Danish as a subject and teaching practices

Research challenges and solutions

The humanities are being challenged with new political agendas demanding relevance and applicability of aesthetic and historical research and knowledge. It is vital that these challenges are faced and dealt with in the subject areas. In this research group, we attempt to come up with new suggestions and solutions to meet the challenges that currently face the area of Danish as a subject, addressing everyday teaching practices. If properly addressed, we find that these challenges can also be regarded as strengths and tools for developing Danish as a subject.

In a project on museum education, associate professor Line Hjorth Christensen investigates how museums and public spaces offer rich environments for experimental learning strategies, with particular focus on exhibitions. Acknowledging the subject of Danish to be of a fundamentally aesthetic quality, her research combines curatorial, visual and literary approaches.

The research group also addresses the challenges and potentials that follow from the ubiquitous influence of digital media and technology in our society. There is a general call for integrating IT in education – i.e. for e-learning. Yet know-how concerning the practical implementations of e-learning remains sparse. In a fundamental sense, laptops, smartphones and tablet computers are reconstructing our classrooms. These interactive media afford new teaching and learning practices that often lead to ambiguities regarding teacher and student roles. Yet they also offer new didactic possibilities in terms of e.g. activating, multimodal, student-centred learning.