Pohľady učiteľov na slovenskú reformu školstva a svoje miesto v nej

The study analyzes the implementation processes of Slovak curriculum reform and its consequences at the school mezzo level. The study assumes theoretical scopes of the foreign authors who realized successful school reforms and stated the order of the reform steps. It was compared with the situation in Slovakia. The paper analyzes the research findings of Faculty of Education UMB with the aim focusing on teachers’ perception of the curriculum reform processes, their approaches towards reform, their acceptance rate of the actual curriculum, their comprehension and interpretation of the reform changes and their experiences from the real implementation processes. The research methodology was conceived qualitatively and quantitatively. The quantitative methodology (the questionnaire IKR-2014 with a four-point Likert scale involved 954 teachers from 63 schools) was combined with qualitative methodology through content analyses of half-structured interviews with 25 teachers from five involved schools. Two groups of respondents were formed during the research − the group of teachers supporting the reform and the group of teachers refusing it. The searching for possible factors that caused reform rejection followed the comparison of these groups. The teachers rejecting further reforming changes showed negative approaches and opinions in almost all monitored research items, but it did not show that any factor was significantly dominant. Empirical results supported by qualitative analysis more likely proved that negative approaches were largely influenced by directive, unmanaged, hectic and formal implementation process of reform. This caused the negligence and mischief of the teachers, and their misunderstanding of meaningful reform changes. It led to teachers’ unwillingness to make such changes and take the responsibility for reform, and teachers did not feel like active developers as well.