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LANGUAGE IN SEARCH OF PRACTICE: THE PROGRESS
OF CURRICULUM REFORM IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

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LANGUAGE IN SEARCH OF PRACTICE: THE PROGRESS OF CURRICULUM
REFORM IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

By

Kamila Rosolova

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Educational Policy

2008

ABSTRACT

LANGUAGE IN SEARCH OF PRACTICE: THE PROGRESS OF CURRICULUM
REFORM IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

By

Kamila Rosolova

In 2004, the Czech Republic passed a new Education Act and with it a curricular
reform that is expected to fundamentally transform education in the Czech Republic. The
reform replaces old highly prescriptive national curriculum with new national curricular
frameworks and mandates that each school produce its local curriculum to ﬁt the new
frameworks. More importantly, through the frameworks, the reform brings into focus
new educational goals --so called key competencies-- that are to help Czech schools and
teachers embrace instructional approaches targeting students' skills rather than mastery of
knowledge as the ultimate goal of education. In the context of Czech education, these
ideas appear revolutionary. Previously, teachers were not involved in curriculum
development and students were not expected to demonstrate that they are able to use and
apply the knowledge they had acquired through schooling.

This dissertation examines the meaning of the reform in its existing context and
its early implementation. As it captures the trajectory of the reform‘s evolution, it focuses
on two objectives: 1) explaining the gestation of the new curricular policy and 2)
understanding the nature of the policy implementation in its early stages. The study takes
a broad view of policy analysis that spans the distance from global trends and their
impact on the development in state policy to teachers in high school classrooms. The

overtones of globalism colliding with historical traditions and institutions, combined with

policy perceptions and the reactions and responses of “street level bureaucrats,” produce
a more complex narrative than a traditional implementation study.

The dissertation primarily draws on qualitative inquiry based on 51 semi-
structured interviews with policy actors at various levels of the system, document
reviews, and surveys collected from 89 high school teachers from schools that were
piloting the reform. The organization follows Hodgson and Spours' conceptual
framework for policy analysis that integrates macro- and micro-level perspectives of
policy. The study ﬁrst examines the international, political and historical contexts of
Czech education and then zeroes in on the policy process, including the. gestation of the
policy, analysis of the policy text, and analysis of the early implementation in a small
sample of high schools.

The reform has progressed abruptly and at times heedlessly. It has been severely
underspeciﬁed and teachers did not tend to view it as a signal of a signiﬁcant change that
will prompt them to overhaul their existing practices. But rather than criticizing the new
policy and its implementation, this study explains the peculiarities of the case, positioning
it in its local meanings with regard to global and international inﬂuences. Overall, the
narrative yields a story about difficulties faced by a nation that is re-creating its identity
in the post-communist era of globalization, and shows that change is also culturally
bound and shaped by idiosyncratic national histories and political circumstances.
Propositions from policy research studies that originated primarily in the English
speaking world added insights to the interpretation of the case and generated policy

recommendations that close the study.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the cooperation of the
study participants. I want to thank them all for giving me the time to discuss the reform
and for sharing their views about it. I also want to thank all the school principals who
gave me access to their schools and who helped to distribute and collect completed
surveys from their teachers.

I am particularly thankful to my dissertation chair and advisor Gary Sykes for the
countless hours that he spent discussing the dissertation with me, for his advice and
wisdom, and for allowing me to see things that I would not have seen without him. I
admire him as a great thinker and scholar, and I am grateful that he was willing to be my
mentor.

I also want to extend special thank you to Michael Sedlak who has recruited me to
Michigan State University and provided extraordinary guidance and support through all
the years that I took to complete the program. He has been an attentive listener and
pragmatic problem solver. I greatly appreciate his straightforwardness, kindness, and
willingness to help any time. Hadn’t it been for him, I would not have been where I am.

I am also indebted to Brian DeLany, Lynn Fendler, and Lynn Paine who served
on my committee next to Gary Sykes and Michael Sedlak, and who were always willing
to squeeze in some time for me in their busy schedules whenever I needed their feedback
and advice. Each contributed to the dissertation through their expertise as well as
personal support.

There are many other people and dear friends to thank and I cannot list them all

but I owe a thank you to my husband Gaston who has patiently witnessed the many

iv

emotional meltdowns that I experienced as part of the writing process and helped me get
through.

Finally, I must thank the Fulbright Commission in Prague for making it possible
for me to come to Michigan State University, and to Michigan State University and the
College of Education for supporting my research with a pre-dissertation Summer
Research Fellowship, College of Education Alumni Fellowship, and Dissertation

Completion Fellowship.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... ix
LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... x
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1
The Czech reforms in a nutshell ................................................................................................ 1
Conceptual ﬁ'amework .............................................................................................................. 4
Data and analysis ..................................................................................................................... 11
Organization of the study ........................................................................................................ 12

CHAPTER 2: THE POLITICAL ERA AND EDUCATION STATE: HISTORICAL

LEGACIES AND CURRENT SITUATION IN CZECH EDUCATION .................. 18
Czech education in history ...................................................................................................... 19
Jan Amos Comenius, the teacher of nations ................................................................................... 19
Maria Theresa’s school reform ....................................................................................................... 20
Education in independent Czechoslovakia ..................................................................................... 24
With the Soviet Union forever and never otherwise ....................................................................... 26
Velvet Revolution of 1989 .............................................................................................................. 31
The new political era ............................................................................................................... 33
The education state .................................................................................................................. 36
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 45
CHAPTER 3: EXISTING SCHOOL SYSTEM .......................................................... 48
Pre-schools as sites of innovation ............................................................................................ 48
Primary school ......................................................................................................................... 49
Selectivity of the system .......................................................................................................... 51
Academic high schools vs. other secondary schools ............................................................... 54
Teaching and learning in academic high schools ............................................................................ 56
Organization of instructional time .................................................................................................. 56
Content of instruction ..................................................................................................................... 58
Instructional practices ..................................................................................................................... 59
High school exit examinations ................................................................................................. 62
Higher education and university entrance examinations ......................................................... 65
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 71
CHAPTER 4: POLICY GESTATION ......................................................................... 74
Towards an overarching educational strategy ......................................................................... 74
"Quality and Accountability" .................................................................................................. 76
New Educational Standards ..................................................................................................... 78
Curricular reform in the shadow of high school exit examinations ......................................... 79
How the idea of reforming curriculum resurfaced again ......................................................... 83
The 'White Paper' versus ’Quality and Accountability' ............................................................ 85
External political pressures and migration of discourses ......................................................... 87
Origins of the ideas .................................................................................................................. 89
The curricular reform and new Education Act ........................................................................ 92
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 95

vi

CHAPTER 5: THE POLICY AS TEXT ..................................................................... 100

The content of the new Frameworks ..................................................................................... 101
Key competencies, attainment standards and content ................................................................... 101
Subject integration, cross-curricular themes and instructional time allocations ........................... 103

The text as a discourse ........................................................................................................... 106

Clash of ideologies ................................................................................................................ 108

Implementation strategies and support mechanisms ............................................................. 112

The language of the Frameworks .......................................................................................... 1 14
Political signiﬁcance of the language ........................................................................................... 117
Language in search of practice ..................................................................................................... 119

Text distribution and consumption ........................................................................................ 121
Pilot projects ................................................................................................................................. 121
Interactive policymaking? ............................................................................................................ 124
Newspapers on the curricular reform ............................................................................................ 126
The role of non-proﬁt educational associations ............................................................................ 130

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 131

CHAPTER 6: THE PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTATION IN A SAMPLE OF
ACADEMIC HIGH SCHOOLS .................................................................................. 136

A note: How will school curricula be judged? ...................................................................... 139

Teacher Autonomy and the National Curriculum .................................................................. 142

Ownership and empowerment: Is change likely to ensue? .................................................... 148

Key competencies .................................................................................................................. 153

Seeing the old in the new ....................................................................................................... 157

The rules of the reform .......................................................................................................... 162

Capacity and support ............................................................................................................. 165

Professional development ...................................................................................................... 168

Reﬂective feedback, learning the reform and learning from the reform ............................... 169

School curriculum writing — a whole school affair? .............................................................. 173

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 177

CHAPTER 7: INTERPRETING THE REFORM .................................................... 183

Localized perspective of the reform ...................................................................................... 183

A word on globalization ........................................................................................................ 189

The Czech reform interpreted in global terms ....................................................................... 192
World culture theory view ............................................................................................................ 192
Conﬂict theory view ..... 193
Global forces, local meanings ....................................................................................................... 196

Prospects for a large-scale change ......................................................................................... 200

CHAPTER 8: RESEARCH-BASED INTERPRETATION OF THE REFORM .. 202

Research perspectives on reform ........................................................................................... 202
Brief history of policy implementation research ........................................................................... 202
Proposition one: Clarity, speciﬁcity, and policy language matter in implementation .................. 205
Proposition two: Choice of policy instruments helps determine policy effects ............................ 210
Proposition three: Changes in governance may not be sufﬁcient to spur changes in instructional
practices ........................................................................................................................................ 2 14
Proposition four: Reforms require attention to policy alignment and coherence .......................... 218
Proposition ﬁve: Reforms call for attention to teaching and learning up and down the system 222
Proposition six: Successful implementation utilizes the potential of social networks .................. 228

Implementation and local wisdom ......................................................................................... 231

vii

CHAPTER 9: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ............................................................ 233

Combining the narrative and policy research perspectives ................................................... 234
Concluding remarks ............................................................................................................... 248
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 252
Appendix A: Study approach .......................................................................................... 252
Interviews ..................................................................................................................................... 253

The ﬁrst round of interviews ................................................................................................. 254

Second round of interviews ................................................................................................... 254

Third round of interviews ...................................................................................................... 257

Interview questions ....................................................................................................................... 257
Document review .......................................................................................................................... 261

Surveys ......................................................................................................................................... 263

Data analysis ................................................................................................................................. 270
Appendix B: Examples of high school exit examination topics in history ..................... 272
Appendix C: Instructional time allocations for four-year academic high schools ......... 275
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 276

viii

LIST OF TABLES

Table l — Teachers' perceptions of the status of their profession ...................................... 44
Table 2 — Numbers of high school graduates according to school type ............................ 55
Table 3 -— Numbers of university students between 1997 and 2006 .................................. 67
Table 4 — Teachers' perceptions of their work constraints .............................................. 143
Table 5 — Teachers' perceptions of the new Frameworks and teaching .......................... 149

Table 6 — Teachers' perceptions of the new Frameworks and school decision-making..149

Table 7 — Teachers' perceptions of content's relevance ................................................... 149
Table 8 — Teachers' perceptions of the amount of content .............................................. 150
Table 9 — Teachers' perceptions of the novelty of the reform ......................................... 160
Table 10 — Teachers' perceptions of the concept of the reform ....................................... 160
Table A.1. — Interviews .................................................................................................... 253
Table A2. — Key policy documents in chronological order ............................................ 262
Table A3. — Teacher surveys in pilot schools ................................................................. 264
Table A4 — Teacher survey ............................................................................................ 265

ix

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 — Conceptual framework (Hodgson & Spours, 2006) ........................................... 6

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
This study has been motivated by the desire to capture and explain the gestation
and implementation of a new curricular reform that has been introduced in Czech
education. The case has been evolving in rather peculiar ways, particularly when viewed
from the perspective of implementation theories that originated primarily in the English-
speaking world. But I do not wish to suggest that policy research is universally applicable
across the globe. Instead, I am going to show that while there may be some general
approaches that increase the likelihood of reforms being implemented closer to policy
intentions, policy change is also culturally bound and shaped by idiosyncratic national
histories and political circumstances. In sum, this dissertation is set to do two things: 1)
explicate the emergence of a new curricular policy and 2) understand the nature of its
implementation in its early stages.
The Czech reforms in a nutshell
The Czech reform that lies at the core of this study is a new curricular policy
adopted with the passage of the Education Act of 2004. Although the Czech educational
system produces relatively good results as evidenced in international comparative studies
such as TIMSS or PISA, various national leaders and prominent educators now consider
the system increasingly outdated and irrelevant. One complaint prevails —- Czech students
tend to be overloaded with large amounts of factual knowledge, which they master fairly
well but then are at a loss when they need to apply their knowledge and exercise
independent judgment. The curricular reform sets out to ﬁx this problem, among other
things. It introduces new national curricular frameworks with content outlined in more

general terms than in the previous highly prescriptive national curriculum. More

importantly, the frameworks are oriented towards a new goal, the "key competencies", or
students' skills to actively work with knowledge.

