CURRICULUM SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN SLOVAKIA.

In 2008 a curricular reform brought the model of dual-level curriculum to Slovak primary schools. The reform induced a situation in which primary schools had the mandatory objective to create their own school curriculum within several weeks. Teachers had to modify the composition of the teaching subjects to match specific features of the particular primary schools. This resulted into the research task: to describe how teachers see the need to create the school curriculum and to derive a model of an "ideal primary curriculum". The paper presents a description of findings acquired by qualitative semantic analysis of semi-structured interviews with primary school teachers. The semantic codes and categories were processed using software Atlas.ti. The paper describes teachers' notions on themselves in the role of the "change bearers". We identified three perceived levels - teacher as the creator of new relations, teacher as the advocate of new values, teacher as the innovator of the teaching process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]