Editorial

Abstract

According to current theories, professional teachers conceive their area of action (i.e. the classroom) as a basically ambiguous space that requires to establish constantly and reflexively an interrelation between situative contingen-cies and professional knowledge. In this view, professionalism means the ability to actualize and calibrate professional knowledge and situational awareness in ac-cordance with interactively embedded requirements of perception and action. Goodwin (1994, 2018) labels such an ongoing calibration of professional knowl-edge and situational awareness as “professional vision”. To acquire a profession-al vision means to perceive (scientific) discipline’s objects as part of the profes-sionally appropriate practices of naming, assessing, and acting. In teacher edu-cation, concepts of research-based learning are widely discussed as a way to promote professional vision, and thus the development of professionalism. These concepts stress the structural similarities between researching and teaching, both featuring an open-mind attitude towards situative characteristics and contingen-cies, and construction and selection as a key to knowledge building and under-standing of the situation. It is this special issue’s objective to introduce and dis-cuss current conceptions of research-based learning from the area of subject didactics. Focus is on the theory-based reconstruction of processes of profession-al development in the context of practical teacher training during university edu-cation. The contributions present an interdisciplinary approach to research-based learning, and otherwise discuss first results from German didactics, philosophy, sport and social science education, and, finally, German as a second language