The backbone mechanism of the curricular reform is decentralization of decision-
making authority to individual schools and teachers who are being asked to design their
own school curricula in response to the new frameworks and the key competencies. This
decentralization is another remarkable novelty introduced to a system that has been
historically governed by the state. The underlying assumption is that curriculum
developed at the school level to ﬁt the new national frameworks will better respond to
local conditions and the changing needs of the society. Since Czech schools do not
employ curriculum specialists who could take on the task of curriculum design, the work
will fall on teachers. The premise is that teachers' engagement in curriculum development
will allow them to tailor the content to their students' needs, possibly reduce the large
quantities of content, and thus free space to make use of other teaching practices besides
the traditional recitation and lecturing. Consequently, Czech students will no longer cram
to memorize large quantities of information but they will develop skills that will allow
them to apply acquired knowledge.

For the Czech Republic, the new curricular policy signals a revolutionary
departure from the past. In a society where education has been traditionally equated with
content and mastery of factual knowledge, and where teachers have always been regarded
as agents of the state, the reform indeed implies a radical shift and overhaul of the
existing system. The Czech media announced a revolution and policy makers deploy the
rhetoric of a fundamental, even revolutionary change. However, Czech educators and

policy makers have had no prior experience of reforms on such scale, and the reform

presents numerous challenges and hurdles that need to be overcome. The reform departs
from deeply embedded traditions and introduces novelties that few are prepared to
absorb. There are no policy leaders experienced in curriculum change who could guide
the envisioned transformation and policy makers appear to be handing down the reform
implementation to teachers who nevertheless also lack experience and knowledge of the
practices that the reform advocates. In addition, teachers have virtually no incentives to
change. To an outsider, the expectations that the curricular reform might actually spur a
large-scale change are perplexing because in the absence of experience, know-how, and
incentives to change, successful implementation seems unlikely. But insiders seem to
believe that the reform is much needed and will produce desirable effects.

To understand the particularities of the Czech case and how the reform unfolded
in ways that may upon closer inspection appear puzzling, it is necessary to take a broad
view and scrutinize different factors that inﬂuenced the conception and implementation
of the reform. Czech history of education and tracing of the gestation of the reform will
provide some clues and set the ground. At the same time, deep knowledge of the local
circumstances and historical conditions that propelled the rise of the reform is not going
to be sufﬁcient to explain the trajectory of the reforrn's evolution and early
implementation. In a world that is increasingly interconnected, exploring local contexts
must be coupled with an examination of broader, global circumstances, which ﬁrnction as
strong pressures for change in national policies. Positioning the case in its local meanings
with regard to global and international inﬂuences yields an interesting story about
difﬁculties faced by a nation that is re-creating its identity in the post-communist era of

globalization. This story can be built by re-constructing events that span the distance

from broad developments in state policy to teachers in high school classrooms. Such
spanning might be regarded as a standard policy implementation study, but the overtones
of globalism colliding with historical traditions and institutions, combined with policy
perceptions and the reactions and responses of “street level bureaucrats,” produce a more
provocative mix than the standard implementation narrative.

Even so, the story may be incomplete. Given the wealth of policy research and
scholarship on reforms, the complexity of the case may be explained more fully with the
use of an additional perspective that draws on abstract generalities regarding
implementation. This implementation perspective is grounded in research that evolved
over the past decades primarily in the English-speaking world and that captures important
factors that impact policy formulation and implementation. Some of the implementation
theories originated in political science, some stem from sociology and psychology, others
from history, and many are interdisciplinary. They do not coincide with any particular
discipline but present views that are representative of the social sciences. With this added
approach to the analysis, the case of the Czech reform expands from a journalistic
account to a more nuanced study that explores the interplay of local, historically and
politically contextualized factors of the reform, and broader generalities that have arisen
in prior study of reform implementation.

Conceptual framework

I adopt the view that policy is a process that involves policy gestation as well as
policy implementation. This process unfolds on macro and micro levels (Olssen, Codd, &
O'Neill, 2004; Taylor, Fazal, Lingard, & Henry, 1997), and it is dialectic and interactive

in nature. By that I mean that policy responds to numerous interests, pressures, and

circumstances but it also affects them, reshapes them, and co-creates them. On the macro
level, policy makers formulate policy goals and strategies, and articulate them in policy
documents. Once policy ideas are established in texts, the evolution of policy continues
when individuals (street-level bureaucrats) decipher the texts and translate policies into
practice, adapting them to their work circumstances, re-interpreting them and reshaping
them. Thus, policy continues to evolve and often results in producing unintended
consequences that differ from the original policy goals (Majone & Wildavsky, 1984;
McLaughlin, 1987). Ultimately, implementation changes policy. The change is linked to
what individuals do with the policy but it goes even beyond that because individuals do
not act in a vacuum and are affected by the institutional context in which they work as
well as the conditions in the system as a whole.

Approaching policy analysis with such a complex view requires that attention be
paid simultaneously to different layers of policy and this has proven to be a challenging
task for policy analysts. While they have recognized the need to develop and utilize more
holistic frameworks (McLaughlin, 1987 & 2006), they have struggled to integrate the
different aspects of policy into single models. However, such models have been proposed
and this study draws on one relatively recent attempt by Hodgson and Spours (2006) to
draft an integrative model (Fig. 1) that brings different contexts and aspects of

policymaking and policy implementation under one umbrella.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework (Hodgson & Spours, 2006)

        
   
   

Political Eras 4 Polltrcal Space

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I I I / The I I
P 1 .
\\ \ / p.232: /
\ \ / text /

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/ practice production \

    
  

 

 

Hodgson and Spours (2006), similarly to Taylor (1997) argued that policy
analysis must be contextualized in broader historical and socio-political trends (2006,
p.685). In their model, these trends receive attention in the outer dimension that they
titled political eras. Contextualizing policy in history and political circumstances means
acknowledging that societies undergo signiﬁcant shifts and changes in political
ideologies, and that such shiﬁs matter to policy development. It also means accounting
for transnational and international forces that increasingly contribute to the formation of
national discourses and policy making. Anchoring policy developments in the broader

socio-political and historical circumstances is important in any study but it becomes even

more pertinent in an international study like this one, where the primary audience is from
the US. and the focus of the study is on a country that has distinctively different patterns
of schooling and organization of education. The dimension of political eras provides a
setting where these patterns can be described and explained. The socio-political and
historical lens also aids analysts in selecting and presenting necessary background
information, identifying the culturally unique patterns of schooling, and more effectively
explaining to foreign audiences why certain developments occur and what they may
mean in a given context. Generally speaking, the broader view of the political eras helps
analysts to set the scene.

Once sufﬁcient contextual information is outlined, analysts can move to other
factors that play an important role in policymaking and policy implementation. Hodgson
and Spours addressed these factors in their second dimension of the model, nested in the
dimension of political eras and titled education state. Education state refers to various
education stakeholders and policy actors who inﬂuence policymaking and who
participate in policy implementation. These actors may include government institutions
and various pressure groups, think tanks, associations, and individuals. Understanding
who these players are and what inﬂuence they may have in the policy process helps to
explain and interpret how policies emerge and what interests they may serve.

Hodgson and Spours started from a broader view but they did not lose sight of the
micro-level aspects of policy and policy implementation. Their model progresses from
the bigger picture of political eras and policy actors to the policy and its implementation.
The part of the framework that is concerned with the policy and implementation draws on

previous work of Bowe and Ball's (1992) and their conceptualization of the policy

 

process into a triangle model consisting of three contexts that together shape concrete
policies: inﬂuence, text production, and practice. The context of inﬂuence represents the
arena where policy ideas are initiated and developed. It takes into account the policy
actors as well as the politics of the process and the timing of reforms. Different
stakeholders compete to push forth their proposals on how education should be
understood and how it should evolve. Governmental interests meet with interests of
various associations, committees, and individuals and education discourses are formed.
The conceptualization of the context of inﬂuence closely resonates with theories of
policymaking and brings to mind Kingdon's classic "Agendas, alternatives, and public
policies" (1995). In this book, Kingdon discussed windows of opportunities, pet
proposals, problems and governmental agendas and showed how at least three policy
streams (problems, policy streams and politics) must come together to result in policy
proposals that appear on agendas. Kindgon's theory of the policy process ﬁts into Bowe
and Ball's context of inﬂuence and is utilized in this study to explain how the curricular
reform in the Czech Republic emerged.

At the second tip of Bowe and Ball's policy triangle sits the context of text
production. This refers to the phase in the policy process when winning ideas appear on
policy agendas and are articulated in concrete policy texts. Policy texts represent policy
in various forms including ofﬁcial and unofﬁcial texts, legal acts, policy documents,
commentaries, and media representations of policy. Because policy texts reﬂect a
contested terrain of diverse and competing interests and values and because they are

frequently a product of multiple authors, they tend to be ambiguous; key terms are used

inconsistently, and coherence and clarity are absent. But analysts should still scrutinize
them for underlying discourses and assessment of the course that policy ideas are taking.

Policy texts serve as a steppingstone to policy implementation, which constitutes
the third tip of Bowe and Ball's policy triangle although they do not call it
implementation but a context of practice. Through implementation that has now moved
among school practitioners, policy continues to evolve and reshape its form. The policy
text often serves as a key clue for policy implementers to decipher the meaning of a new
policy and act upon it. And because "for any text, a plurality of readers must necessarily
produce a plurality or readings" (Olssen et al., 2004, p.62), it is understandable that new
meanings are constructed and the policy may unfold differently than policy makers
originally assumed. Practitioners read texts through the lenses of their prior experiences,
knowledge and values but they are also constrained by the circumstances of their daily
jobs. As they locally construct the meanings of policy, they determine what the policy
becomes.

Bowe and Ball acknowledged that their triangle model offers a somewhat
simpliﬁed view of the policy process, which is not as linear in nature as the model
suggests but it serves as a helpful analytical tool that calls attention to different aspects of
policy that matter. As for the conceptual framework that incorporates Bowe and Ball's
model, Hodgson and Spours included one more dimensions to their model — political
space. This dimension refers to tipping points and the timing of events and can be seen as
weaving through all the other dimensions of the model (i.e. political eras, education

state, and the policy process).

In respect to this study, the model was used primarily to identify the key arenas
that needed to be examined and addressed, and to organize the study into meaningful
components. As stated earlier, understanding how the reform arose and why is has
unfolded in its particular ways requires a deep knowledge of the local socio-political
context and its inﬂuence on the reform, and such understanding can be reached through
examination of the dimension of political eras. This dimension facilitates scrutiny of the
Czech policy memory, existing political ideology, and deﬁning moments that contributed
to the development of the reform. The reform is inextricably linked to the existing
political climate in the Czech Republic, which is characterized by the nations’ continuous
efforts to break away from the communist past and become fully integrated in the
European Union and the globalized world. Political pressures are negotiated through
various agencies, interest groups, and individuals, and the model's second dimension --
education state-- helps to understand better who the policy actors on the Czech policy
scene are and what interests and ideologies they represent.

