The Challenges of History Education in Iceland

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-110
Author(s):  
Súsanna Margrét Gestsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Teaching Material ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Standardized Exams ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

In this article the author discusses the teaching of history in Iceland, first and foremost in relation to the environment in which the subject finds itself, the legislation relating to it and the curriculum. Curriculum development over the past decades is examined, in addition to changes in teaching material and the general attitudes that have influenced both of these from the time of the struggle for national independence in the former half of the twentieth century. There is a discussion of the disputes that have arisen as a result of tampering with the curriculum and teaching material in history in recent years, both when new emphases were introduced in the eighties and when history teaching in upper secondary schools was substantially reduced with the new curriculum in 1999. Considerable attention is given to history teaching in upper secondary schools, despite there being a dearth of research at this level. There is quite a degree of evidence that history is popular amongst Icelandic students and the public at large. In this article, an attempt is made to analyse the state of history as a school subject in Iceland, not least in the light of the extensive freedom enjoyed by teachers in their jobs, bearing in mind that there are no standardized exams in the subject and no supervision of teaching methods. At present there is a review of the curricula at all school levels in Iceland and the future of history as a subject is therefore rather uncertain.

scholarly journals History teaching in Finnish general upper secondary schools: Objectives and practices

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Rautiainen ◽  
Eija Räikkönen ◽  
Anna Veijola ◽  
Simo Mikkonen
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Student Activities ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
Teaching History ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

In Finland, the trend towards a new kind of history teaching emphasizing the understanding of historical knowledge and historical thinking skills began in the mid-1990s, when history teaching objectives were defined much more broadly in the curriculum than previously. In this article, we examine how, in over twenty years since the changes in curriculum objectives were made, general upper secondary school teachers have come to value the curriculum objectives of history teaching and how these have impacted on their teaching. The data for this article were collected by a semi-structured survey in 2016. Using counts, percentages, means, standard deviations and medians, a descriptive exploration was made of history teachers' perceptions of the essential objectives in teaching history and how often they were put into practice in related student activities. To investigate the balance between the objectives the teachers emphasized as the most essential and the teaching methods they actually used, we applied the Kruskal–Wallis test and the Friedman test. According to the results, what the teachers considered essential for teaching history did not correlate with their teaching methods. In addition, according to the results, this state of affairs is still undergoing change; old traditions and new objectives of history teaching are creating tensions. The results were interpreted in the light of the cultural viewpoints of Finnish teaching, the position of matriculation examinations in Finnish general upper secondary schools and the challenges the curriculum is setting for history teachers.

scholarly journals Exploring the washback effects of a high-stakes English test on the teaching of English in Spanish upper secondary schools

2010 ◽  
pp. 149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marian Amengual Pizarro
Keyword(s):  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
High Stakes Tests ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Teaching Curriculum ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

In the past decades, there has been a growing interest in the effects of language tests, especially high-stakes tests, on teaching and learning referred to as ‘washback'. In fact, high-stakes tests have started to be exploited to reform instruction and achieve beneficial washback. This paper focuses on the washback effects of a high-stakes English Test (ET) on the teaching of English. The main goal of this study is to examine the washback effects of the ET on the following aspects of teaching: curriculum, materials, teaching methods, and teaching feelings and attitudes. The study also attempts to discover teachers' perceptions towards the introduction of a speaking and a listening component in the design of the new ET due to be implemented in 2012. The overall findings, collected from a questionnaire carried out among 51 secondary teachers, indicate that the ET is clearly affecting curriculum and materials. Results also reveal that the ET appears to influence teachers' methodology. Furthermore, most of the teachers believe that the introduction of a speaking and a listening component in the new ET design will help solve the mismatch between the communicative approach they seem to value and the skills so far evaluated in the ET.

scholarly journals Postawy uczniów ponadpodstawowych szkół ogólnokształcących dla dorosłych wobec rynku pracy

