engleski

Urban School Culture in Croatia: Student Empowerment or Spirit Impoverishment?

The chapter deals with the issue of student position in the culture of urban primary schools in Croatia. It describes Croatian educational context and the political attempts made to reform the education system. Those attempts have been going on for over than two decades and have yielded several important documents. The intention was to create a modernised system but a couple of questions arise from the analysis of the reform efforts. First, have the proposed changes been implemented in schools and to what extent? Second, how have those changes affected student position in school culture? In other words, are students being encouraged to take an active part in their own education and be active citizens in an urban environment or does the system still primarily seek obedience from students so that the status quo can be preserved? The emphasis is placed on primary education as the foundation for lifelong learning. In urban areas it represents an educational level which is most accessible to different social classes and involves children of different ethnic origin, religion, family types and lifestyles. Its school culture denotes a set of values, norms, beliefs, rituals and traditions within the educational institution that is part of the general culture and value-system as a whole. As school culture basically reflects the relations between students and teachers, the issue of student position is addressed in the research of classroom activities in urban schools. In order to determine whether the urban school culture in Croatia promotes active learning (student development, initiative, cooperation, self- confidence, critical thinking etc.) or students are still expected to be in a relatively passive position in the classroom (doing only what teachers ask them to do), the findings of recent studies about classroom activities are discussed in the chapter.

classroom relations, school culture, student initiative, teacher, curricular reform

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