Together, the political era and education state provide a descriptive background
of the national context and its evolution. In respect to political space as it surrounds these
two dimensions, this study pays attention to the larger context of the European Union,
how the Czech Republic is situated within it and how important policy events were linked
to the EU's policy proposals. The analysis of the cunicular reform itself is modeled
according to the inner part of the framework — the policy process and its three contexts I
(context of inﬂuence, text production and practice).

The model does not have explanatory power; instead it breaks down the policy

process and highlights areas that analysts should scrutinize when seeking an

10

understanding of policy driven change. While lacking the power to explicate what
happens, the model and its individual components help analysts to capture the full
complexity of examined phenomena and understand the different dimensions that
determine policy effects. Furthermore, each dimension has the capacity to accommodate
theories that emerged from policy research. These various theories weave through
individual chapters and are explicitly brought together in the closing chapters in efforts to
interpret the narrative and provide an alternative, theory-based view of the phenomena
examined in this study. In other words, the conceptual frame serves to determine what
needs to be examined; the research propositions then provide additional clues as to how
the examined areas may be explained and understood. According to Hodgson and
Spours, the conceptual model also helps researchers assess when and how to intervene in
the policy process. The authors assume that a researcher's role goes beyond policy
critique and extends from "analysis of policy" to "analysis for policy" (p.691).
Data and analysis

The aim of this study is to illuminate a process of reform gestation and evolution
during its early implementation. Hence, the most ﬁtting approach to investigation was a
qualitative, naturalistic inquiry (L. Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000) drawing on
grounded theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). This approach is inductive and
interpretive in nature; it does not begin with a set theory but instead it is open for theory
to emerge. It assumes thick descriptions and generation of hypotheses; it does not seek

proofs and objective facts but meanings and understandings that are construed by

individuals who vary in their perceptions of phenomena (L. Cohen et al., 2000).

 

To understand the process that led to the policy formulation and the meanings
ascribed to the policy, I needed to obtain data that would capture how the policy evolved
and that would show actors' perceptions and understandings of the process. Data were
collected on different levels of the policy system and from different sources in three
points in time (summer 2004, fall 2005, spring 2006). In sum, there are three kinds of
data: interviews, surveys, and documents. The study draws on 51 semi-structured
interviews with various policy actors, including governmental ofﬁcials, researchers,
university professors, school principals, and teachers. Schools included in the study were
secondary high schools, and towards the end of the study, only pilot secondary high
schools, which were the frontrunners of implementation of the reform that to this date has
not yet ﬁrlly unfolded. Surveys were used during the ﬁnal phase of data collection only in
pilot schools to gauge attitudes of their teachers towards the reform and to provide a
richer description of the case. Altogether, 198 surveys were sent to ﬁve pilot schools with
89 surveys being returned (53% response rate). Document review included policy
documents and reports as well as newspaper articles concerning the reform and published
in three mainstream newspapers between fall 2003 and spring 2007. Details about
methodological approaches, data sources and data analysis are included in Appendix A.

Organization of the study

The study takes into account that readers are unlikely to be familiar with
education in the Czech Republic. For the readers to understand the reform, they must ﬁrst
gain some knowledge of the culture and traditions of Czech education as well as the
current school system. In line with the conceptual framework, Chapter Two thus begins

the exploration of the 'policy era' and the 'education state'. It maps the broader historical

12

and political context of Czech education and introduces the current policy scene and its
players. The chapter begins with the description of historical roots and strong traditions in
Czech education, which have evolved over centuries and to a degree still affect how the
general public perceives education today. The education system was established and
governed ﬁom the top down and Czechs learned to rely on the state as the primary
education provider and care taker. With the shift from communism to market based
democracy in 1989, the constellation of political powers changed, new actors emerged,
and in part also due to the effects of globalism, traditional views about the purposes of
education have been challenged.

The education system has been adjusting to the altered circumstances that
followed the democratic movement after 1989 but at the same time, it holds on to its
traditions and " grammar of schooling" (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Chapter Three delves
deeper into what the grammar of schooling is and what new trends it has encountered. In
the perspective of the conceptual framework, Chapter Three functions as an extension of
the examination of the education state context. It provides an overview of the existing
school structure, the culture of Czech schooling, and challenges that it faces. The
description of current state of affairs of Czech education is important also because the
audience of this study is foreign and explanations are necessary so that readers
understand the implications of the curricular reform. The chapter opens with an
observation that a reform has reached pre-school education and early grades of primary
schooling but from higher grades of primary school up the system, Czech schools
continue to operate on the concept of what one inﬂuential Czech education professor

called "erudition," focusing on transmitting large quantities of factual information and

13

knowledge with little attention to students' ability to apply their knowledge in practice.
The curricular reform is based on the assumptions that part of the problem with Czech
education lies in the national prescriptive curriculum that promotes a content-driven
education model and teachers' limited autonomy to steer away from it. However, this
chapter shows that there are also other mechanisms in the system that help to preserve
existing status-quo, namely entrance examinations between school levels. Czech teachers
tend to perceive university entrance examinations as a particularly strong mechanism of
control that shapes school instruction even though the entrance examinations are
developed locally and are highly variable and unpredictable.

Chapter Four shifts gears from the contextual factors that affected the emergence
of the curricular reform to the reform itself. More speciﬁcally, Chapter Four looks at the
ﬁrst tip of the policy process triangle model that lies in the center of the conceptual
framework and examines the context of inﬂuence. In concrete terms, this means that
attention is paid to how the policy formulation was inﬂuenced by workings of various
change forces, and shaped by opening and closing of 'policy streams' (Kindgon, 1995).
Drawing on document review and interviews with policy makers and practitioners, the
chapter reconstructs circumstances that led to the formulation of an overarching strategy
for the development of Czech education and consequently to the Education Act of 2004,
which instituted the curricular reform, among other things. In exploring the interplay of
politics, policy actors, and ideas, the chapter discusses a concurrent reform of high school
exit examinations and EU policy trends that arguably also affected the gestation of the
curricular reform. The high school exit examination reform preceded the curricular

reform and captured the policy scene for a number of years. Even though to this date the

14

reform of high school exit examinations has not been launched, it has played an
important role in the debates of educational transformation in the Czech Republic and it
continues to hold strong implications for the curricular reform.

Chapter Five zeros in on the curricular reform as it was articulated in the text of
the new national frameworks (Frameworks from here on). From the point of view of the
conceptual framework, this chapter connects to the second tip of the policy process
triangle, the policy text. It analyzes the text of the Frameworks and other related
documents; it describes the reform in greater depth, and identiﬁes its underlying
assumptions. It is the text of the Frameworks that schools receive and teachers decipher
for clues about the implementation of the reform. As such, the text plays a vital role in
the implementation so this chapter scrutinizes it not only for what it says but also for how
ideas are formulated, interpreted through the media, and re-interpreted by school
practitioners. The chapter thus spans the distance from the text, to information channels
that carry the text, namely newspaper articles, to school principals and teachers in high
school classrooms and their reading of the text.

Chapter Six moves to the level of practice and examines how principals and
teachers in non-pilot and pilot high schools negotiate the meanings of the reform as they
are beginning to implement it. At this early stage, implementation meant that a small
number of teachers in each pilot school were writing the school curriculum for their
subjects in response to the requirements of the new Frameworks. This chapter links the
assumptions embedded in the Frameworks with the realities of teachers' jobs and then
looks at other ways how, from the perspective of the teachers, the reform played out in

the schools where it was piloted. As a whole, the chapter illustrates the difﬁculty of

15

change implied by the reform when teachers have virtually no access to alternative
models of practice, few incentives for change, and limited capacity and resources to work
with.

Chapter Seven brings together the pieces discussed in individual chapters. It
offers a preliminary answer to the overarching question 'How has it happened that the
reform has evolved and unfolded the way it has?‘ This answer is contextualized in the
reform's evolution and movement from the policy level to practice that was captured in
the narrative in Chapters Two through Six. In addition, it notes international inﬂuences
and incorporates a discussion of the role of globalization in the Czech efforts to transform
the education system.

While the local-global perspective explains a great deal about the reform, until
this point, the study has made little use of the wealth of scholarly literature on reforms,
although some of the research has been introduced in individual chapters. With the
prospect of generalization and additional insights into the narrative, Chapter Eight
highlights six propositions from prior policy research that bear on the case and seeks to
identify areas in policy implementation that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. The
research introduced here primarily originated in the English speaking world and one
might argue to what degree it can be applied to the Central European context. But policy
research has no tradition in the Czech Republic and few theories to draw on so an
introduction of an alternative framework may bear some utility.

Chapter Nine concludes the story of the reform with a discussion of both
perspectives presented in Chapter Seven and Eight — one contextualized in knowledge of

local circumstances and global pressures on the reform, and one interpreting the case

16

through the lens of prior research on reforms. It teases out how each perspective
contributes to understanding of the story and how the two perspectives complement one
other, creating a richer and more nuanced explanation of the case. It also proposes some

policy recommendations and implications of this study for future research.

17

CHAPTER 2: THE POLITICAL ERA AND EDUCATION STATE: HISTORICAL

LEGACIES AND CURRENT SITUATION IN CZECH EDUCATION

The aim of this study is to understand a complexity of a reform and thus it is
essential to ﬁrst examine the context to which the reform was introduced. But simply
describing the current affairs of Czech education is not going to be sufﬁcient. The Czech
education system has long historical traditions and its own "grammar of schooling"
(Tyack & Cuban, 1995). The historical legacies and events that shaped the Czech nation
and its education over centuries continue to affect people's perceptions of the system, its
problems and its opportunities. For that reason, an inspection of the existing context, i.e.
the education system and the political era, must begin with the past.

The Czech Republic (Bohemia and Moravia) is a small country of 10 million
people situated in the middle of Europe, between Germany on the West and the Slovak
Republic on the East. Although the country's geographical position is in Central Europe,
in the more recent history, Czechs have been described as Eastern Europeans while in the
more distant history, the Czech nation was seen as part of Western Europe. The
distinction between Eastern and Western speaks of political inﬂuences that ruled the
small nation often caught in the middle and pulled in various directions. To this date,
Foreigners unfamiliar with the Czech Republic tend to think of the country as a former
part of the Soviet Union. Although this was never the case, 40 years of the communist
rule (1948-1989) earned the nation the position in Eastern Europe. Historically and
culturally though, Czechs have been closer to their Western European counterparts. All

this information may seem trivial in a dissertation that focuses on analyzing a current

18

educational policy but reforms do not exist in a vacuum, and their enactment is strongly
affected by cultural practices, shaped and colored by a nation's history. Czechs are
humbled by the more recent history and proud of the long foregone past, and as a
consequence, the education system has been swayed to reviving some relics of the more
distant past, building new links to the West and discarding associations with the more
recent history that is connected to the East (and the Soviet Union in particular). This is of
course not a clean-cut process because the traditions cannot be easily separated into what
is Western and what is Eastern, and more importantly not everything that can be linked to
the West can work in the current system, or should even be tried out for that matter. And
in the same vein, not everything that originated in the communist past deserves to be
dismantled or discarded. Czech policy makers did not approach the rebuilding of the
system after 1989 uncritically but given the complicated and complex circumstances, new
structures that emerged present numerous tensions and paradoxes. This chapter lays down
the history that will make these tensions and paradoxes presented in later chapters easier
to comprehend.
Czech education in history

Jan Amos Comenius, the teacher of nations

Czechs take great national pride in their association with the celebrated 17th
century humanistic scholar and forefather of contemporary educational theories Jan
Amos Komensky (Comenius). And while many continue to praise our association with
the European humanist, in many respects, Czech education goes ironically counter to
Comenius' teachings on education. Comenius spent much of his life developing

philosophy of education and can be considered as the founder of a system of progressive

19

instruction (Piaget, 1999, p.4). In a passage quoted by Piaget (1999, p.5), Comenius
wrote:

Crafstrnen do not hold their apprentices down to theories; they put them to work

without delay so that they may learn to forge metal by forging, to carve by

carving, to paint by painting, to leap by leaping. Therefore in schools let the
pupils learn to write by writing, to speak by speaking, to sing by singing, to
reason by reasoning, etc., so that schools may simply be workshops in which
work is done eagerly.

