Subject-didactical Typology of Social Science Teachers

Abstract In 2019, a new curriculum for “Economics & Politics” was introduced on the lower secondary level in the German state of Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany, emphasizing economic education. While studying the teachers’ acceptance of the new curriculum, we identified various types of teachers based on their instructional practices and instructional preferences with respect to subject-didactics (sub-discipline, subject-didactical teaching approaches, learning tasks). We applied a principal component analysis of eleven variables related to teaching design and task preference, yielding three factors. Based on these findings, we identified five distinct teacher clusters. This empirical methodology can be applied to other subjects such as geography and languages.