Structuring a teaching session into five distinct phases is not merely a matter of scheduling. The five stages of didactics form a framework that makes visible the objectives, success criteria, and cognitive processes engaged by both the teacher and the learner. Their recent formalization also serves as a lever for educational equity, by systematizing the clarity of expectations for the most vulnerable students.
1. Opening and Activation of Prerequisites
Further reading : ADMR 2026: discover the new rates and their impact on your budget
The opening is now considered a full-fledged didactic moment, not just a simple welcome ritual. Its role is to reactivate prior knowledge that the learner will need to approach the new concept. Without this step, there is a risk of building on unstable foundations.
Specifically, the teacher can ask a targeted question, propose a short review exercise, or display a summary diagram of the previous session. The goal is not to “correct homework” but to create a cognitive bridge between what is already acquired and what will follow.
You may also like : End of the teacher pact in 2026: what impact on teachers' salaries?
To delve deeper into the definition of didactics and pedagogy, it is important to note that this opening phase precisely distinguishes the didactic approach from a purely pedagogical approach focused on group facilitation.
2. Devolution of the Problem to the Learner
The concept of devolution, formalized by Guy Brousseau, refers to the process by which the teacher transfers the responsibility of a learning problem to the student. The student must engage in the task as if the situation were non-didactic, meaning making decisions and independently evaluating the effectiveness of their strategies.
Failures in devolution are one of the critical points of a sequence. If the teacher guides too much, the student executes without understanding. If they guide too little, the student disengages. The table below compares the effects of these two pitfalls on learning.
| Parameter | Excessive Guidance | Insufficient Guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Cognitive Engagement of the Student | Low (mechanical execution) | None or anxiety-inducing (dropout) |
| Knowledge Construction | Superficial, not transferable | Absent or fragmentary |
| Role of the Teacher | Direct transmitter | Passive observer |
| Type of Situation | Explicit didactic | Non-didactic endured |
In contrast, a calibrated dosage transforms devolution into a productive a-didactic situation, where the student mobilizes their skills without perceiving the teaching intent.
3. Didactic Transposition and Content Selection
Didactic transposition refers to the transition from scholarly knowledge (produced by research) to taught knowledge (presented in class). It is not a simplification: it is a reconstruction. A mathematical theorem is not “summarized” for cycle 3 students; it is reformulated in a language, examples, and situations adapted to their cognitive level.
The new French programs for 2024-2026 profoundly modify this process. Didactic sequences must now be conceived in terms of skills rather than just disciplinary content. A mathematics teacher no longer simply transposes “fractions”: they transpose the skill “solving a problem involving fractions in a concrete context.”
This evolution requires reconfiguring the third step of the approach. The curriculum no longer provides a checklist of concepts to tick off but a framework of skills to articulate with varied learning situations.
4. Institutionalization of Knowledge
Institutionalization is the moment when the teacher validates and formalizes what the students have discovered or constructed during the previous phases. Without this step, knowledge remains implicit, floating, and difficult to mobilize in another context.
It often takes the form of a collective written record, a shared definition, or a summary diagram. Its effectiveness depends on two conditions:
- The formulation must incorporate the words and reasoning produced by the students, not just those from the textbook, so that the learner recognizes their own progression in the institutionalized knowledge.
- The link between the experienced situation and the formalized rule must be explicit: the student must understand why this formulation summarizes what they have done.
- The timing matters: institutionalizing too early cuts off exploration, too late allows erroneous conceptions to take hold.
In the context of explicit teaching, institutionalization makes success criteria visible and allows the student to verify whether they have achieved the objective set at the opening of the session.
5. Closure, Metacognition, and Consolidation
Closure is not limited to putting away notebooks. Like the opening, it is now recognized as a didactic moment dedicated to metacognition. The student verbalizes what they have learned, how they learned it, and what posed difficulty for them.
This phase serves three distinct functions:
- Consolidating memorization by reformulating the institutionalized knowledge in their own words.
- Identifying residual areas of misunderstanding before they crystallize.
- Preparing for the next session by creating an anchor point for the next opening phase.
The structured five-step approach draws part of its strength from this loop: the closure of one session feeds into the opening of the next. The didactic cycle does not function as a linear succession but as a spiral sequence, where each passage deepens the targeted skills.
Conversely, a session without explicit closure leaves the learner without a reference for what they are supposed to retain. Explicit teaching practices show that the systematic formalization of this last phase improves the clarity of expectations, particularly for students who do not benefit from academic support outside of school.
The five-step didactic approach is not a rigid framework. Its value lies in the visibility it provides to the learning processes, both for the teacher who plans and for the learner who progresses. Recent curriculum reforms, focused on skills, further reinforce the relevance of this structuring by requiring each phase to go beyond mere content transmission.