But Comenius' philosophy did not leave a strong trace of inﬂuence in his
homeland and rather than in progressive ways, Czech education developed traditionally.
As a protestant refugee, Comenius ﬂed Bohemia after the Battle at the White Mountain
of 1620 where Czechs were defeated by the Habsburgs, and developed his philosophy in
exile. For three centuries onward, Czech lands were ruled by the Habsburgs, and Czech
education was strongly inﬂuenced by German educational philosophy, and Herbartianism
in particular. The new curricular reform implies that the Czechs return to some of these
old ideas and premises of progressive education, and rectify the trajectory that the
education system has taken over the past centuries.

Maria Theresa’s school reform

In contrast to the US. or Scandinavian nations where public education developed
as an institution of local control, the Habsburgs established and governed education from
the top-down. The origins of the education system in Czech lands as a public affair are
linked to the year 1774 when the empress Maria Theresa issued the General School

Ordinance and established a school commission in each province to govern three kinds of

20

schools: normal schools, high schools, and community, or elementary schools for all
children aged 6-12 (Roider, 1973). The school reform that Maria Theresa initiated was
quite revolutionary at the time and the year 1774 is considered to mark the beginning of
compulsory education in Czech lands.

School attendance was not strictly enforced from the very beginning because the
school infrastructure had not been fully developed and not every community had a school
building. But the development of the inﬁastructure was eased by the state taking over
Jesuit schools. Maria Theresa’s Ordinance came a year after the pope had dissolved the
Jesuit order, which had a dense network of schools. The pope thus freed a great wealth
that the Jesuits had possessed including their school buildings and teachers (Ingrao,
1994). The infrastructure has a foundation that continued to be built upon and by 1780,
some 500 new schools opened in addition to those that had already existed (Roider,
1973)

Historians portray Maria Theresa as a strong leader and a politician who was
concerned with humanitarianism. Her Ordinance reads:

We, Maria Theresa. . .offer to each and all of our loyal citizens...our grace and

present the following for their observation. Because nothing is so dear to us as the

welfare of those lands entrusted to our administration by God, and since we are
accustomed to paying strict attention to their best possible improvement, so we
hold it true that the education of youth of both sexes, which is the most important
foundation for the true happiness of the nations, deserves a thorough examination

(Roider, 1973).

21

Maria Theresa was concerned with human conditions of people living in the
empire but she was also a politician who understood that common people’s well being
was connected to the economic and political prosperity of the empire. Her reforms can be
seen as a reaction to the dire conditions of the Empire depleted by wars and poverty, as
well as the changing social conditions that accompanied the transition from feudalism to
industrialization. But her motivations to introduce compulsory education may be
irrelevant for this study. What matters is that she created foundations of a strong tradition
of education state whose legacy still lives. Parents learned to send their children to school
and respect the state as the primary authority responsible for their children's education.
This idea still holds true for the Czech education today. As one policy researcher said:

...when you talk to people e. g. in Scandinavia where the system grew from the

bottom, where parents established schools for their children. . .at about the same

time as [schools were being established] here, the systems signiﬁcantly differ
because of that. What works there and doesn't work here is the civil oversight and
civil care of schools. Here, the view that is strongly engrained is that the state
takes care — [the attitude] we send children to school so be glad that we do that
and that's it for us. So, for example, attempts to introduce parental school boards
etc. have been quite problematic and it basically has not worked very well.

Maria Theresa’s reforms led to strengthening the central government, which held
the ethnically, economically and culturally diverse empire together. The strong central
governance survived centuries after Maria Theresa died, and it regained and strengthened
its power when the communist regime seized rule over Czechoslovakia in 1948.

Although the system has been signiﬁcantly decentralized over the past nearly two

22

decades, the legacy of centralized power is still very much alive as evidenced from
remarks that interviewees made. In the words of a high ranking ofﬁcial from the Czech
Ministry of Education as he described the current system:

A great number of responsibilities have been transferred on the lower levels but

the system continues to behave as if this was not the case. For example, local

administrators require if not a directive, than at least an opinion from the Ministry
whether they can do this or that, although the legislation does not forbid them to
do that. . .that tendency to have things conﬁrmed from above is still there...

The school structure that Maria Theresa's Ordinance created has more or less
stayed in place until today, namely the elite academic secondary school—the gymnasium.
Maria Theresa requested that education be provided to all children of age 6-12. Parents
could have their child educated at home but if they did not have the ﬁnancial means to
pay for a tutor, they had to send their child to a public elementary school (Roider, 1973).
If they wished for their child to continue with education, the child could attend a middle
school (Hauptschule) and later the elite university preparatory high school, the
Gymnasium (Ingrao, 1994) which has survived centuries and continues to be an inherent
part of the present educational system.

Aside from control of school attendance, the strong central powers also regulated
teachers and teaching. All teachers were required to receive training from normal schools,
which were established in the capital of each province of the empire (Ingrao, 1994). The
Ordinance introduced basic guidelines for school instruction:

Each teacher must instruct all students together in one classroom. To use class

reading time effectively, he should make use of tables and other reading methods

23

as prescribed. In short, he must follow exactly that which is contained in the

books of methods passed out for the instruction of teachers. Instruction must not

concentrate immediately on committing things to memory or on plaguing the
children with rote learning of necessities but on improving their understanding

(Roider, 1973).

Following the Ordinance, in 1775 the General School Commissioner Johan Ignac
Felbiger published even more detailed guidelines for school instruction in the Methods
Book (Frantisek Morkes, 2004). F elbiger's Methods Book carried traces of inﬂuence of
Comenius' teachings but those ideas gradually evaporated as the German Herbartianism
became a fashionable trend in the 19th century and with its focus on knowledge,
recitation, and rote learning overshadowed the ideas that implied progressive and
constructivist education.

Throughout the 19th century, the original structure of the education system further
evolved and underwent more changes, namely in secondary education. New types of
secondary schools were established -- Gymnasium continued to be the elite 4-year
university preparatory school, next to so called "Realka", which was more practically
oriented polytechnic school. Multi-year secondary schools (i.e. 6-8- year academic high
schools) entered the system and ran parallel to the 4-year gymnasium, and high school
exit examinations were introduced. The end of 19th century also marked the emergence of
pre-school education and vocational education.

Education in independent Czechoslovakia
The end of World War I in 1918 created an opportunity for Czechs and Slovaks to

unite and on the relics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire create a sovereign democratic

24

federation Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia’s development was quite promising until
1938 when key European leaders met in Munich and gave much of the country away to
Hitler. In Czech history, the period of 1918—1938 is referred to as the First Republic and
after the collapse of communism in 1989, Czechs turned to this time period as the bright
times of the past. During the First Republic, Czechoslovakia adhered to democratic
principles and counted among the most industrialized and advanced nations in Europe.
Education was widespread and educational philosophy was marked by pro gressivism,
which manifested itself in a number of experimental reform schools promoting student-
centered pedagogy (Glenn, 1995).

This brief history of democracy gives the Czech Republic some advantages when
compared to other post-socialist nations because it offers some ideals, democratic
principles and education history that Czechs can return to on build upon. Czechs are quite
proud of this time period and tend to glorify it. Using words from Andre Roberts'
dictionary of Czech popular culture (2005):

...fond memories are held of [the First Republic’s] cultural achievements and its

bourgeois pastimes. Many covet images of well-dressed middle class citizens

whiling away time in luxurious coffee houses, attending elegant soirées, and
traveling abroad on vacation. . .The communists did all they could to discredit this
golden age; they portrayed it as a time of poverty, exploitation, and oligarchical
rule. . .these prejudices all disappeared with the fall of communism. Present-day

Czechs of virtually all political stripes turn to the First Republic for inspiration

and symbolic capital (p. 137).

25

When the iron curtain fell in 1989 and Czech reformers began looking for ways to
change the educational system, one of the things they did was to revive the institution of
elite, multi-year (6-8—year) academic high schools, which ﬁrst occurred in the 19th
century and thrived during the times of the First Republic but ceased to exit when the
communist regime came into power. In today's system, the research community views the
revival of these elite schools rather negatively. Researchers argue that these elite schools
contribute to increased inequalities that Czech educational system fosters because they
pull higher achieving students from regular schools as early as at the age of 11 and
provide them with a different kind of education than most other children get. Sorting of
children to these schools has a lot to do with their socio-economic background and the
education of their parents but the Czech elites have been strongly opposed to the
abolishment of these institutions.

With the Soviet Union forever and never otherwise

After the end of the WWII, communists began gaining on popularity in
Czechoslovakia and in 1948 the Communist Party seized power. What followed were 40
years of authoritarian single party rule. The communists wrapped the borders of
Czechoslovakia in barbwire and cut off the country from the West. From then on, the
Soviet Union and other socialist countries were the only acceptable partners. The Soviet
Union in particular served as an example of perfection and a model to emulate.
Educational philosophy in Czech and Slovak schools came to draw heavily on Soviet
pedagogy. Schools strongly focused on cognition and scientism, and paid only marginal

attention to social and personal development of children (Matusova, 1997/98).

26

The communist government was aware of the power of education and used it as a
central platform for spreading its ideology. Schooling became completely subjugated to
the political agenda of the party with the explicit goal to train “new socialist citizens”
who would be disciplined and loyal to the communist regime (Glenn, 1995).

The ideological control of the party over education tightened even more after Prague
Spring of 1968 when Czechoslovak government unsuccessfully attempted to create
“socialism with a human face”. The efforts to reform socialism in Czechoslovakia
presented a major threat to other socialist governments in the Warsaw pact so they
crushed it by sending their troops to Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. The years that
followed are known as the period of political “normalization” which launched massive
repressions. The Soviets oversaw installations of new communist leadership loyal to the
politics in Moscow. The normalization dismissed “tens of thousands of intellectuals and
artists out their jobs, relegating them to menial labors as stokers, window-washers, or
night-watchmen. Others were allowed to keep their jobs, but at the cost of publicly
pledging gratitude to the Russians for the invasion. Most Czechs survived normalization
by keeping their heads down." (Roberts, 1 13)

Education strengthened its mission of teaching children to be obedient and to
conform (Matusova, 1997). All school activities were closely monitored. The communist
party had a local organization or a committee in each school and thus ensured that
schools were employing politically reliable teachers who complied with the regime’s
objectives. Teachers who showed disagreement with the regime’s practices or who
would not conform to the ruling ideology were at risk of being reported by the committee

and persecuted. As Véclav Havel, a playwright and a political prisoner during the

27

communist times, wrote in 1975 a protest letter to the president of Czechoslovakia and
the General Secretary of the Communist Party Gustav Husak: “For fear of losing his job,
the schoolteacher teaches things he does not believe; fearing for his ﬁiture, the pupil
repeats them after him" (Glen, 1995, p.179). An excerpt ﬁ'om a letter written by a
schoolteacher in 1975 further illustrates the difﬁcult position that many teachers had to
face:

I appear before my class and, as ordered, I recite things which I do not agree with.

