The Future of Education

The paper analyzes the approach to teacher education for conducting curricula of cross—curricular topic Citizenship  education (CE) in Croatia. The analysis is based on three theoretical concepts - initial education, competence profile and professional development of teachers. The aims of the analysis are to determine the outlook of initial education, the matrix of the competence profile and the modalities of professional development of elementary school teachers for the implementation of the CE curriculum. Content analysis of the educational policy documents, syllabuses of the faculties of teacher education and national professional development plans sought to provide answers to the research questions. Results show that in faculties syllabuses the representation of courses with content related to CE is sporadic and unstructured with a negligible percentage share in the total number of courses. The lack of representation of content related to CE in initial teacher education is complemented by an undefined teachers competence profile for the implementation of the CE. There is no explicit competence profile, but after analysis of the teachers' tasks listed in the CE curriculum, an implicit competence profile was extracted. Within the extracted competence profile the dominance of the methodical, the presence of didactic and the absence of pedagogical competence is observed, which indicates that educational policy does not have a clear picture of the competence profile required by teachers for the implementation of the CE curriculum. Research results point to the absence of a comprehensive system for the development of competencies necessary for elementary school teachers to implement CE curriculum. That is a consequence of the lack of concern from the side of national educational policy for the elementary school teachers and the quality of implementation of the CE, and in wider perspective consequence of the activities of national political elites who do not want citizens educated for democracy.

Keywords: citizenship education, competence profile, elementary school, teachers, initial education, professional development.

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