The Building of a New Academic Field: The Case of French Didactiques

In this article, the author attempts to show how French disciplinary didactiques were created and have developed. At the beginning, nobody could forecast the future and whether the didactiques would one day be recognised by the academic and instructional systems. The French didactiques are strongly based on school subject matters. Since the creation of Instituts Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres (University Teacher Training Institutes) in 1991, they are completely integrated in French educational research and training systems: a major evolution in education that has taken about 40 years. More recently, a new field of research is developing in the French-speaking area: comparative didactics that groups together disciplinary didacticians in a true research programme.