Contemporary Educational Problems and Major Challenges as a Part of Curriculum Changes in Croatia: A Multiple Perspectives Insight

Abstract

During the past 15 years, educational and curriculum changes in Croatian pre-tertiary education level took place under the influence of modern pedagogical and didactic paradigms on one hand, and on the other, under the influence of the new socio-cultural values. Since these changes reflect on all education system stakeholders, a multiple understanding and problem detection can contribute to further improving education reform steps for effective curriculum changes at all levels and with all stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to identify and analyse multiple problem perspectives of educational and curriculum changes - teachers, pupils, parents, professional associates, school founders, using the interviewing method of a randomly selected research sample, and to detect and determine the biggest and the most common problems of the surveyed stakeholders. The results were processed through qualitative and quantitative analysis, applying the comparison method and triple coding, and classifying narrative statements of the respondents. The research results show that pupils’ motivation to learn represents the most frequent problem category. The problem of pupils’ motivation to learn appears to be most common not only among teachers, but also among parents and pupils. Professional associates at school face the administrative burden as the most frequent problem whilst the attitudes of school founders’ representatives are most often related to financial problems.