Valuation of Understanding: From a Curriculum and a 'Didaktik' Perspective

An important aim for the teacher in Higher Education is that students, in order to learn, achieve understanding in terms of being able to handle knowledge in a certain way. In this paper focus will be on understanding as a phenomenon which is permeated with values of what good understanding might be. Understanding is to be discussed as a phenomenon which in its definition is relative to the paradigm of educational thinking in which it is embedded. Paradigms of valuation of understanding in higher education will be viewed from two perspectives: An anglosaxon curriculum studies tradition and a Central and Northern European ‘didaktik' tradition.  The thesis is that understanding within these traditions might be described by different images of understanding movements which express different ideals of structures of understanding. Due to these different ideals of structures of understanding valuation of understanding might be different. The difference between these two paradigms are to be discussed with specific reference to how these different ideas of ideals of structures of understanding might influence valuation of understanding and how valuation of understanding has consequences for teaching and learning. Furthermore, the way valuation of understanding is conducted might have consequences for the formation of students.