Title: the Curricular Reform in Upper-Secondary Schools

Dr Bogomir Novak

Educational Research Institute

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Title: The curricular reform in upper-secondary schools

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Ghent, 19-21 September 2007

Abstract

This paper constitutes a further reading to the evaluation study “Evaluation of the upper secondary education from the perspectives of the extensiveness of the curriculum, inclusion of the cross-curriculum knowledge, and representativeness of the curriculum goals” which only compared the changes that occurred in the curricula between 1991 and 1998. The theoretical framework is didactical and educationally transactional with the emphasis laid on the need to develop interactive communication between teachers and pupils with a view to making subjects less burdensome. The main characteristics and objectives of various types of Slovene upper secondary schools are described. The criticism voiced by pupils and members of a commission for the upper secondary school reform lead us to believe that Slovene upper secondary schools are predominantly transmissive since their curricula are process-oriented at a declarative level whereas at the implementation level, they turn out to be content-oriented. The table of comparison between the transmissive and transformational school indicates that acquiring transformational characteristics remains a goal of the reform of upper secondary schools.

The Slovene upper secondary school is striving to shape a new identity for itself as it is a step between the nine-year primary school introduced by the 1999 curricular reform and the university joining the Bologna process only now. It is defined as the most demanding school at the general secondary education level. The syllabi based on the curricular reform are incoherent, namely not all the objectives at all subject areas and at all taxonomic levels (from the lowest to the upper secondaryest) are given equal importance.

1 Has the 1998 upper secondary school reform introduced integrative curricula with different contents? Have the curriculabecome process-oriented?

The premise of the paper is the evaluation study (Ivanuš-Grmek, et al., 2006). The theoretical framework is didactical and educationally transactional with the emphasis laid on the need to develop interactive communication between teachers and pupils. The aim is to perfect the quality of upper secondary schools since, considering European trends, this is the most demanding general secondary school.

In the pursuit of quality, Sloveneupper secondary schools (gimnazija in Slovenia, Gymnasium in Germany)1went through the process of differentiationin the mid 1990s.General upper secondary schools, that used to be the most difficult type of secondary school, split into a general upper secondary school in the strict sense of the word, and into an economic or artistic, technical, professional, classical (confessional) and Waldorf upper secondary school. In the areas where minorities live, there are bilingual upper secondary schools. Sloveneupper secondary schools are most demanding four-year secondary schools and are a step between the nine-year primary school and the first stage of the Bologna process of the university. They are again in search of their identity because of further differentiation of options and didactical methods.

School legislation has been based on 1995White paperand has provided for the development of the Sloveneupper secondary school. The syllabi based on the curricular reform are incoherent, namely not all the objectives at all subject areas and at all taxonomic levels (from the lowest to the hieghest) are given equal importance (Novak, 2006a, 2006b).

The evaluation study usedempirically quantative methodology and comparative analysis. In the research there was included 29 out of 56 Slovene upper secondary schools. A questionnaire for pupils and teachers indicated that 1999 reform has not taken away surplus of contents, made curricula interdisciplinary or made pupils more active in the classroom. Class observations have shown that teachers predominantly assess whereas pupils can repeat certain facts and do not encourage pupils to explore upper secondary levels of knowledge.

The literature offers an overview of the plethora of names used to denote the upper secondary school in the world, their structure or length. Nevertheless, these schools share their objectives and European tendencies. Most upper secondary schools develop some practical skills and competencies and thus prepare pupils for further education. The professional upper secondaryschools in Slovenia are a case in point. Depending on the type of school, upper secondaryschools focus on developing technical or language and communicational competencies; classical and catholic upper secondaryschools promote the spiritual side of a human being, community ethics, social sciences and personal growth. They focus on classical languages (Greek and Latin) and culture.

The following comparison of the 1992 and 1998 general upper secondary school syllabi is focused on the objectives. The Act on Upper secondary schools2defines the objectives, the syllabi specify them. The role of the Sloveneupper secondary school is to prepare for further education at higher education or university level and for professional life. It encourages creativity, develops knowledge, capabilities, skills and other personal characteristics necessary for success in personal and professional life. From the educational anthropology point, it is interesting to note that upper secondary schools promote development at all levels of personality (a balanced physical, cognitive, emotional, social, moral and aesthetical development) and development of a person as a whole. There are four catholic confessional upper secondary schools in Slovenia. Their task is to develop primarily the religious, spiritual and cultural levels of a person.

These objectives are comparable with other educational systems in developed European countries. All syllabi are based on objectives and processes. The substantive syllabi meant overtaxing (demonstrated in the evaluations of the 1996—1999 curricular reform by the curricular council for upper secondary schools).3 The aim of the reform was to ease the burden. However, it has subsequently become clear that by and large changes have been made in the content only and therefore their impact did not fulfil expectations.

