers and a researcher collaborate in transforming practical teaching problems into research questions.

A case study is conducted. Data consist of field notes, logbooks, manuscripts and conference papers from two learning studies conducted in grade 4 by three teachers and one researcher, and notes from meetings in a subject-teacher group at the school. The analysis focuses on how the research questions emerge and change in relation to discussions among teachers and in the research group of teaching, previous research and learning theory.

Questions about students’ discernment of the structure in the base-ten system emerged in learning study 1 and in the subject-teacher group. Discussions of previous research and the didactical theory learning activity transformed the research questions in learning study 2, into focusing students’ theoretical knowledge, examining general structures in the base system, using learning models as tools. Conditions for identification of specific teaching problems and alternative theory in a learning study are discussed.

The explicit example where research questions are transformed can be used in further discussions and methodological questions regarding formulation of research questions in educational research. Discussions, specifically of transforming research questions, when learning study is used may be promoted.

The purpose of this paper is to give an outline of the main topics of an introductory course in complexity and social sciences.

This paper consists of a survey of the main issues and some of the classical literature for an audience with no background in philosophy of science, social philosophy, the literature on complex systems and social choice.

In the didactical framework of the article, it would be more accurate to speak of learning objectives rather than findings. The learning objectives are the acquisition of the basic knowledge for understanding the features, the possibilities and the limitations of scientific explanations and predictions and their applications in the long-term perspective of complex social systems.

Again, the implications are didactic. The basic knowledge that constitutes the learning objective of the course serves to give students the instruments for recognizing the main opportunities and obstacles in social forecasting.

The practical implications of this paper include making students aware of complexity-related problems in their working environment and of the opportunities and constraints involved in solving them.

Operators who are aware of the main issues involved can contribute to a more balanced approach to social forecasting: avoiding to raise unrealistic expectations and making more efficient use of the available instruments.

This paper summarizes an original combination of elements from the philosophy of science, epistemology, social philosophy and social choice.

Purpose – The chapter reports on a national indigenous games research project and follows the socio-political construction of indigenous games as a sporting code and the post-colonial identity dynamics within South Africa.

Design/methodology/approach – Researchers from 11 tertiary institutions in South Africa collaborated to capture 536 ‘indigenous’ game and sporting activities from 170 communities. An inductive research approach informed an emic typology, with further analysis of the 20 most popular indigenous games (and their variations). This analysis demonstrated hegemonic gender and ethnic layering within the context of participation, as well as in the broader South African society. The institutionalisation of selected indigenous games by Sport and Recreation South Africa and the implementation thereof in the Siyadlala programme (community-based mass participation programme), afforded widespread participation to meet a human rights framework.

Findings – In accordance to the strategic outcomes of the national department, this initiative provided access to sport and recreation, especially for the previously ‘disadvantaged’ communities who experienced high levels of exclusion during the Apartheid years (1948–1994). This politically informed intervention followed a political agenda of national identity association in celebrating the African heritage and ‘unity through diversity’. Standardisation of rules and the re-invention of some games for local, national and international festivals along the line of competitive sport offered contradicting messages and practices.

Originality/value – The underlying discourses of post-colonial resistance, national identity formation and socio-political agendas are interrogated.

The aim of this paper is to describe teachers’ professional development in Lesson Study (LS) as processes situated in Semiosphere and generated by the unevenness due to different cultural traditions. The authors characterise teachers’ professional development in two LS experiments as processes generating new knowledge to point out their products, i.e. new professional frame teachers produce after these experiments. The authors use Hybridization, a particular form of Networking of Theories (NWT).

The authors collected video-registration of several Italian LS meetings. The authors analyse two LSs, where time emerged as a conflictual aspect. Through Hybridization components, the authors show how teachers make sense of LS and how teachers revise their professional frame.

In NWT different theories are deployed to study the same problem. To grasp the issue of unevenness in our LS, we use Hybridization of a Theory, a form of NWT characterised by a structural asymmetry. It is given when a construct c is introduced coherently, operatively and productively into a theory T, obtaining a hybridized theory T'.

Hybridization lens allows to describe potentialities and limits of LS as a tool for teachers’ development. The two analysed LS are different: in one of them Hybridization process produced a new theory T', whilst in the second one it was limited to the awareness of a gap between LS and initial teachers’ professional frame.

Identifying links between different Hybridization components is a helpful tool for teacher educators/researchers to foster the shift from one another. For instance, through this tool, teacher educators could keep track of what happens in successive LS and mirror the dialogue between teachers, moving towards group-shared metareflections. This initiates the advancement of a new theory T', where asymmetries are interpreted.

In this approach teachers are protagonists of the construction of a new professional frame. LS is a tool for teachers’ professional development, allowing teachers to question their own educational intentionalities. Hybridization components provide a tool to analyse such a process.

