GENERAL DIDACTICS AND DIDACTICS OF DISCIPLINES: CAN THE THEORY OF SIMPLEXITY PROVIDE THE LINK?

The relationship between general didactics and the plurality of didactics of various disciplines is a vexata quaestio that for the past decades has raised interest within the European Educational Research field. The two main positions held stem from two lines of thought. On the one hand, there are some who sustain general didactics, intended as a science able to identify suitable methods and strategies that ensure that all students acquire necessary skills and expertise to master the different types of knowledge. On the other hand, among the scholars sustaining didactics of disciplines, the prevailing idea is that unless there is something to teach, teaching doesn’t occur.

This epistemological debate raises the need for an interaction between the two positions held with the aim of reaching a complete understanding of the teaching-learning process. Teachers, taking into account the learners’ needs and adapting themselves to the context in which they act, must transpose didactically a particular knowledge on the basis of content and methodological foundations of the specific subject.

The pedagogical-didactic key aid in overcoming often transmissive and routine forms of teaching, concentrating one’s attention on the pedagogical intention that responds to their training needs and paves the way to the planning of training paths in and out of school.
Based on these considerations, this study aims at identifying a possible link between general education and disciplinary didactics in Berthoz’s theory of simplexity. In fact, such a theory could be considered the theoretical and methodological framework for didactics of disciplines as well as a useful operational guide for teachers. This is because, through the application of the regulatory simplex principles in teaching processes, teachers deviate from stereotyped actions and deconstruct the scenarios and situations that come their way through experimentation and openness to innovation.