Comparative studies on science curricula provide insights into educational standards worldwide. Accordingly, in this study, we analysed the intended curricula of mathematics and science subjects of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Slovenia by comparing their lower secondary (ISCED 2) National Curriculum Documents on mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and geology from the perspective of learning outcomes. By document analysis, we extracted obligatory learning outcomes from the national curricula, assessing their level of detail and structure. A team of seven coders also measured cognitive demands of the learning outcomes using the revised Bloom's taxonomy. Our results showed considerable differences in the number of learning outcomes across countries and in the structure of these outcomes across subjects, even within national documents. Cognitive demands determined by learning outcomes were similar across the countries, but metacognitive knowledge and cognitive processes of higher level (Evaluate and Create) were mostly overlooked. We also found a lack of learning outcomes explicitly requiring the use of ICT, experimental or field work or data analysis. Although these requirements are usually formulated in general sections of curriculum documents, we recommend explicitly incorporating them into these documents as individual learning outcomes.
Geology is a science with a highly interdisciplinary character. Thus, in education it is ideal to provide education in a form integrated with the other branches of natural sciences under the subject of Science or Natural Sciences. However, most European countries prefer separate teaching of the individual educational fields and subsume geology within one of them, most frequently biology or geography. The submitted study discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages of various strategies of allocation of geological topics in education. A comparative method is used to evaluate and analyse curricular documents in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovenia and Poland at the lower secondary educational level. The comparison is focused on the scope and incorporation of selected educational content of geology into individual educational subjects, and on the recommended teaching methods suitable for interpreting geological subject matter. On the basis of this knowledge from abroad, individual subjects are selected for the “best practice” and subsequently proposed for implementation under the conditions in the Czech Republic. This seeks to make geology more familiar and attractive for students at the lower secondary level of education.
This paper aims to reveal the beliefs of students and fresh university graduates about teaching statistics during their university studies with focus on using statistical software. The objective is to detect the approach of faculties to statistics education and to find out which didactic materials and teaching methods are mainly used. Students’ opinions are captured by means of a questionnaire survey and analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show the increasing importance of quantitative research and the necessity of improving statistical thinking. Unfortunately, the teaching methods used in various statistical courses are outdated and unattractive for most students. They call for an active and modern approach. Teaching statistics with the statistical software support seems to be the right way to make statistics accessible to students. The recommendation is to take students’ notions into account when preparing statistical courses.
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