Between Research and Practice: The Concept of Public Teaching Research and Its Potentials in Higher Education Didactics

The concept of Public Teaching Research (öffentliche Lehrforschung, Zajak & Gottschalk, 2020) is presented as an example of transdisciplinary, transformative learning in the university context. Implemented as research-based learning, the aim is to combine research and practice and at the same time, in line with the third mission, to engage in public exchange. In the spirit of Participatory Action Research, the public can be involved in the research process at various stages. In this way, research at eye level with practitioners can also be integrated into teaching settings in which research-based learning takes place. Research-based learning thus becomes a transdisciplinary setting, bringing new perspectives and innovations into the teaching-learning setting. Students learn to draw on knowledge from practice and continuously communicate and transfer it back to society. Public Teaching Research thus makes the concepts of Participatory Action Research and Public Sociology fruitful for the context of research-based learning. Furthermore, it can also be understood as a concept of transformative learning in the context of which not only the understanding of science and practice changes but also the learning subject itself. Two formats of Public Teaching Research are presented which go alongside different subject constructions of the learners. They illustrate the preconditional interplay of transformations of knowledge, practice, and the learning-selfs itself. Subsequently, method(-olog-)ical and metatheoretical potentials and challenges of (public) sociology as a reference science for transformative, transdisciplinary higher education didactics are discussed.