engleski

Changing the National Curriculum for Compulsory Education in Croatia - The Current State and Developments

In the face of challenges raised by the processes of globalisation and development of the knowledge based society, competencies and curriculum came to the fore in the field of education. This presentation is focused on the analysis of the national curriculum for compulsory education in Croatia and its changes from the teachers’ perspective. It is based on the findings of a research carried out in 2003 on a stratified-random sample of 1134 subject teachers in 121 elementary schools (15% sample). The applied questionnaire consisted of open-ended and closed questions set mainly on Likert scales. The teachers were evaluating: 1) representation of areas of child development (following Gardner’ s multiple intelligence theory) in syllabi ; 2) the key curriculum design concepts such as coherence, breadth and balance, contemporariness, etc. (Harland et al., 2002) ; (3) time allocation for each subject, etc. The findings show that the national curriculum is cognitively focused while not balanced enough. The cognitive area is the most represented area in the national curriculum (child cognitive development is covered by each subject). The esthetical, physical and practical/technical area are the least presented areas (they are covered by one or limited number of subjects). The teachers’ estimation of the teaching hours per subject reveal that the subjects responsible for these uderepresented areas (Technical education, Arts, Music, etc.) have the smallest and insufficient number of hours. Insufficient horizontal coherence, a content overload and obsoleteness were also indicated as weak points of the curriculum. In conclusion, the national curriculum for compulsory education in Croatia reflects characteristics of a traditional, knowledge oriented and subject based curriculum. It requires radical changes towards a balanced, integrated and coherent national curriculum which will provide pupils with competencies necessary to cope with challenges of the future.

knowledge based society; the national curriculum for compulsory education; teachers' perspective

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