Technically Simple, Socially Complex.The Making of the Concept of Social Education through Subsequent Reforms of the National Core Curriculum in Poland

Author(s):

Jolanta Sajdera(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

03. Curriculum Innovation

Format:

Paper

Session Information

03 SES 07 A, (Pre-)primary Curriculum Development

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

17:15-18:45

Room:

K4.16

Chair:

Majella Dempsey

Contribution

The aim of the paper is to examine the question of how to develop the concept of social education for children through the National Core Curriculum. In my investigations I use Bruner's category of folk pedagogy (1996, p. 46). I begin with the assumption that the National Core Curriculum structure is based on a particular idea of the agents involved in the education process: pupils, students, parents, and teachers. The idea reflects the way the authors of the curricula envision society and its development.

The focus of my investigations is on the content of the National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education (ISCED-0) in Poland. Several factors determined the choice of pre-school education and Poland as the main area of my research. Firstly, it takes insight and experience in children's interaction to identify and describe social skills in children. This requires the ability to register and verify the behaviours and later interpret their sources in a particular context. The course of social education in childhood determines adult human functioning (Schaffer 1998). However, social skills elude strictly defined categories of normalised content and normalised tasks. The focus on the didactic function of pre-school education obscures the importance of social activity in children, who begin to find their place in their culture and environment.

Secondly, the choice of the National Core Curriculum is directly related to the context of dynamic social and political change, which is characteristic of transition countries such as Poland. Social and political change shapes the context in which Polish curricula are created. Since 1945, 34 different ministers of education have held office in Poland, all of whom represented a variety of different political parties. It is a paradox that from 1945–1989 the Polish education system, which was based on the Soviet model, produced curricula that were suitable for pre-school and early school education. Accordingly, throughout the Cold War era, pre-school education in the Eastern Bloc developed faster than in the West (Garrouste 2010, p. 9).

Following the political breakthrough of 1989, Poland witnessed an education reform that resulted in the new National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education (1999). The reform has set in motion subsequent amendments to the National Core Curriculum, which reflects the tendencies inherent in Polish education policies to centralise the education system. Each amendment added to the National Core Curriculum is widely debated and met with criticism in society as subsequent cabinets fail to continue reforms instituted by their predecessors and, at the same time, political opponents. It is pointed out that the corrections are merely “technical” in nature and often resemble the “copy-paste” method; by no means can they replace real debate on the necessity of educational reform. These “technically simple” amendments are nonetheless difficult to put in place in the Polish education system reality. For this reason, it is vital that questions be raised concerning the concept of social education for children and its evolution reflected in the National Core Curriculum for Pre‐primary Education from the 1990s until today.

Method

The research used qualitative content analysis to study formal documents. Four editions of the National Core Curriculum were selected for the research; they were published in 1992, 1999, 2008, and 2017 by the Polish Ministry of National Education (the latest edition is now available as a draft to undergo public consultation). The aim of the study was to formally identify recommendations for social education that are provided by the author (Ministry of National Education) in the structure of the National Core Curriculum. The analysis was performed on phrases referring to particular elements of social activity in children. The analysis was performed in two stages: 1) to describe and categorise the material; 2) to subsequently interpret it. In Stage 1 I compared and contrasted the curricula with regard to their formal content structure concerning social education for children; I also identified semantic categories describing pre-school education. They were later used as analytical categories to provide interpretation in Stage 2. The theoretical framework for semantic content analysis was provided by the concept of “curriculum (de)regulation” (Kuiper, Nieveen, Berkvens 2013), which encourages government officials to use (non)prescriptive methodology in developing national curricula.

Expected Outcomes

The research on the National Core Curriculum in Poland reflects on the ways its authors envision children's education and social development. Despite numerous studies on the subject (e.g. Garrouste 2010, CIDREE: 2013), only few address national curricula in transition countries such as Poland. Social change becomes increasingly dynamic in the world today, which provokes anxiety about the future. The sociological analysis of phenomena such as “crisis of trust” and “atmosphere of mistrust” in Poland (Sztompka 2012) demonstrates the importance of bonding in social education for Polish children. The semantic content analysis of the National Core Curriculum published from 1992–2017 provides for a wide overview of the ways in which decision-makers envision the relationship between children and their social context. The resulting evolution resembles the pendulum swing, a phenomenon that occurs in the education system in Hungary (Horvát, Kaposi, Varga 2013), where tendencies to restrict individual autonomy begin to emerge. Polish curricula tend to provoke anxiety for a number of reasons: – They are focused on interpersonal social skills rather than intrapersonal (self-awareness). – They tend to verify children's achievements with peculiar document-speak, which is also known as the “language of requirements”. – They tend to confine the social context in which children acquire their social skills to their home/pre-school/homeland while restricting the multicultural component. The outcomes can be used to exchange know-how and expertise with other countries with similar or different history, not only to learn from other people's mistakes but also to seek solutions that are useful in developing recommendations for decision-makers who shape national curriculum reforms.

References

Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press. European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice/Eurostat, (2014) Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe. Eurydice and Eurostat Report. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Garrouste Ch. (2010) 100 Years of Educational Reforms in Europe: a contextual database. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Horvát, Z. Kaposi, J., Varga, A. (2013) The curriculum pendulum swings in Hungary. In: Kuiper, W., Berkvens, J. (Eds.). Balancing curriculum regulation and freedom cross Europe. CIDREE Yearbook 2013. Enschede, the Netherlands: SLO. Kuiper, W., Nieveen, N., Berkvens, J.(2013) Curriculum regulation and freedom in the Netherlands- A puzzling paradox. In: Kuiper, W., Berkvens, J. (Eds.). Balancing curriculum regulation and freedom cross Europe. CIDREE Yearbook 2013. Enschede, the Netherlands: SLO. Schaffer, H. R., (1998) Social development. Oxford, Malden, Mass. Blackwell Publishers, Silverman, R. (2006) Interpreting qualitative data. Methods for analizing talk, text and interaction. London [etc.] : Sage Publications. Sztompka, P. (2012) Socjologia : analiza społeczeństwa. Kraków : Wydawnictwo Znak.

Author Information

Jolanta Sajdera (presenting / submitting)

Pedagogical University of Cracow

Faculty of Pedagogy

Kraków

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.