My students know this and also disagree but they keep silent. But this is exactly

where my situation becomes painful; I have to feel ashamed in front of my

children and at the same time grateful to them but I cannot help worrying about
the kind of character traits they are developing and about what they are going to

be like as future citizens of this country. (as cited in Kusin, p.204)

Monitoring activities of schools and teachers was just one realm of the party's
intervention into education affairs. The party also took a proactive role in launching a
campaign of systematic political indoctrination of education although if often meant that
many children learned things contradictory to their parents' values and beliefs. The
Education Act of 1984 charged schools with the responsibility to prepare youth for "life
and work in developed socialistic society and for defense of the socialist homeland."

Schools were given the task to form pupils marxist-leninist world ideology, socialistic
ideological consciousness, ...socialist and proletarian intemationalism and class
consciousness" (Czechoslovak Socialistic Republic, 1984, 117). Communist ideology and

Marxism-Leninism permeated school curriculum in all subjects however impossible it

may seem. A proponent of the regime’s ideological indoctrination in schools was quoted

28

in Kusin (1978) to say: "there is no science without communist party-mindedness" (p.97).
Key ideological concepts such as 'Lenin', 'Red Army' and 'October Revolution' were
introduced as early as in kindergarten (Glen, p.175).

Soviet scientism organized subjects so that they mirrored the sharp divisions of
the scientiﬁc classiﬁcation of disciplines; textbooks were highly academic and children
were overloaded with large amounts of information that they typically memorized and
reproduced (Matusova, 1997/98; Watson, 2000). Basic education was reduced from 9 to
8 years as was the norm in the Soviet Union, and this change resulted in further increase
of information overload because academic content was compressed to fewer years
(Glenn, 1995). Russian was the compulsory foreign language and children had to study it
ﬁ'om 5m grade onwards. History curriculum featured achievements of the workers’
movement, and lists of Communist party conventions and their agendas (for an example,
see themes for high school exit examination in history from 19803 in Appendix B).
Instructional practices went hand in hand with the ideology, i.e. plurality of views was
not permitted, and critical thinking and individualization were discouraged.

The presence of the ideology was also physically displayed. Many people of my
own generation may still remember the omnipresent slogans such as 'With the
communists to better times' or 'Capitalism is the scourge of humanity' that decorated the
halls in our schools. Some may even remember verses and songs about happy life in
socialism that we memorized and recited at formal social events, or the bulletin boards in
our classrooms that we embellished with newspaper articles commemorating political
events important to the regime such as the anniversary of Lenin’s death, or the Great

October Revolution of 1917.

29

Apart from the curriculum, the party also controlled access to schools, namely
secondary schools and universities. Oftentimes, children of prominent communist
ofﬁcials were able to get access regardless their intellectual abilities and achievement,
although the formal mechanisms of school mobility were based on students' academic
performance. On the other hand, children from families that did not show the correct
attitudes to the communist regime could be kept away from the schools they desired to
attend. Through its arms of control, the regime punished its opponents, scared off those
who could have been inclined to dissent, and kept everyone in line. The government
successfully enacted politics of fear. Using Havel's words again:

For fear of being denied the opportunity to continue studying, a young person

enters the Youth Movement and performs as necessary; fearing that his son or

daughter won’t have enough points to gain access to a school in the monstrous
political points admission system, a father accepts various political

responsibilities and does 'voluntarily' what is required of him. (Havel, 1999)

The point system that is referenced in Havel's quote was not a transparent system
that one could make sense of but everyone knew that Party membership, or an afﬁliation
with the Party and its important members, counted in university admissions as well as in
job promotions.

On the more positive side, education during the communist times was ﬁ'ee of
charge at all levels; it was provided to all, and high literacy rates were achieved early on,
although literacy was wide-spread already during the times of the First Republic when
even by European standards, Czech society put "unusually strong emphasis on education

for the widest groups in society" (Education Policy Association, 1999, p.32). The

30

communist regime maintained the solid school infrastructure, and supplied all schools
with the equipment they needed. Children were provided textbooks and in the early
grades also some basic school supplies. Additionally, they were also fed. The state
provided free snacks and subsidized school cafeterias. It also ﬁinded programs of “school
in nature”—- times during the school year when the entire class spent several weeks in the
woods, typically in a mountain or a spa resort. Some of these provisions still exist
although they function under ﬁnancial constraints and ﬁrnding for them has shifted from
the state to parents.
Velvet Revolution of] 989

In 1989, as communist regimes in Eastern Europe began to crumble,
Czechoslovakia had its Velvet Revolution which brought an end to the communist
dictatorship. One could argue that despite the Party's effort, schools had not succeeded in
their mission to indoctrinate the young generation with obedience and loyalty to the
regime because the Velvet Revolution was set to motion by a movement of university
students. The movement began with events of November 17 when university students in
Prague commemorated the ﬁftieth anniversary of closing of universities by the Nazis in a
government-approved march. As the students were parading through the streets, they
started denouncing the communist regime (Roberts, 2005) and calling for freedom.
Slogans included 'Academic freedom' or 'Why continue learning non-sense?' (Vlcek,
RﬁZiéka, & Zvéiina). The government responded with sending riot police to the scene.
The police blocked off the march and disbanded the peaceful protest with brutal beatings.

It was not the ﬁrst time when the riot police used violence against the regime's

opponents but November 17 was different in that the protestors were young university

31

students, not political dissidents. Soon after the incident, a rumor spread that one student
was killed. Given the seriousness of the rumor, the media was compelled to comment on
the incident. The TV screened an interview with the allegedly killed student, showing
that the student was alive and well. Nevertheless, the black and white footage in
otherwise color TV, and apparent bruises and swells on the student’s face suggested that
the media may have been omitting some information about the brutality of the police.
Party censorship was working its way and it was difﬁcult to gauge what was true, what
was not, and what was being withheld. The student who had participated in the march,
political dissidents, and actors wanted to make sure that the society learned about the
events. Thus, they began disseminating information about the November 17 events
through their own channels that they had formed. The dissidents and members of various
reform initiatives established Civic Forum — a movement calling for an investigation of
the beatings, dismissal of ofﬁcials responsible for the violence, and release of political
prisoners. University students created a coordinating and information committee, sent
student representatives to towns around Czechoslovakia to talk about the Nov 17 events,
and called a general strike, which gradually spread throughout the country. Actors
interrupted many of their performances in theatres around the country and discussed the
November 17 events with their audiences. Within days, thousands of people started
ﬁlling the streets of cities across Czechoslovakia, calling for democracy and demanding
the communist government to resign, which it did on November 28, 1989 (Vléek et al.).
The peaceful overthrow of the regime entered history as so called Velvet Revolution, and

Czechoslovakia found itself at the threshold of a new historical and political era.

32

The new political era

In the global context, the demise of socialism signaled a triumph of capitalism,
which manifested itself in quick moves of the post-socialist societies to abandon any
establishments that had associations with the socialist past. As Joel Sarnoff (1999)
described it, the new notion that prevailed was that "everything that can be linked to
socialism, however tenuous the link, is clearly ﬂawed, precisely because of that link"
(p.56). People turned their attention away from the Soviet Union and looked onwards to
the West as the new authority. The Czechs and Slovaks also dug into their pre-communist
history, which provided some alternative models for the restructuring that ensued.

The early199OS were highly turbulent with changes taking place simultaneously at
all levels of social and political life. A side effect of the new nation building was a split
of Czechoslovakia in 1993 into two sovereign nation-states, the Czech Republic and the
Slovak Republic. Each of the two new democracies has pursued its own destiny since
then although some general characteristics of educational change were common for both
nations. Educational change in the 1990s mirrored the entire liberalization movement that
was sweeping across the society — the democratically elected leadership worked to
increase school diversity, unleash market forces, and open up schools to the society.

Many grassroots movement of early 19903 initiated change, which happened
almost organically. Legal provisions and top-down decisions followed rather than steered
the early stages of transition (Cerych, 1999). In 1990, the ﬁrst democratically elected
Parliament instantly modiﬁed the Constitution and expunged Articles proclaiming the
leading role of the party and education in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism (Prﬁcha &

Walterova, 1992). This led to immediate changes in the school curriculum: Marxism-

33

Leninism was dropped altogether and Russian ceased to be the mandatory foreign
language. The rhetoric celebrating socialism, and pictures of Lenin and communist
ofﬁcials instantly disappeared from schools and textbooks.

The Parliament also amended the Education Act of 1984 and adopted new
provisions that provided a legal ﬁame for the establishment of private and parochial
schools. Moreover, it also revived the First Republic's elite multi-year academic
secondary schools. New educational programs and curricula emerged as well. Public
primary schools that had previously followed one national curriculum were given the
possibility to choose from three types of curricula. Apart from that, a number of
alternative pedagogical movements such a Montessori, Waldorf, or Dalton plan also
found their way to the system.

The central powers began loosening up: universities gained signiﬁcant autonomy
(although ﬁscally, they are still dependent solely on the state budget); school principals'
decision-making powers were augmented, and teachers' freedom in instructional practices
expanded (e. g. choice of textbooks). A more recent reform in public administration
further reshufﬂed the distribution of powers and strengthened the role of regions and
local communities in school administration. Regions now carry a full responsibility for
establishing, abolishing and administering secondary schools, and municipalities are in
charge of administering primary schools and pre-schools.

There were also major changes in school ﬁnancing. The principle of voucher
mechanism has replaced automatic allocations of funds to schools according to their

previous budgets so in the current “normative system”, money follows the student, and

34

funds are diversiﬁed according to the school type (Cerych, 1999). The state however
continues to control teacher salaries and directly pays expenditures on salaries.

All in all, governance has grown decentralized and the state moved from a strictly
controlling role to a coordinating one.

Qualitative change inside schools and in teaching practices occurred to a lesser
extent. Although there are individual teachers and principals who introduced new
schools, new courses, and new instructional practices, one can only speak of small
pockets of change. According to the Annual Report of the Czech School Inspectorate for
the academic year 2003/2004, less than 10% schools chose to go against the grain and
follow a curriculum alternative to the traditional school (Czech School Inspectorate,
2004). "Much of the teaching has remained teacher directed and fact based; pupils
continue to be assigned a passive role" (Polyzoi & Cema, 2001b, 79). On the more
positive side, the Czech School Inspectorate noted that schools today are better equipped,
principals more informed and teachers well prepared. Nevertheless teaching, especially in
middle and secondary schools, continues to be heavily teacher-centered, overwhelmingly
concerned with content and memorization of facts (Czech School Inspection, 2004).
Knowledge is transferred with little opportunity for students to learn how to apply it.
Classroom presentations, discussions and debates are rare as is any active engagement of
the students (Czech School Inspectorate, 2003).

The many changes that did take place in the closing decade of the 20th century
were unprecedented in their breadth and scope, and yet they fell short in effecting the
deep, profound and large—scale change that reformers hoped for at the onset of the

transition. Complaints continue to prevails that schools still carry the legacy of the

35

communist times when education stressed literacy, numeric skills and factual information
but discouraged independent thinking, formation of one’s own opinion and an open
dialogue. As Keith Watson wrote (2000), the educational systems in communist countries
"were inﬂexible and they failed to develop problem-solving skills, higher order thinking,
creativity, initiative and a spirit of inquiry" (p.57), and these traits continue to
characterize education in the Czech Republic today. I

In the context of the Czech Republic working to return to Europe and once again
be viewed as a strong European democracy, policy makers called for deeper change in
schools and internal school transformation. Clearly, any deep and fundamental change in
how things have worked for centuries is going to be challenging. In the words of J iii
Kotasek (1992), a highly respected Czech professor and educator, "it is not inconceivable
to consider that forty to ﬁfty years will be needed to improve our education. This
coincides with the estimated two-generation turnover to repair the socioetlrical and
spiritual devastation "(p.43). But proposals for change have been drafted, strategies
developed, and with the new Education Act of 2004 and the curricular reform embedded
in it, the basic concepts of the envisioned change have been laid down.

