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In international education policy articulations by organisations such as the UNESCO, inclusive education is defined rather vaguely, usually in terms of human rights. Yet, national reception it is more or less taken for granted. Analyses of "policy lending" show that when national education traditions are not respected, the lack of clarity about the concrete form of inclusion is further augmented by resistance to a foreign import. Taking the example of the implementation of inclusive education in the Czech Republic, a secondary analysis of survey results on responses from teachers and parents is presented. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the reactions of two groups of actors who have had only a marginal involvement in preparing the implementation of inclusion; specifically, teachers at ordinary schools and parents of pupils with special education needs. Teachers are critical of inclusion, which they regard as special care for individual pupils with special education needs. It is only in schools which have lengthy experience with integration that a transformation of the school culture and the teaching profession in the direction of greater teamwork has taken place. The imperative of inclusion coming from above is regarded more as interference with what is a spontaneous development. The view of parents to pupils with special education needs was that systemic support to inclusion was lacking. Parents are forced to be intermediaries between other actors, but often do not have enough information and are not respected by teachers as "experts" on their children.

This essentially polemical article questions whether the Bologna Process (BP) is necessary (and desirable) in the adaptation of universities to the new social conditions or whether it is a Trojan horse sent out to introduce neo-liberal changes in the field of higher education. First, it addresses the circumstances surrounding the origins of the Bologna Declaration, demonstrating that it enabled the instrumental logic of the marketization and commodification of education to pervade universities traditionally conceived of as cultural institutions of knowledge. It then investigates the eight declared objectives of Bologna and, finally, summarises the consequences that can be firmly established ten years after the event. These include the fact that three of the pillars of the BP can be interpreted as responding to the requirements of neoliberal New Public Management; namely, study structure (flexibility and market-driven profiles), credits (standardization, mobility and effectiveness) and quality assurance (external control). In conclusion, the paper suggests that the BP primarily represents a problem in understanding a situation that displays signs of the radical transformation of the social function of one dimension of societal life--higher education. Although it is clearly an adaptive reaction to the (neoliberal) transformation of society, it has also become part of the ideological games played by certain special-interest groups and, as such, we must make continual attempts to gain a deeper understanding of it.

The article focuses on the criticism of the neoliberal approach to manage universities and academic research in the Czech Republic. It discusses the resistance and reactions from the higher education community towards government policies that aimed to rebrand university education as a market commodity and introduce elements of corporate management. It explores the impact of these policies on university administration, evaluation of research results, funding, and the overall academic culture.

The closure of schools as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic is a unique experience of the Czech education system and of families as well. The situation appears to off er distinctive challenges for students with special educational needs (SEN), for whom distance learning can present different risks and benefits than is the case for non-SEN pupils. The article deals with the course of distance teaching for pupils with SEN in the spring of 2020 from the point of view of their parents. The online questionnaire survey was responded to by 4030 parents of primary school pupils, of whom 506 were pupils with SEN. The questionnaire mapped the provision of recommended support measures, the frequency and type of pedagogical communication, the frequency of peer contact, conditions in families during distance learning, and parents’ concerns about their child’s further academic results. Analyses have shown that according to the parents pupils with SEN are less likely to communicate with teachers compared to non-SEN pupils, while parents are more likely to communicate with teachers, but are less satisfied than parents of non-SEN pupils. Parents are worried about the further development of their children, and children are in less frequent peer contact compared to children without SEN. According to slightly more than half of the parents, children with SEN were not provided with the recommended support measures during distance learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Czech school reform tends to aim at competences rather than at knowledge. We attempt to bring some evidence that the mathematical competences is a vague term without precise scientific as well as practically useful contents. Based on the analysis of the Czech data from PISA 2003, we could not substantiate the differences in teaching practices referred by students with different mathematics test results, i.e. allegedly with different levels of math competences. Thus, any more or less effective competence-teaching practices could not be identified. Similarly, in TIMSS 2007, we did not find any differences in teaching practices between the Czech "pro-reform" and "antireform" teachers. We further investigated the reformists' requirement to set up the real life, on the one hand, a starting point of the school teaching/learning, and, on the other hand, its ultimate goal. In the studies exploring the issue, we found no definite results in favour of the use of real-world problems in school mathematics. Similarly, the effectiveness of any particular method or practice of school knowledge acquisition on a far transfer into the everyday or even professional life cannot be proved. Moreover, the usefulness of the concept of transfer itself was questioned in recent debates as redundant (existing besides the concept of learning). We conclude that the Czech reformist discourse is predominantly based on extracting partial moments of the teaching/learning process, putting them as antagonisms and labelling them as universally good or bad. On the contrary, we argue that these different moments, however opposite they could seem, stand as mutually linked parts in the real teaching/learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. The study aimed to reveal the level of burnout syndrome, coping strategies and self-efficacy and their mutual relationships among teachers at elementary schools in the Czech Republic. Sample and setting. The sample comprised 2,394 teachers (85% of females and 15% of males). The variables were measured by Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure, SVF 78 (coping strategies) and USE (teacher selfefficacy). Hypotheses. Authors hypothesized that teachers with higher self-efficacy would prefer positive coping while teachers with lower self-efficacy would prefer negative coping. Then, it was assumed that teachers with higher self-efficacy and positive coping would report less burnout syndrome. Because positive coping is a part of professional competencies, it was hypothesized that self-efficacy would predict burnout syndrome stronger than coping strategies. Statistical analysis. The main analyses consisted of correlation, linear regression and multinominal regression. Results. The analyses showed the high prevalence of burnout syndrome (19% with perspicuous manifestation and 65% in risk of burnout). Teachers with higher self-efficacy preferred positive coping over negative coping and vice versa. Teachers with higher self-efficacy and positive coping reported lower burnout syndrome. The link between coping and burnout was significant. The association of negative coping with burnout syndrome was stronger. Study limitation. Correlational research; distinction between positive and negative coping assessed by the SVF 78; not-random research sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]