Jana Kalin

Teacher perceptions of the goals of effective school reform and their own role in it

The role of the teacher in the modern school system is increasingly important and complex. A teacher needs a high level of professional knowledge and autonomous decision‐making when faced with professional challenges. The curricular reform in Slovenia has encompassed several areas of teachers’ professional activities. This paper establishes that declarative goals by themselves are not enough for successful introduction of reform, as the achievement of reform goals in practice is highly dependent on teacher perceptions and how actively they are involved in all phases of the reform. The empirical study examined how teachers understand the main aim of the reform, and how they evaluate their own level of competence in areas which have gained in importance as a result of the reform. The study included 468 primary and grammar school teachers. The results show that teachers have a fairly narrow view of the goals of the reform. The categories stressing a more active and responsible role of the learner (in line with modern models of instruction and learner‐centred paradigms of curriculum development) did not rank highly. The study also points at areas where teachers need additional training. The importance of quality teacher education at pre‐service and in‐service levels is stressed as a pillar of effective school reform.

Didactic Competencies of Teachers from the Learner's Viewpoint.

Teacher competencies can be researched in many different ways. In the present article they are studied from the learner’s viewpoint. The article presents results of the extensive project “Teacher Education for New Competencies for the Knowledge Society and the Role of these Competencies in Educational Goal Attainment at School”, carried out at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana, with the financial support of the Slovenian Ministry of Education and Sport. We present the results of the learner’s judgement of the teacher’s didactic competencies. We formed a questionnaire with which we operationalised teacher competencies with the purpose of measuring the teacher’s efficiency of instruction. In order to achieve the goals of modern instruction it is important to engage both models: learner‐centred and teacher‐centred education. The research showed that elements of the traditional instruction model are more frequently used than the model that demands a changed learner role.