The education state

Hodgson and Spours (2006) discuss the education state as an important dimension
in policy analysis that manifests and reinforces the dimension of political era. Looking at
the education state means mapping various key actors who constitute the landscape of
education policy and play a role in inﬂuencing the ﬂow of ideas in policy arenas. In
democratic nations, education state includes governmental organizations and regional

bodies, pressure groups, associations, and think tanks as well as individuals who exert a

36

degree of inﬂuence at different points in the policy process (Hodgson and Spours, 2006,
p.687).

The education state in the democratic Czech Republic lives with the past legacies
of strong central governance but continues to move towards increased decentralization
and devolution of powers. Despite administrative decentralization, the central focus of
the policy environment still gravitates towards the Ministry of Education and education
ministers who have the institutional power to draw proposals for governmental hearings,
draft legislation, channel distribution of state funds to schools, and issue various
directives and regulations that affect the functioning of the education system and schools
within it (White Paper, 2001). The Ministry serves as an umbrella organization for a
number of institutes that it houses. These include: Institute for Research in Education;
Center for Reform of High School Exit Examinations renamed in 2004 to Center for
Evaluation of School Results; the Czech School Inspectorate, National Institute for
Further Education, and other organizations related to the Ministry. The Institute for
Research in Education is particularly important for the curricular reform because it
authored the text of the new curricular F rarneworks and has assumed charge of
coordinating the reform's initial implementation and pilot.

The role of the Ministry of Education is being redeﬁned from the strictly
controlling and administrative authority to one that creates a vision, coordinates
education, supports reform ideas and serves as a connector between the general public
and state bodies. However, the general public and policy actors outside (and even some
within) the ministerial Institutes continue to perceive the Ministry as a largely ineffective

bureaucracy unable to give up its administrative functions and unﬁt to perform the role of

37

a change agent. In the words of an education professor who was engaged in the

development of new educational policies and worked with the ministerial ofﬁcials in

various advisory roles:
The Ministry has been trying to move away from doing pure administrative
work. . .but I think that so far they have not been very successful. It still sees
things only in the perspective of ﬁnances, how we must reduce the number of
teachers, how much money we have available for operational costs...The Ministry
is still an administrative apparatus. It's not an agency for improving the quality of
teaching and educational outcomes. . .There is a strong administrative tradition
here. They, as administrators [at the Ministry], feel responsible for allocating
funds, keeping records, observing laws, issuing regulations, and the majority of
the people who work for the Ministry are economists, lawyers, some are
educators, but within the Ministry, they all take on the mentality of an
administrator who monitors, gives orders. That idea that the Ministry creates
conditions for innovation and change, that does not exit in their conscience, which
is given by the Austro-Hungarian tradition and tradition of such Ministries in
general.

A ministerial administrator was even more critical:
The Ministry should ﬁrst of all focus on conceptual, strategic tasks and reduce the
administration... there is virtually no one at the ministry who would think
conceptually... You would need a magnifying glass to ﬁnd someone with whom

you could talk about more conceptual issues...

38

Efforts to innovate and seek alternatives to the traditional teaching have been
generally linked with people and organizations that stand outside of the Ministry and its
Institutes. Democracy facilitated establishment of various reform groups calling for
"humanization of education, a focus on development of critical skills and problem
solving, and diversiﬁcation of curricular options" (Polyzoi, p.74). These groups have
been concentrated in various non-proﬁt organizations, educational associations and think
tanks, and involve reform-oriented teachers, educational entrepreneurs, researchers, and
university academics. Polyzoi and Cema (2001) noted that the inﬂuence of reform
groups has diminished since the early 19908 with the Ministry selectively choosing to
incorporate some ideas of the reformers into concrete proposals while ignoring others.
Interviewees largely conﬁrmed that the inﬂuence of reform groups on policy decisions
has not been very strong. An educational expert and a protagonist of the reform ideas
described his experience with collaboration with the Ministry as follows:

We tried to educate them [the Institute] through critique and advice — we did

both. . .I cooperated with them for quite some time, I criticized them and I wasn't

alone in both. . .Most people who initially worked with them eventually gave up
because it was simply impossible -- their proposals and attitudes were not desired.

And then we tried to criticize them, but they do not react. . .we do not have any

political instruments to push our ideas through.

The depiction of the policy scene so far suggests that the policy scene is divided
into two camps: the Ministry that is somewhat ambivalent (sometimes it listens to the
non-traditionalists and outside groups and sometimes it doesn't) and the progressive

groups. Naturally, the situation is more complex. Not all people working for the Ministry

39

and its Institutes are bureaucrats without a vision. A university professor who has served
as an advisor to the Ministry said:

The Ministry is a systemic organization that is trying to unsystematically help.

There are many individuals who help, who are good and who work hard but

because communication between individual departments and ofﬁces of the

ministry is non-existent. . .they have no clue what they are doing so they produce
documents that contradict one another or overlap.

Also, not all non-governmental organizations represent progressive ideas and call
for a reform, at least in the sense of advocating for fundamental shift from the existing
content driven educational model. There are two discipline/subject associations that are
visibly on the policy scene and that have earned a reputation that would classify them, at
least in some instances, as traditionalists. For example, an Association of History
Teachers strongly opposed the curricular reform when the reform was ﬁrst introduced to
the public on the grounds that the reform encourages integration of subjects, which can
be threatening to the culture and quality of Czech education. In a somewhat similar vein,
the Association of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists which has had some inﬂuence
over the decisions of the Ministry, has been portrayed by some interviewees as largely
conservative, and unable to see alternative ways to mathematics teaching and learning.
The Czech Republic has yet to see the math wars that have played out in the US. The
prevailing view on mathematics teaching and science teaching in general is largely
uncontroversial. In interviews with school practitioners who teach mathematics or
sciences, the practitioners often noted that teaching mathematics or physics is

straightforward and cannot really be done differently; students have to memorize a set of

40

rules before they learn a new concept. The predominant notion was that alternative,
constructivist approach to teaching might be possible in history or social sciences but it is
unlikely to work in exact sciences where things are given. As one teacher put it: "You
cannot teach students without asking them to master some facts. How can I search the
Internet for information on acceleration when I don't know what acceleration is? They
simply have to know something ﬁrst".

Besides the various non-proﬁt organizations and education associations, many of
which stand for introducing progressive concepts in education, there are a number of
individuals who have become prominent on the Czech educational policy scene. So far,
this study has referred to educational experts, entrepreneurs, researchers and university
professors as if they have clear roles. The fact of the matter is that these individuals often
wear several hats and can't be placed into any one single category as they speak from the
point of view of different experiences. An education entrepreneur may be someone who
is for example engaged in a testing agency but at the same time may have afﬁliations
with a university as a professor, be associated with a research think tank, and serve as an
advisor to the Ministry.

As for notable institutions that make up part of the map of the Czech policy scene,
there is for example the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech
Republic (so called ISEA), which has authored a number of research studies in education
or the Center for Education Policy that has also had a say in the country's strategic
documents. Then there is SKAV, the Standing Conference of Educational Associations,
which represents various independent initiatives (currently some 17 associations) and has

been prominent in the reform movement in that it has organized regular round table

41

discussions around important topics in education. SKAV has served as an important
counter balance to the ministry — SKAV representatives have provided advice to the
Ministry but they also represent an independent voice that is often critical of the actions
of the Ministry. Apart from other organizations and initiatives, e. g. the well-established
project Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking that provides professional development
to teachers to promote alternative instructional practices, there are also two test
development agencies that can claim some impact on school instruction and educational
policy. One of them is called the Kalibro project and its focus is on the development of
formative tests and self-evaluation tools for schools. The second one, so called Scio, is a
testing agency conceptually similar to the American ETS, developing admission and
diagnostic tests that schools can choose to purchase and administer. The two testing
agencies have, among other things, produced reports that provide empirical evidence on
the deﬁciencies of the current educational system and thus serve as an argument for
change. For example, Kalibro has analyzed student performance on formative assessment
and validated PISA ﬁndings that Czech students show difﬁculties applying their
theoretical knowledge to real problems. Scio, on the other hand, has provided insights
into the policy discussions related to university entrance examinations and the proposed
high school exit examination reform. In conversations with teachers, teachers sometimes
pointed to the tests produced by these two agencies as sources of ideas for instruction so
both agencies also exercise some direct impact on school instruction.

A discussion about key policy actors cannot ignore the general public, parents,
students, and teachers. As suggested earlier, the long tradition of state responsibility over

education has made the general public somewhat apathetic and uninvolved in education.

42

People are used to leave educational affairs to the state and they are generally content
with the education system. Some researchers would argue that the contentment often
stems from a lack of knowledge of how the system works (Strakova, Basl, & Vesely,
2006). A survey conducted in 2006 by the Czech Institute of Sociology of the Academy
of Sciences showed that 59% of respondents were content with the educational system in
the Czech Republic; 19% did not have any opinion on the matter and only 22% were
dissatisﬁed (Strakova et al., 2006). When the respondents were asked whether Czech
primary and secondary schools need fundamental reforms, the numbers slightly shifted:
nearly half of the population did not think that reforms are necessary, 18% did not know
or did not care and 36% said yes to reforms. "The bad news for the curricular reform is
that only 16% respondents consider the development of general skills important"
(Strakova et al., 2006, p.1).

Parents have traditionally played only a marginal role in how education is
conducted, and mostly stayed uninvolved although on some occasions they raised their
voices. For example, in 2006, the city of Brno decided to reduce the number of elite
multi-year secondary schools and parents who saw this decisions as a threat to their
children's future united, wrote a petition and collected some 2500 signatures (Lidovky.cz,
2006). Their protest did not sway the city's decision but it was highly publicized and
noticed. The Education Act of 2004 introduced local school boards to Czech education,
thus giving an opportunity to parents to be represented in their children's schools. But
according to the 2006 annual report of the Czech School Inspectorate, although these
boards now exist, they get minimally involved in schools' operations and they are only

beginning to search for their practical functions (C81, 2006). So far, they have not played

43

a very strong role in the education system and their activities have been largely formal
and symbolic.

Teachers continue to be cautious participants in the change process (Polyzoi &
Cema, 2001b). Results from the survey conducted for this study and collected ﬁ'om 89
teachers in four pilot high schools indicate that teachers are divided in their opinion about
the need for a fundamental reform in academic high schools: 44% did not think that such
a reform is needed; 56% felt that a change was necessary. Whether in favor of the
curricular reform or not, most teachers agreed that they teach too many things
disconnected from reality (67%) and that content should be reduced (68%). However,
there is little that could get them implement the changes even when they think that they
are desirable. Teachers' jobs are already demanding but their salaries and social status is
low. The survey results provide some evidence to this claim with 78% teachers
perceiving the status of their job as low and 73% viewing their salaries as inadequate
(Table 1). The reform does not offer any incentives for change; in fact, it is asking
teachers to do even more than they currently do, and to many that may be discouraging
rather than motivating them to become change agents.