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 236-241
Author(s):  
Paweł Czapliński
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Job Market ◽  
The Public ◽  
Level Of Activity ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Influence Activity ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools ◽  
Research Show

This article tries to give the answers to the questions: Who are the students of upper secondary schools for adults? Why they receive education in this type of schools? What is their level of activity in the job market? What are their attitudes toward the job market? Is there any territorial diversification in the attitudes toward job market? What influence it? The  success  in  the  job market depends on  a  lot of  factors. The most  important  factor  is intellectual inborn potential and influence of environment especially schools on individual person. Schools should form the enterprise attitudes by the lessons on entrepreneurship. This type of education unfortunately doesn’t function in the job market and hasn’t got such a chance. The public feelings, mentality and positive relations between government and businessmen are the most important factors which influence activity in the job market, as research on students of upper secondary schools for adults shows. It was conducted in cities known of their entrepreneurship . Kołobrzeg, Chojnice, Starogard Gdański and Koszalin. It seems the institutional and personal models influence students and local communities. The results of research show certain regularity. The enterprised attitudes depend not only on hard economical factors but also and maybe mostly on social and psychological factors.

Convincing others that they are competing: the case of schools

Competition ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Niklas Bomark ◽  
Peter Edlund ◽  
Stefan Arora-Jonsson
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Organizational Challenges ◽  
Rich Variety ◽  
The Past ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

The past decades have seen numerous attempts to introduce competition into new sectors of society, but we still know little about the processes by which competition is realized in a new setting. We study three decades of organizational efforts of a Swedish municipality that sought to introduce competition for students among its upper secondary schools following a national reform in the early 1990s. Our study shows that declaring competition was far from sufficient for its realization; the path to competition was lined with hesitation, uncertainty, and a rich variety of organizational challenges to be overcome. One particularly vexing challenge was to convince the principals of the schools that they should view each other as competitors for students. Our findings contribute to previous literature by demonstrating that competition need not be a prerequisite for choice; that several organizers of competition may operate at once; and, more generally, that competition is introduced through stepwise, piecemeal processes.

scholarly journals Tests of Writing in the School Examination in Upper Secondary Schools

SAGE Open ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 215824401667313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Ginting ◽  
Ali Saukah
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Dominant Factor ◽  
English Writing ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Examination ◽  
Writing Test ◽  
School Based ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Student Graduation ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

Although the results of the final examination in Indonesia were the dominant factor in determining high school graduation, the public still did not know how the examination was administered nor how results were used to determine student graduation. Despite its importance, no comprehensive studies about its implementation have been conducted. The present study investigates the implementation of school-based assessment (SBA) in upper secondary schools focusing on the development and administration of the English writing test. This particular test was not covered in the English national examination. Twenty-one schools were surveyed, selected through stratified random sampling. In-depth case studies were conducted in three selected schools representing fully implementing school (FIS), moderately implementing school (MIS), and partially implementing school (PIS). The majority were categorized as PIS. This study suggests that the way in which examinations were implemented needs serious consideration, especially in light of the new regulation that student graduations are based on the result of the school examinations and no longer on the result of the national examination.

scholarly journals English writing instruction in Norwegian upper secondary schools

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
May Olaug Horverak
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Teaching Material ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Detailed Instruction ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
English Writing Instruction ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools

