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There is no education without content. Teaching and learning in schools is devoted to "something," not to "nothing" or "anything." The more heterogeneous, multicultural, and multilingual the classroom, the more semantization of educational content within teaching and learning is needed. Therefore, the role of various languages in the classroom is revisited. In this article, we elaborate on the theory of language-sensitive content transformation and introduce the concept of operational isomorphism and its potential in the field of didactics, research on teaching, and learning and teacher education. Using a case study of mathematics teaching, we illustrate, how students can benefit from semantization and instrumentalization practices in the classroom and how these processes take the form of extensional deconstruction and intensional expansion or intensional condensation.

The paper argues that what is left behind in the current era of accountability is the educational content. The authors present "shedding the content" as the great challenge of teaching and learning in today's schools. They turn to the tradition of "Bildung" and outline the theoretical background for the "content-focused approach" to (research on) teaching and learning. Their approach is based on analyses of authentic (real-life) teaching and learning situations. The paper highlights how "didactic case studies" can be used to "generalize the findings" across individual cases. Within the multiple case studies, 44 didactic case studies were reanalysed to identify didactic formalisms, i.e. problems in the semantic and logical structure of educational content, which corrupt the quality of instruction. Two specific types of "didactic formalism" are described in detail; "stolen cognition" and "concealed cognition." "Stolen cognition" prevents cognitive activation of students when the teacher over-reduces the space allowed for the students' cognitive work with the content, "concealed cognition" are instances of purposeless cognitive activation of students due to their being disconnected from the content.

Natural processes and biodiversity are under pressure, especially in the human-dominated region of Central Europe. Therefore, an effective approach is needed for the conservation of the last fragments of valuable habitats. Šumava National Park is one of the biggest relatively natural forested areas within the cultural landscapes of Czechia and Central Europe. It has been protected since 1991 as a National Park, but management has been changed several times; thus, we would like to create a map with nature protection prioritization based on objective procedures and data to help manage the National Park with regard to its goals. We used occurrence data for 50 selected key fauna and flora species and made habitat suitability models; furthermore, data derived from the habitat mapping layer describing the quality of habitats were prepared. These data were inputs for prioritization ZONATION software resulting in a prioritization map, which could be compared with the current zonation of the National Park. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This theoretical paper follows the publication of the Czech translation of the book by F. A. J. Korthagen et al. Linking practice and theory: The pedagogy of realistic teacher education. The paper consists of two parts. In the first part, the key (leading) ideas of Korthagen’s approach are introduced; the text is descriptive without the ambition to provide a critical analysis. Such analysis is the topic of the second part of the text. The authors revisit some of the ideas of Korthagen’s approach, analyse them and discuss them in a wider context of some newer approaches. They focus on three problem areas: (1) The nature of the relationship between practice and theory – underestimating Theory with capital T? (2) The importance of reflection in teachers’ professional development – deemphasising content? (3) Supporting professional learning – a limited view on supervision? Towards the end of the paper, the authors discuss how the presented ideas could inspire the practice of teacher education in the Czech Republic.

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With an increasing number of international schools, traditional EFL teaching methods may not satisfy students' needs. This study aims to investigate perceptions of social media technologies (e.g., Web 2.0) and willingness to adopt such technologies to collaborate and communicate in multicultural classrooms among novice EFL schoolteachers in the Czech Republic. The participants were 100 novice EFL schoolteachers in Prague and the South Moravian regions of the Czech Republic. The study used a mixed research method consisting of a survey (stage 1) and a semi-structured interview (stage 2). The survey examined the participants' appraisal and concerns of using social media technologies to collaborate and to communicate as well as the level of willingness to use social media technologies. A hierarchical cluster analysis using participants' responses regarding their attitudes and behavioural tendency towards using Web 2.0 social media technologies in language classrooms identified three clusters of teachers. The teachers who were most likely to adopt social Web 2.0 technologies were those who had the highest ratings on both appraisals and concerns regarding the use of social media in language classrooms. The results from the semi-structured interviews were consistent with those from the survey. Together, the results from the two stages demonstrated that most pre-service teachers favoured using Web 2.0 technology for collaboration and communication among colleagues and stakeholders in a broader community, but they displayed contrasting levels of appraisal of and concerns towards using social media technologies. Participants believed that this might be due to their different levels of ICT proficiency, workload, and working environment. The political and practical implications in K-12 education in the Czech context are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]