Table 1 - Teachers' perceptions of the status of their profession

 

 

Strongly Disagree -- -- Agree Strongly
disagree Agree
The Czech society values 12.7 58.2 6.3 2.5 19 0
teachers
I am content with my 28.6 37.7 6.5 5.2 22.1 0
salary
(W

The survey results also suggested that many teachers remain in the profession because

they enjoy teaching. Although teacher education programs produce the highest

44

percentage of graduates in comparison to other areas of study, most graduates from these
programs do not enter teaching (Mateji’r & Strakova, 2004). The Master's degree they
need to become qualiﬁed teachers allows them to ﬁnd more lucrative jobs outside of
teaching.

In all, a large part of the society does not see the need to innovate instructional
practices and keeps a distance from the efforts to reform the educational system.
"Although some change has been observed within schools through lateral diffusion,
active support by parents and students and innovative attempts by teachers, on the whole,
tend to be rather isolated and uncoordinate " (Polyzoi & Cema, 2001b, p.79). This
statement still seems to hold true.

Summary

The Czech educational system is indebted to its relatively long historical
evolution. The education system was established from the top down and for centuries it
was governed by the state. Czechs brieﬂy experienced democracy between 1918 and
1938 and during this time, pro gressivism was introduced in a number of experimental
schools. Nevertheless the communist regime once again steered the system towards the
traditional teacher-centered education. Teachers represented the extended authority of the
regime, schools followed SoViet scientism, and students' job was to memorize
information without questioning it. The demise of communism in 1989 clearly
demarcated the beginning of a new political era that represents the political ideology of
free markets, decentralization, pluralism, and democracy. The transitional period from
socialism to capitalism initiated with the regime change has been characterized by

introducing these principles into the system. The role and functions of the Ministry of

45

Education that holds the political leverage in the system are being redeﬁned, and the
work of the Ministry varies with election cycles and individual ministers.

Although signiﬁcant changes have occurred in governance, administration and
school ﬁnancing, teaching largely seems to be caught up in the old ways of transferring
large quantities of information at the expense of dialogic processes that would facilitate
students' independent thinking and application of knowledge. Interviews with reformers
showed some individuals' disappointments, perhaps even disillusionment about
opportunities that were missed during the reconstruction of the society and education in
19908. The 1990s opened with a spirit of excitement in the society about sweeping
changes that were to come but there was also chaos and instability as the new leaders of
the country were only beginning to learn to lead. It is hard to judge how things could
have been but it is understandable that no revolution in schooling occurred. Teaching and
learning in schools with an educational tradition spanning over 200 years is deeply rooted
in its established ways. It is a historical circumstance that these ways largely did not
coincide with the democratic principles that the Czech Republic now pursues. The sharp
change in the political regime in 1989 shook the society to its core but the robustness of
the educational system ensured that it resisted fundamental changes and preserved its
continuity. In part, this was perhaps because the Czech society never experienced a sense
of educational crisis begging for major ﬁxes.

Still, the new political era that came after 1989 established conditions for change:
the Ministry has devolved powers to the lower levels, new actors emerged on the policy
scene, and a dialogue has begun about the need to continue transforming the system. But

in a nation where education has been traditionally the concern of the state, engaging the

46

society in such a dialogue has been a challenge. Only a handﬁrl of participants seem to be
talking, leaving the general public uninvolved and somewhat apathetic, as various reports
pointed.

One of the purposes and functions of educational policy is to marshal change,
manage it and give it direction (Taylor et al., 1997). It is plausible that with the right
interventions, things might change faster, and in the direction that corresponds with the
demands of the current times. But in all, history has left schools and teachers unprepared
to take on new roles and to become decision makers who hold signiﬁcant responsibilities.
The new political era and conﬁguration of the education state might have created
conditions for change but fundamental shifts in philosophy of teaching and
conceptualization of schools that the current curricular reform implies are unlikely to take
off on their own, without incentives for change, massive capacity building, and

'reculturing' of the society (Fullan, 2001 ).

47

CHAPTER 3: EXISTING SCHOOL SYSTEM

Chapter Two contextualized Czech education in history, and described the current
political era and key players who are involved in shaping and re-shaping education in the
Czech Republic. The aim of this chapter is to provide additional description of the current
state of affairs in Czech education and lay out the structure of the system and challenges
the system faces so that the reader can develop a better understanding of the scope and
signiﬁcance of the new curricular reform. First, individual school levels are discussed
and cultural practices of schooling introduced. The chapter then focuses on elements of
the system that present tensions and that have implications for the cunicular reform.

Pre-schools as sites of innovation

Pre-school education has been the source of pride in the Czech Republic,
particularly over the past decade as many pre-school centers came to look less like
schools and developed into houses of creativity and play. This is a fairly interesting
progression that several interviewed university professors mentioned although there is
little research that would capture the change and explain it. Pre—school education has had
a strong tradition in the Czech educational system for more than a century. It has
unfolded in the spirit of European traditions of holistic personal and social development,
and stands in contrast to the content-driven educational model that permeates all other
school levels.

The overwhelming majority of Czech children start their education in pre-school
centers at the age of 3. During the communist times, public education also included

creches for children up to 3 years of age but since 1990 public spending on early

48

education has decreased and most creches closed down. The government’s alternative
was to extend maternity leave from 2 to 3 years (28 weeks paid at 69% of earnings
followed by a ﬂat rate beneﬁt until the child reaches 4th birthday) (OECD, 2006, Annex
E, p.304). Thus, children under 3 typically spend time at home with their mothers or less
commonly with their fathers who can also take the parental leave of absence.

Although pre-school education is voluntary, almost 90% children attend (OECD,
2006). This fact is partially indebted to the cultural habits and affordable costs. The costs
are shared between the state, municipalities, and parents. Municipalities found and close
the centers, appoint the centers' heads and cover the running costs with parents’
contributions capped to a maximum of 50% (OCED, 2006). The fees that parents have to
pay typically range between 300-1000CZK per month (approx. 20-7OUSD), although
cost varies ﬁ'om a center to center depending on the number of children enrolled, local
sponsorship, and economic strength of the municipality. Many children stay in a pre-
school all day. Most pre-schools employ a cook so the children receive structured care as
well as hot lunch and snacks. Parents pay additional fees for these lunches but the overall
cost is still relatively low. Low-income families can apply for a reduced rate or a waiver
of the fee. With the new Education Act of 2004, the last year of pre-school became
compulsory and thus free of charge.

Primary school

When children enter a primary school, they encounter a whole new experience
when compared to their pre-school experience. School becomes much more structured,
and cognitive development comes to the forefront. To use Andrew Roberts' (2005)

cultural dictionary:

49

Grade school is a disciplined affair which packs children full of facts and rules.
The school day begins with children either walking or taking public transport to
school. Upon arrival, they put away their shoes and don slippers. When the
teacher comes into the classroom, students immediately stand up and do not sit
down until the teacher greets them with ‘Dobry den, posad’te se‘ (Good morning.
Take a seat.) Under communism, teachers were required to stick closely to the
textbook (a habit they have maintained even today). So much that learning takes
place with students reading aloud or reciting poems they have memorized.
Dictations are another common exercise, their goal being to reinforce spelling.
Quizzes take place frequently, a random student being called up to the front of the
class to answer oral questions from the teacher. Grades are delivered immediately
and out loud. A single class of approximately thirty students remains together for
all eight years of elementary school (for grades one through four, they usually
have the same teacher). Each class has to take care of its own bulletin board
where it posts important announcements and anniversaries (in the past mainly of a
political character). One of the highlights of the school year is skola v pfirodé
(nature school) when the entire class spends a week in the woods. Students ﬁnish
school with a strong set of ﬁrndamentals and a large supply of memorized facts
and dates, which leads them to score well on international tests. On the other
hand, they are actively discouraged from creative or independent thinking. (p.153)
While this description still largely holds true and Czechs would likely recognize
the portrayal as accurate, the Czech School Inspectorate noted that instructional practices

have been changing, particularly in the ﬁrst stage of primary education. In the absence of

50

research studies that would map the conditions and changes in Czech education, the
Czech School Inspectorate's annual reports serve as the main source of evidence that
reﬂects the situation in Czech education - the Inspectors perform hundreds of
observations and school visits every year and assess what they encounter against a set of
criteria the Inspectorate had developed. The reports bring news that is good especially for
grades 1-3 where the Inspection found high quality instruction and teachers using a
variety of methods and instructional practices effectively motivating kids (Czech School
Inspection, 2004). However, the Inspection's report spoke less positively about the
second stage of primary education (grades 5-9) where the instruction focused primarily
on factual knowledge. The report reads: "teachers mistakenly included all content from
their textbooks (i.e. content that expanded, informed or illustrated the basic content) and
required students to master it in its whole" (Czech School Inspection, 2004).

Primary education lasts nine years. Children typically move through these nine
years in cohorts with 20-30 other children. For the ﬁrst four years, the cohort has one and
the same teacher. From ﬁfth grade on, the students have the same homeroom teacher but
a different teacher for each subject. It is quite corrnnon for the same subject teacher to
stay with the class until the end of primary education — for example the same
mathematics teacher teaches the group from grade 5 until grade 9.

Selectivity of the system

When asked about the key features of the Czech educational system, interviewees
frequently talked about the system's high selectivity that for some children begins at age
11 and in some cases even earlier. The following words of an educational researcher

represent a view that interviewees generally shared:

51

The educational system in the Czech Republic is too selective. It still divides
children among the good ones and the bad ones. It fulﬁlls the function of
choosing the good students, providing them with demanding academic education,
and it parts with the other children early on. And the problem is that this society
accepts it as that's how things should be. . .And the instruction reﬂects it. . .the
encyclopedic instruction for those kids that can handle it. . .and those who can't get
de-motivated.

Interestingly, embracing democracy did not mean leveling the playing ﬁeld for all
children but ﬁirther increasing the system's selectivity, which was already high in
comparison to other democratic nations (Bartova, 2004; Cerych, Koucky, & Matéjﬁ,
1998; Matéjﬁ & Strakova, 2005b; Strakova, 2002). In the early 19908, the government
reinstituted First Republic's elite multi-year (6-8-year) academic high schools that run
parallel to primary schools and 4-year—academic high schools. These institutions serve
roughly 10% of the population (Matéjﬁ & Strakova, 2005b), pulling children out of
regular primary schools after 4th or 6th grade. The selection into these schools is
conditioned by entrance examinations and parents' pressure to have their child receive
academic education earlier than after completing primary education as is the norm for
most other children. But the selection of students into elite schools may start even earlier
— some children may leave after 3rd grade to attend primary schools that e. g. put stronger
emphases on foreign language study (Matéjﬁ & Strakova, 2005a).

Researchers generally agree that the revival of the 6-8-year academic secondary
schools has been problematic. These schools do not necessarily serve the most talented

students but they tend to cater to children from advantaged backgrounds, and thus

52

reinforce elitism and increase social stratiﬁcation (Matéji’r & Strakova, 2005a). Early
specialization is considered unhealthy because ten- or eleven-year-olds are more likely to
be driven by their parents’ interests than their own abilities, which are not yet fully
developed to show what speciﬁc talents they might have. Additionally, primary schools
also suffer because they lose highly motivated students who help to create healthy
competition in schools. Yet, any attempts to eliminate or reduce the number of the multi-
year high schools typically end in vain because they face strong resistance from parents
and Czech elites. The educational researcher quoted earlier further said:

The Czech elites do not adopt the attitude that the educational system should open

up more and serve children who have not been so lucky in life, that it should in

fact serve all, and pay more attention to the kids who are left behind. But it's very
difﬁcult to persuade the elites about this because they continue only seeing the
beneﬁts for their own children. The problem of this society is that we do not have
the elites that would be more generous in how they view social problems.

