Developing new teacher education curricula: Why should critical rationalist epistemology talk louder?

Rain Mikser

University of Tartu

Abstract. This paper concentrates on the legitimisation of two basic traditions of teacher education: educational psychology in Anglo-American countries and Didaktik in continental European countries. Having been developed and reinforced largely by empirical research carried out in accordance with their own conceptual premises, these two traditions, when used together in teacher education, cause terminological vagueness and casual overlap of the curriculum. This paper argues for stronger epistemological considertion in legitimising the usage of these concepts in teacher education. It will be argued that a critical evaluation of the scientific content of these concepts – via the critical rationalist tradition initiated by Popper and Lakatos – is logically possible and a practically inevitable task for the improvement of teacher education curricula.

Keywords: teacher education, educational psychology, didactics, critical rationalism