2 A comparative analysis of the 1992 and 1998 upper secondary school syllabi

The starting points for the upper secondaryschool curricular reform (1996), adopted by the National Curriculum Council, underlined the problems in the Slovene educational system, fundamental values, key objectives to be achieved by the reform, principles and strategy of the reform. The key problems of the upper secondary school system were:

− size of the programme and curricula was too big,

− knowledge was fragmented amongst subjects and

− emphasis was laid only on some programme objectives.

Upper secondary schools are characterised by a global, comprehensive approach to education. Their specific goals are:

- to raise interest in theoretical knowledge;

- to assist in shaping one's own viewpoint;

- to deepen understanding of the complex interconnection of national natural and social phenomena,

- to encourage critical thinking and attitude to the world

- to develop one's own rounded personality (cf.Krek, 1995). (see:

There are content-, process-oriented and integrative curricula. Following the guidelines of the curricular reform, in 1998, curricula did not change only content-wise because of the scientific development but also process and integrity-wise. Let us look at the difference between these types of curricula. The curriculum, essentially, is a set of documents for implementation. Another way of looking at curriculum theory and practice is via process. In this sense curriculum is not a physical thing, but rather the interaction of teachers, pupils and knowledge. In other words, curriculum is what actually happens in the classroom and what people do to prepare and evaluate. What we have in this model is a number of elements in constant interaction.

Characteristics of curriculum as a process4 are:

1. Teachers enter particular schooling and situations withan ability to think critically, -in-action.

2. An understanding of their role and the expectations others have of them, and a proposal for action which sets out essential principles and features of the educational encounter.

3. Guided by these, they encourage conversations between, and with, people in the situation out of which thinking and action may result.

4. They continually evaluate the process and outcomes they can see.

A curriculum model providing for a constant change of learning contents, teaching methods and result testing is an open, integrative model. The method of evaluation is integrative, too. Integration is feasible only to a certain extent. It presupposes some extent of streamlining. The model is contrary to the separatist model. By teaching every teacher is called upon to find a place for emotions, imagination, searching thinking and creativity. Obviously the relatively integrative model contains various types of curricula from the content, process and objective perspective.

It is easiest to carry out the integrated approach in primary schools. It is appropriate to create and resolve conflicts that call for presenting arguments pro and contra. That is why integrated curricula may have a positive impact on pupils' motivation. Integration allows for confrontation of different problems and thus makes classes interesting and diverse. Moreover, integrated curricula would eliminate any redundancies. But the selection of contents for an integrated curriculum does not turn out to be always appropriate in practice. This can lead to more confusion rather then clarity in understanding the learning content. Thus it is clear that there are some problems in making up an integrated curriculum.

Connections and links between subjects and disciplines have been made and new didactical instructions on pupils' classroom activities have been given to teachers. The scope of learning content and the number of hours of classes has remained unchanged. Nevertheless, learning contents are in some places further divided into subtopics and sometimes headings have been changed. That is why those who are not experts in certain subject matter cannot judge if the contents are the same or different. Some subject names have been changed, e.g. arts is now art history, biology with ecology is now called just biology, 'computer and information science' is now simply called 'information science'. Some new subjects have been introduced, e.g. environment science, educational science. The Hungarian and Latin languages disappeared from the set of new subjects. The total number of subjects has not changed much since the first curricular reform in 1992.

Both the 1992 and 1998 curricula classify the data according to the year of study. Syllabi are prepared for each subject according to the list of subjects and specified according to the principles of planning learning objectives. The general (guiding) and specific objectives of a subject (informative, formative and socialiseable) are determined in such a way that a teacher chooses methods independently. The stipulated mandatory contents have to be marked by grades whereas this is not the case for the elective contents.

The 1998 syllabi were prepared separately for the professional upper secondary schools and for the areas where minorities live. Nevertheless, all syllabi have the same structure: the name of the subject, the number of hours of classes per study year, possible teaching methods, guiding and specific objectives of the subject, obligatory methods of testing pupils' knowledge, a framework list of references, connections with other subjects, didactical teaching guidelines.

Interestingly, the new curricula are silent on the general staff and material working conditions; something that wasmentioned in 1992. An example of staff condition would be the required level of education (university, in exceptional circumstances upper secondary education). Teachers who have not received pedagogical training have to subsequently take part in it; all teacher assistants have to pass a professional exam.

The 1998 list of subjects of the Sloveneupper secondary school programmes comprises:

- mandatory subjects,

- elective subjects,

- elective expert subjects (professional upper secondary school),

- other forms of independent and group work (artistic upper secondary school),

- mandatory elective contents.

