While disciplinary didactic is supposed to be part of teachers training in most countries, the place actually dedicated to didactic learning may vary.  First because the ratio between academic education and professional education, within each training, is different, depending on the countries and the aimed educational levels (or grades). Then, because inside the professional education, didactic and disciplinary didactics are more or less valued and hence, time and credits specifically allocated may be more or less important. For instance, in Belgium, initial teacher training is implemented by different operators whose division corresponds to the level of education. Primary and lower secondary teachers do not have the same kind of training as upper secondary teachers. The firsts have a three-year training provided by high-schools. It includes about 960 hours dedicated to pedagogic and didactic training. The later have a training provided by universities, including 4 to 5 years dedicated to academic training and one year dedicated to professional training.  A short 150 hours is invested into pedagogic and didactic training.

Our question of interest was to explore how a national curriculum could actually respond to a low investment in didactic during teachers training. In a specific situation where teachers have a training clearly more focused on academic  background (4 to 5 years) than professionalization (1 year), we explored the place given to disciplinary didactic into school programmes. Considering the weak background of teachers on the topic, how did curriculum writers for upper secondary education adapt their requirements? Do programmes contain explicit information on didactic expectations?  Or do they guide teachers on the path of didactic by implicit requirements? The issue at stake is whether pedagogical and didactic training of teachers may affect their understanding of programmes as well as their didactical approach of science.

A thorough analysis of the content of 13 science programmes, regarding nine core concepts of didactic, was performed. Data collected concerned occurrences, rates, and modalities of didactic prescription, both explicit and implicit. Results show an unexpected situation, an under representation of didactic into programmes. Such avoidance of didactic concepts, put into the perspective of teachers training on that topic, let us expect teachers to be, at the start, poorly equipped to prepare their lessons with regards to main didactic knowledge.

 This brings us to the question of the place devoted to didactical content in programmes and their usefulness for the teachers, as well as the place dedicated to didactic skills into teachers training. 

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