Transformation of school culture in post-totalitarian society; teachers in one school remember societal changes invading into their world

Author(s):

Dana Moree(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 09 A, Citizenship Education in Changing Societies

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-15

10:30-12:00

Room:

KL 24/122c,G, 43

Chair:

Dana Moree

Contribution

This project is a follow-up of exploratory interdisciplinary research on how Czech teachers cope with social and educational transformation in 2004 – 2008 (Moree, 2008). This research showed that coping with school reform in Czech schools encounters a basic fear of dogmatisation among teachers. This fear is related especially to new topics like democratic citizenship and its moral aspects, multicultural education, environmental education, media education etc. It seems that teachers’ fear linked to these topics is influenced by experiences of life during totalitarianism (before 1989) and transformation (after 1989).

Political changes after 1989 started also a process of educational change, which had specific features in the case of post-totalitarian countries. Travelling policies (Seddon, 2005; Silova, 2005, Wilkins et al., 2010) meet in-land top-down and bottom-up processes (Fullan, Goodson). All together they create a situation in which certain aspects of change are accepted by key players and some aspects are neglected.

The educational reform, which started in 2004, initiated changes of curricula. However, it seems that school culture and particular teachers’ perception of societal changes play a crucial role in the process of reform implementation. School culture itself changed dramatically after 1989 but has never been researched. By school culture I mean especially relations among teachers, among teachers and pupils as well as among teachers and school leadership (Higgins-D’Alessandro & Sadh, 1998; Klaassen, 2005; Klaassen & Huwae, 2006; Veugelers 2004).

School culture is strongly influenced by the way how teachers perceive changes of their roleand professional identity, which will be analysed on the background of research of Van der Veen et al (2001), Veugelers and Klaassen and others (Morris, 2008; Osborn, 2008), and which changed dramatically during the years of transformation.

The changing roles of teachers in society are inevitably linked to the aspect of teachers’ biographies and generations. Different teachers’ generations experienced a wide range of historical events, which influenced their lives in many different ways. For analysing the aspect of teachers’ generations the framework of Goodson (2005) and Becker (1997) will be used.

Difficulties and dilemmas linked to changes in school culture are very often a taboo, which is not communicated in the process of transformation of the educational system in the Czech Republic. This leads me to formulate a new research question: “What kind of changes of school culture the transformation brought in the Czech school culture and how do teachers experience this process?”

Method

This research question will be elaborated by means of an interdisciplinary qualitative research based on a combination of methods from several disciplines like anthropology, micro-sociology, history and education. Several research methods will be combined: literature analysis from all of above mentioned disciplines and qualitative research based on biographical interviews with teachers in one primary school in middle-sized Czech town. Approximately fifteen biographical interviews will be done with teachers, who were actively teaching around 1989. The same questions will be asked teachers, who are at school at present (also approximately twenty interviews). The main research question “What kind of changes of school culture the transformation brought in the Czech school culture and how do teachers experience this process?” will be elaborated in more detailed ones: Which changes in the society influence teachers in their work? Which dilemmas accompany these changes? What was the transformation about in school? How were relations in school influenced by the transformation? How were educational aims and objectives and school culture influenced by the transformation?

Expected Outcomes

The research started in spring 2010 and is still continuing. At this moment I can introduce some preliminary results based on the first 12 interviews with teachers who were teaching around 1989. In Spring 2011 a series of interviews with present teachers at the same school will be done. Preliminary results show following: Travelling policies play a crucial role in terms of defining educational change and bringing new topics linked to democratic citizenship into schools. However, these new topics were not internalized; they are perceived as foreign. The top-down and bottom-up relation did not change very much, it was perceived as difficult before 1989 as well as after 1989. Before 1989 teachers were servants of the regime. The research brought a lot of evidence about how the communist regime organized the educational system to ensure loyalty from teachers. The school reform of 2004 brought a lot of freedom accompanied by increased administrative pressures, which is however perceived as something that deepens mistrust between top and bottom. 1989 brought destruction of relations between teachers at school. A deep conflict among teachers transformed into its chronicle stage. Relations among teachers and pupils are also perceived as problematic (they do not understand and trust each other according to teachers).

References

Becker, H. (1997). De toekomst van de Verlorene Generatie. Amsterdam. J. M. Meulenhoff bv. Fullan, M. (2007). The New Meaning of Educational Change, 4th edition. New York: Teachers College Press. Fullan, M. (2010). All Systems Go; The Change Imperative for All System Reform. Canada: Corvin Press and Toronto: Ontario Principals Council. Goodson, I. (2005). Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics. London & New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. (2004). Change Processes and Historical Periods. In Sugrue, C. Curriculum and Ideology; Irish Experiences, International Processes. Ireland: The Liffey Press. Higgins-D´Alessandro, A. & Sadh, D. (1998). The Dimensions and Measurement of School Culture: Understanding School Culture as the Basis for School Reform. International Journal of Educational Research,27, 553 - 569. Johnson, D. (2010). Politics, Modernisation and Educational Reform in Russia. Oxford: Symposium Books Ltd. Klaassen, C. & Huwae, S. (2006). Scholen die werken aan burgerschap. Die Pedagogische Dimensie, 43. Klaassen, C. (2005). Leren in een waarde(n)volle schoolcontext. De Pedagogische Dimensie, 37. Ubbergen: UitgeverijTandem-Felix. Moree, D. (2008). How Teachers Cope with Social and Educational Transformation; Struggling with Multicultural Education in the Czech Classroom. Benešov: Eman. Osborn, M. (2008). Teacher Professional Identity under Conditions of Constraint. Springer Netherlands. Morris, P. (2008). Teacher Professionalism and Teacher Education in Hong Kong. Springer Netherlands. Seddon, T. (2005). Travelling Policy in Post-socialist Education. European Educatinal Research Journal, 4, 1 – 4. Silova, I. (2005). Travelling Policies: hijacked in Central Asia. European Educatinal Research Journal, 4, 50 – 59. Veen, K., Sleegers, P., Bergen, T. & Klaassen, C. (2001). Professional orientations of secondary school teachers towards thein work. Teaching and trachet Education 17, 175 – 194. Veugelers, W. & Bosman, R. (2005). De strijd om het curriculum. Antwerpen – Apeldoorn:Garant. Veugelers, W. & Klaassen, C. (2007). Burgeschapsvorming in het basisonderwijs. De Pedagogische Dimensie, 52. Amsterdam: Instituut voor de lerarenopleiding.

Author Information

Dana Moree (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of humanities, Charles University of Prague

Civil society sector

Prague

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