Some updated syllabi are more detailed than others. There is more freedom in social science syllabi and less in science. The competences are best defined in the languages syllabi. Most subjects list as competencies practical use of knowledge. Only history, sociology and philosophy also feature critical thinking (assessment, evaluation) that entails the ability to research and study notions, solve problems and take part in social democratic processes.

Syllabi’s premise is that knowledge means to get familiar with and understand basic principles, facts, data, laws and the capacity to use methods and techniques of learning and research. Even so, knowledge which presupposes getting familiar and understanding is not broken down to the same elements in all subjects. Geography and history do not distinguish between global and regional. The history syllabus could develop pupils’ capacity to act historically, i.e. a pupil may understand a lot on the basis of historic facts and still not have the impression that one can influence the course of history. At the economic upper secondary school, at the subject economy, pupils learn notions such as management but they do not learn how to manage economy; they get familiar with the rules of alternative means of consumption but they do not acquire a critical attitude to consumption. In short, some syllabi place a great emphasis on studying phenomena but none of them stresses individual’s social behaviour.

Science syllabi stress the development of analytical thinking whereas the social science ones insist on synthetic thinking. But in my opinion non good synthesis can take place without a good analysis. Therefore, both groups of syllabi should focus on both, analytical and synthetic thinking to a varying degree. Both groups of subjects call for analytical and synthetic thinking as well as logical and intuitive thinking but in a different sense.5

Table 1: Differences between the transmissive and transformational school – based on the model of the 1992 – 1998 – 2006 upper secondary school syllabi

Transmissive schools / Transformational schools
Content oriented curricula / Process oriented curricula
Classes focus on knowing the content / Many types of knowledge according to different taxonomies
Focus on individual subjects / At least partly focus on interdisciplinary connections
Prevalence of teacher's explanation / In language and social science classes more emphasis on interactive communication
Prevalence of content knowledge and learning / Involving various forms of knowledge and learning
Prevalence of educational quantity / Improving educational quality
Teacher as a subject expert / Introducing the idea of complex professionalism of a teacher
Teaching of learning contents / Introducing a new subject "learning to learn" in nine year primary schools
Partialized teacher education / Education of teachers – workshops
School with prevalence of rational argumentation / School with development of rational, emotional and spiritual competencies
Pseudo-activity of pupils / Didactical stimulus for pupils' activity and cooperation
Unreflected learning, i.e. passively memorising facts / Various types of transformational learning
Communicational defect – schools are very noisy / Active listening – considering pupils' specific capacities and interests
School that poorly relates to its environment / Autonomous school as part of a network of schools
Pupils learn individually / Pupils learn individually and in groups
Traditional culture of testing and assessing knowledge / Introducing new culture of testing and assessing knowledge
Teacher as an external authority for pupils / Teacher with a self-limiting authority
Teacher as a transmitter of knowledge / Teacher as a pupils' facilitator, researcher, animator and tutor

Standards for curriculum making have risen. Only in 1998, curricula provided some didactical guidelines, recommend certain teaching methods, and define inter-subject links and ways of testing and assessing knowledge. The 1992 curricula provided staff and material conditions for their implementation.

The 1992 curricula had contents defined in terms of key words, whereas in the 1998 curricula the content clusters are laid down for each year. Each content cluster is broken down to contents, operational objectives, standard knowledge and special didactical recommendations with interdisciplinary links. This is followed by knowledge standards related to end of schooling.A content-wise comparison between the old and the new curricula shows that there has been no significant change in naming content clusters but re-structuring has been visible. This does not mean however that there has been a change in the level of details required and thus in how demanding the learning content is.

3. Different syllabi for the same subjects at different upper secondaryschools

3.1 Comparison between a Slovene and UKupper secondaryschool chemistry

The 1992 and 1998 curricula provide for chemistry being taught in the first 3 years of a general upper secondaryschool. The structural elements of the 1992 syllabi were: objectives, contents (broken down to obligatory, additional contents for those taking a Matura exam and optional), conditions for implementing the syllabus (staff and material). The 1998 chemistry syllabus contains general objectives of upper secondaryschool chemistry, operational side of general objectives, classification of syllabus objectives and contents, content of the subject and standards of knowledge defined according to core content clusters, general didactical instructions, special didactical recommendations and interdisciplinary links with physics, mathematics, biology, history, health education and arts, obligatory ways of testing and assessing knowledge and upgrading of contents (+ 35 hours) for the chemistry Matura exam.

The objectives of the 1992syllabus focused on familiarisation with the structure of content, the use of different information sources and their value, familiarisation with the methods and techniques of classifying data, research methods, experiments, safe storage of chemicals, the use of protection at work, being environmentally friendly, and responsibility for using chemical technology.