This article first examines didactics from an epistemological perspective.

Didactic analysis grasps knowledge as something circulated and/or transmitted. It is distinguished from sociological and psychological approaches to the learning act that legitimize the sociology of education, and from cognitive approaches.

Modifying the learner's individual knowledge so that it conforms to institutional knowledge is a scholastic goal that, in our view, defines the field of didactic research.

The second part of the article proposes answers to these questions: What is the status of the notions taught by the discipline? How are these notions constituted? What is the role of values and knowledge in school exercises and school goals? And what is to be understood by literary culture?