Primary and Lower Secondary School Teachers and the Development of Their Attitudes towards the Curriculum Reform: Three Stories

The aim of the study was to clarify the impact of teachers’ own experience connected to the implementation of the curricular reform on their attitude towards the reform. Based on the previous research in the same field, the authors decided to focus on the state of the teachers’ attitudes during the three stages. The analyses dealt with the expectations of teachers before the implementation of the reform, crucial moments during the implementation of the reform into practice, and final teachers’ attitudes towards the reform today. For this purpose, three qualitative case studies were conducted focusing on three primary school teachers who were chosen based on their different attitude trajectories. The data which were gathered through the method of in-depth interviews were analysed by the means of qualitative content analysis. Initial expectations of all the three respondents can be characterized as positive because the reform was perceived as an opportunity to deepen teaching, enable specialization of a certain school and improve communication among teachers. Even though crucial moments of one of the teachers had positive connotations and led to her positive attitude, the other two teachers experienced mostly negative moments that included weak organisation support, not fulfilling the potential of the reform and underappreciation of teachers’ work. The negative moments led to the resistance towards the whole reform and its current form or to the search for compensation strategies which would allow the teacher to cope with the reform as it is.