AbstractThis article presents a study of current English writing instruction practices in a selection of Norwegian upper secondary schools and discusses how this draws upon ideas within genre-pedagogy. The data comprises individual and focus-group interviews, observation reports and some teaching material. The study shows that English teachers focus on teaching genre requirements and adjustment of language to task and context. However, despite agreeing on the importance of teaching how to write specific text-types and to adjust to the situation at hand, there seems to be different opinions about how detailed instruction should be. Some teachers fear that too explicit instruction may hinder creativity, while others emphasise the need to learn how to structure a text, and to open up for creativity within certain writing frames. In spite of the differences, the practices revealed in this study comply quite well with genre-pedagogy. From the findings in this article, it seems like there is a need to develop and make available teaching material in English to be used in writing instruction, and also to improve the English teacher education with regard to the teaching of writing.Keywords: Writing instruction, genre-pedagogy, teaching-learning cycle, con-text and modellingSammendragDenne artikkelen presenterer en studie av engelsk skriveundervisning i et utvalg norske videregående skoler, og diskuterer hvordan disse praksisene samsvarer med sjangerpedagogikk. Innsamlet data består av individuelle og fokusgruppe-intervjuer, observasjonsrapporter og undervisningsmateriale, og studien viser at engelsklærere fokuserer på å undervise sjangerkrav og det å tilpasse språk til oppgave og kontekst. Til tross for at det er enighet om at det er viktig å undervise i spesifikke tekst typer, og det å tilpasse skriving til situasjon, er det ulike meninger om hvor detaljert skriveundervisningen bør være. Noen lærere frykter at for eksplisitt instruksjon kan hindre kreativitet, mens andre understreker behovet for å lære å strukturere tekster i detalj, og åpner opp for kreativitet innen bestemte skriverammer. Til tross for ulikheter, så samsvarer praksisene presentert i denne studien i stor grad med sjangerpedagogikken. Ut fra funnene i denne artikkelen, kan en konkludere at det er et behov for å utvikle og gjøre tilgjengelig undervisningsmateriale for skriveundervisning i engelsk, samt at det er et behov for å forbedre engelsklærerutdanningen når det gjelder opplæring i skriveundervisning.Nøkkelord: Skriveundervisning, sjangerpedagogikk, undervisnings-lærings syklus, kontekst og modellering 

scholarly journals EXPERIENCE WITH AND PERCEPTION OF CLIL BY STUDENT TEACHERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 482
Author(s):  
Zuzana Lukáčová
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Schools ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
English Language ◽  
The Past ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Meaningful Context ◽  
Upper Secondary Schools ◽  
Structured Questionnaire

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) plays a key role in addressing the issue of meaningful and authentic learning. Central to this approach is the concept of a foreign language in a meaningful context while taking into consideration dual aims, i.e. a linguistic and a content aim. The purpose of this paper is to review recent research into the problematics of CLIL and its implementation at primary, lower-secondary and upper-secondary schools as well as to explore the experience with and perception of student teachers towards the CLIL approach. The data were obtained from a semi-structured questionnaire distributed among student teachers of English language and literature (in combination). Based on the data obtained, approximately half of the respondents have had an experience with the CLIL approach in the past. Moreover, the majority of the respondents perceive such an experience as positive.  Student teachers' previous experience with CLIL can play an important role in addressing the issue of implementing this approach into teaching by teachers – beginners. Thus, it is believed that the paper will contribute to our understanding of the approach, its implementation at primary, lower-secondary, upper-secondary schools and the perception of the approach by the student teachers of English (in combination) in Slovakia.

scholarly journals Teaching Science in Today’s Society: The Case of Particle Physics for Primary Schools

Universe ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Cristina Lazzeroni ◽  
Sandra Malvezzi ◽  
Andrea Quadri
Keyword(s):  
Particle Physics ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ongoing Project

The rapid changes in science and technology witnessed in recent decades have significantly contributed to the arousal of the awareness by decision-makers and the public as a whole of the need to strengthen the connection between outreach activities of universities and research institutes and the activities of educational institutions, with a central role played by schools. While the relevance of the problem is nowadays unquestioned, no unique and fully satisfactory solution has been identified. In the present paper we would like to contribute to the discussion on the subject by reporting on an ongoing project aimed to teach Particle Physics in primary schools. We will start from the past and currently planned activities in this project in order to establish a broader framework to describe the conditions for the fruitful interplay between researchers and teachers. We will also emphasize some aspects related to the dissemination of outreach materials by research institutions, in order to promote the access and distribution of scientific information in a way suited to the different age of the target students.

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