This paper – one of only a few examples – aims to conduct a cross‐national research into innovative teaching approaches in entrepreneurship in France and Germany.

The paper is based on two cross‐cultural cases and reflects on the experiences of two innovative teaching approaches in two European settings. The underlying aim of this investigation is to identify commonalities and differences between the approaches, establish learning between the different Higher Education institutions as well as to investigate the transferability of such approaches to other cultural environments.

This research has highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary learning in entrepreneurship research. Whereas, in the German case, management and other disciplines work together to create the example of the “practice firm”, in the French case entrepreneurship theories, network theories and cognitive science are brought together to create a new approach to learning about entrepreneurship. Both approaches highlight the importance of the personal development of the course participants by empowering the student to be proactive.

The paper builds on the early experiences with both the concept of the “practice firm” and the application of repertory grids in entrepreneurial pedagogy, which justifies the highly exploratory character of this research. More research is necessary to establish students' opinion about such innovative approaches, also on a cross‐national level.

The paper provides examples of effective practices for encouraging entrepreneurial thinking in the classroom. More such comparative work is necessary on a European, but also on a wider international, scale to encourage learning, in particular for those involved in teaching entrepreneurship, but also for policy makers who are looking for new ways to stimulate entrepreneurial thinking.

The paper is innovative as it compares and contrasts two innovative approaches to teaching entrepreneurship in two European countries and hence fills a gap in the literature.

In Germany structural change and aggravated international competition have been accompanied by a declining willingness of enterprises to offer apprenticeships. Young people with low levels of qualification increasingly end up in courses at vocational schools that offer few transitions to regular VET or the labour market. This paper aims to show how the German VET (vocational education and training) system turned from an inclusive scheme to a selective scheme regarding young people with low levels of qualifications from basic schooling.

The paper presents empirical results of an evaluation study on the background of the structural changes in German VET.

The empirical results show exemplarily the low connection between these courses and the apprenticeships in companies.

The results are exemplary for one type of course at vocational schools. The results cannot empirically illustrate causalities between the structure of German VET system and the diminishing possibilities of youth with low levels of qualification but secondary data presented in this paper support the assumption of an increasingly selective German VET system.

The article provides information about social selectivity in contemporary German VET.

The article not only recapitulates the current German discussions about structural problems and reforms concerning the VET‐system, but also draws conclusions from the German situation about possibilities of apprenticeship‐based pathways for youths with low levels of qualifications in other countries.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the development of a blended e‐learning pedagogical model for an undergraduate enterprise programme. The proliferation of e‐learning programmes offers new opportunities and challenges for universities to meet the learning needs of new student markets. However, the use of e‐learning as an enabling mechanism for enterprise education remains largely unexplored within academic literature.

The case study methodology comprises a series of focus groups with key stakeholders in the project, namely online tutors, students and scheme leaders from a number of partner colleges involved in the delivery of the course.

The study charts the evolution of the blended learning pedagogy which was found to best meet the learning requirements of non‐traditional learners on an undergraduate programme. The blended learning pedagogy strategy which was developed replicated the best informal practice that had emerged through each of the partner institutions and the learning needs of the students. Constituent elements of the pedagogy included the provision of structured face‐to‐face events, a range of student supports systems and the creation of a code of practice for online tutors. As a result, a model of best practice for blended learning is proposed.

This study contributes to the literature in terms of proposing a working framework for online undergraduate enterprise education with identification of critical success factors including supportive induction, viable pedagogy and effective support systems. The framework can be utilised by practitioners and theoreticians as a guide to the effective management of pedagogical issues associated with blended online education.

The authors developed a lesson study innovation for bridging pre-service teachers' experiences in an early methods course and clinical experiences focusing on the development of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). The authors analyze one planning meeting by a lesson study team comprised of four pre-service teachers and one cooperating teacher. The purpose of this research was to determine the nature of documentation during the online planning meeting and how the cooperating teacher facilitated the documentation process.

The authors used Gueudet and Trouche's (2009) documentation framework to determine the way the lesson study team in our study used all the resources available to plan a lesson. They analyzed the video recordings of the meeting to examine the interplay between material, didactical and mathematical components during the discussions. The material components included the Teacher Desmos Activity Builder and the eTextbook. The didactical components included assessment, scaffolding, multiple representations and problem-solving activities. The mathematical components pertained to systems of linear equations and inequalities with two variables.

The authors’ findings show that the cooperating teacher performed an invariant set of actions for improving the research lesson and, also, gave recommendations about how to implement the lesson. In facilitating the planning discussions, the cooperating teacher made explicit the relationship between material, didactical and mathematical components. The authors’ work has implications for supporting the preparation of facilitators of online planning sessions during lesson study.

The authors did not have access to the planning meeting where the PSTs created the draft of the research lesson. In addition, they are reporting the observations of only one online meeting.

The authors’ work has implications for supporting the preparation of facilitators of online planning sessions during lesson study.