But the multi-year academic high schools are not the only ones that enforce
selectivity. For the majority of students who do not enter the multi-year academic high
schools after 4th of 6th grade, the ﬁrst selection mechanism many encounter are entrance
examinations from primary level to the secondary level. Secondary schools, particularly
4-year academic high schools and technical-vocational schools choose their students
through entrance examinations that they develop themselves on the level of the school
building, or purchase from a testing agency if they can afford to do so. The examinations
thus vary from a school to school. The decision on admission criteria is in the hands of

school principals and the common practice has been to administer the locally developed

53

tests and select students based on knowledge they demonstrate on the test. Historically,
secondary schools have been divided into three types of schools: academic college
preparatory high schools (so called gymndzium), technical/vocational, and lower-
vocational/ trade schools. The acaderrric track is the most prestigious and also tends to be
the most selective one. The lower tracks on the other hand often do not use entrance
examinations at all and accept student who did not get in the academic of
technical/vocational schools.

Academic high schools vs. other secondary schools

Academic high schools represent the highest track of secondary education among
the three main tracks in the Czech secondary education system. The proclaimed goal of
academic high schools is to provide liberal arts education and prepare students for
university studies. Academic high schools thus serve as a vehicle to university education
even when standards of universities are unclear and entrance examinations vary ﬁom
institution to an institution, and between programs of study.

Studies in academic high schools lead towards attainment of upper-secondary
education with a high school exit examination (Maturita in Czech), which serves as a
prerequisite for applying to a university. However, other schools besides academic high
schools can also deploy high school exit examinations -- namely four-year
technical/vocational schools but also some lower vocational schools. While academic
high schools adhere to the same national curriculum, technical/vocational schools offer
highly specialized, professional education (40% of the curriculum is in general liberal
arts, 60% in chosen specialization) (National Institute for Vocational Education). There

are over 250 different specializations (curricula) offered in technical/vocational schools

54

(National Institute for Vocational Education) including preparation for a career in
nursing, business administration, engineering, lab work, kindergarten teaching, and many
others. Lower-vocational schools train plumbers, carpenters, car-mechanics, hairdressers
etc., and instead of Maturita, they typically lead to professional certiﬁcates. Thus,
students who complete lower-vocational schools are not qualiﬁed to apply for university
admission, which makes the pool of competitors for the limited number of seats that
universities offer considerably smaller.

The distribution of students among the three types of secondary schools is uneven
and has been undergoing changes since 1989. The communist regime invested heavily in
vocational training, with education in academic high schools offering little comparative
advantage. The Labor market was skewed towards industrial production and artiﬁcially
controlled by central planning. As the Czech Republic entered the new political era of
free markets, it saw many industrial giants collapse with the consequence of climbing
unemployment rates, especially among people with vocational education certiﬁcates.
University education has turned into human capital investment promising high returns,
and demand for secondary schools leading to Maturita, and speciﬁcally to academic high
schools rose. As a result, the proportion of students with Maturita has been on an
increase and in 2005 it reached 56%. Of all secondary school graduates, 19% graduate
from academic high schools (see Table 2).

Table 2 - Numbers of high school graduates according to school type

 

 

High schools Number of %
graduates

Academic (high school exit examinations) _ 25,449 19.15

Technical/vocational (high school exit examinations) 49,356 37.14

Lower vocational (professional certiﬁcate) 58,081 43.71

Total 132,886 100. 00

 

Institute for Information in Education, September 2005

55

Teaching and learning in academic high schools

Because the focal point of this study is a curricular reform for academic high
schools, it is necessary to acquaint the reader with the culture of teaching and learning in
these schools. I have mentioned earlier that academic high schools adhere to the same
national curriculum. Similarly, there will be the same curricular framework for all
academic high schools unlike technical/ vocational schools, which will be guided by
different frameworks for different specializations. As explained in the methods section in
Appendix A, academic high schools became the focus of this study in part because they
will all follow the same national Frameworks and in part for pragmatic reasons. The data
collection coincided with a pilot of the Frameworks in 16 academic high schools around
the country and the pilot provided a unique opportunity to gauge initial response of
teachers to the reform.
Organization of instructional time

Schools have gained considerable autonomy in comparison to the situation before
1989, but the Ministry of Education continues to govern a number of organizational
aspects of education with decrees, directives, regulations and recommendations that
specify individual provisions of the Education Act. For example, the Act stipulates that a
teaching hour equals 45 minutes. A decree ﬁrrther outlines the organization of the school
year; i.e. that a school year begins on September 1 and ends on June 30; Christmas
holidays last from December 23 to January 2 etc. (Czech Republic, 2004). In similar vein,
the Ministry also controls the total number of instructional hours taught per week and the
instructional time allocated to individual subjects. A total instructional time is capped to

31 hours a week although the most recent update of the regulations from September 2006

56

allows school principals to add 2 more hours of instruction per week if they wish to do
so. Minimum hours of instructional time for individual subjects are also set — the
Ministry prescribes that during four years in an academic high school, students must have
at least three hours of mathematics per week, three hours of Czech language and
literature per week, three hours of two foreign languages each etc. (for details, see
Appendix C). Altogether, students typically have 10-13 subjects each week with a
variable number of hours in each. The schools determine practical aspects of the schedule
— e. g. which three hours a week will be devoted to mathematics in a given cohort and
who will teach the course. Additionally, principals also have a certain number of ﬂexible
hours that they can use according to their schools' speciﬁc needs and desires. For instance
several more hours can be added to strengthen some of the core subjects or to create
seminars and electives.

Similarly to primary education, students move through secondary schools in
cohorts of typically 25-30 students who take all the classes together. With the national
regulations for instructional time, a cohort's school schedule and courses are largely set.
As students progress to higher grades, they gain more ﬂexibility, and they may choose up
to four electives, depending on what their school offers. The electives are generally
connected to the core courses; they tend to extend the content and deepen students’
knowledge in a selected subject. For example, a common elective is a conversational
course in a foreign language that gives students more opportunities to practice the foreign
language they learn. Another example is a seminar in history, typically offered to seniors
as a substitute for regular history, which is compulsory only for the ﬁrst three years of

high school.

57

Content of instruction

The Ministry outlines 13 core subject areas in the national curriculum and these
are more or less synonymous with the school subjects that all students in academic high
schools take every year. Taking mathematics as an example, unlike the US. where
mathematics translates into a number of separate courses such as Pre-algebra, Geometry,
Trigonometry etc., mathematics in Czech academic high schools literally means one
course titled Mathematics that lasts for four years and encompasses algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, calculus etc. as individual units of the course that are lined up in a
prescribed sequence. The same applies to the other subjects. In other words, each subject
is structured to encompass all available knowledge within that subject area.

Historically, the subjects taught in Czech schools have been delineated within
established boundaries and the Ministry has detailed speciﬁc content for each. For
example, history has traditionally included national and world history as well as art
history. It has been taught chronologically, in terms of events divided into ﬁve main
historical eras. For each era, teachers needed to cover a long checklist of topics: e. g. for
the early modern historical period, there were 49 topics such as German national
movement, revolutionary events in Italy, Spain, Russia and France — all being one topic;
Reforms in czarist Russia, Crimean war, Berlin Congress and Civil war in the USA.
being another; and 47 more. Students typically have two hours of history a week for three
years with the option to continue taking history in the fourth year as an elective. Given
the large amounts of information packed into two hours a week for three years, history
generally ends up being reduced to extensive and barely manageable lists of dates, names

and events that students memorize. This exempliﬁes a problem that weaves through

58

education in Czech schools — content is heavy on information and teachers are left with
little time to explore any topic in substantial depth, let alone to try out methods other than
lecture and recitation.
Instructional practices

In the interviews, teachers talked about the "algorithm of teaching" or the
"typical", "traditional" way of teaching. The "typical" scenario looks like this: A teacher
enters the classroom; students stand up to greet the teacher, and sit down when told. The
teacher sits at a desk in ﬁont of the classroom and opens the cohort's class book where
s/he records the topic of the lesson s/he will teach, and marks the names of the students
who are missing. When a homeroom teacher teaches the lesson, s/he has an additional
obligation to check if students who were absent have a signed slip explaining their
absence. After taking care of the administration in the class book, the teacher often moves
to her/his own notebook where s/he keeps the names of all students and their grades, and
randomly calls one of the students to the front of the classroom for a public review.
While the student is being questioned about previous lesson's content, the rest of the class
watches. Sometimes the teacher gives the other students a task to keep them busy.
Typically, the review takes 5-10 minutes. When it is over, the teacher announces the
grade and sends the student back to her/his desk. The remaining approximately 30
minutes of total instructional time can then be devoted to the new material that the
teacher needs to cover. Most frequently, this is done through a lecture. While the teacher
talks, students are busy taking notes — when they come home, they will need to review
and memorize the material for next class in case they are called in front of the class for a

review. Sometimes, students ask questions during the instruction time but in the

59

interviews, teachers often suggested that it only happens occasionally because it is
difﬁcult to get students to talk. Additionally, with the tight time constraints, there is a
danger that discussions steer the class away from the content that needs to be covered.

In 1999, the Czech Republic participated in TIMSS-R video study that examined
teaching mathematics in seven countries (Australia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan,
Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States). This study gathered evidence that
allowed researchers to describe lesson signatures in individual countries and compare
teaching and instructional practices, and the nature and content of the lessons among the
participating countries. The previous paragraph loosely and speculatively described what
one might see in a Czech classroom, but the results of TIMSS-R study provide evidence
that is scientiﬁcally robust and paints a more valid and reliable picture of teaching
practices in Czech schools, although it is representative of only 8th grade mathematics
lessons. However, in terms of the lesson structure and teachers' use of time, it is possible
that similar patters that TIMSS-R found in mathematics teaching would be found in other
subjects taught in Czech schools.

As the study reported, the signature mathematics lesson in the Czech Republic
was characterized by a prominent emphasis on review of previous material (US.
Department of Education, 2003). In 100% of the sampled lessons, teachers focused on
review and performed it typically by calling one or more students to the board to publicly
solve a problem. The purpose of these reviews was to evaluate the students and grade
them as well as re-instruct old knowledge. According to the study, various forms of the
review consumed 58% of lesson time and they were followed by introduction of new

content, which was done typically through a whole-class instruction. Besides the public

60

reviews, another signature aspect of teaching mathematics in Czech classrooms was a
relatively high number of discrete problems presented in one lesson. Most problems were
set-up using mathematical language or symbols only while only 15% of problems were
set up with real-life connection (US. Department of Education, 2003, p.85), and the
focus of teachers' work with the problems was generally aimed at using procedures.
Students' work in pairs or small groups was relatively infrequent. The TIMSS-R results
also showed that the Czech Republic had a lower percentage of problems in which
students had a choice of solution methods, and that most problems were solved by
"simply giving results only without discussion of how the answer was obtained" (US.
Department of Education, 2003, p.129).

The results of the TIMSS-R study are consistent with how interviewed teachers
described the "algorithm" of teaching in Czech schools. They spoke about public reviews,
which some of them said were required by their school principal; they also spoke about
lecturing and giving students ready-made information because there was a lot to cover
and time constraints were high. When asked about experimenting or trying out new
methods that are not typically used, interviewed teachers would describe brainstorming,
group work or games as the methods that are new and different from the typical
algorithm of teaching. For example, one teacher described an alternative activity as
follows:

We did brainstorming on the board. It was in literature. I asked the students what

they knew about the author and wrote it on the board and surprisingly they knew

quite a bit. Then I distributed a text of a story that the author wrote cut into strips,

and I would always ask a question about it. I would write the question on the

61

board, have them all read through the text and then they all tried to ﬁnd an answer

to the question. I thought this was much more effective than if I just tell them to

go home and read the text. . .But often such methods collapse because there is not

enough time.

High school exit examinations

Description of the educational system in the Czech Republic and academic high
schools in particular would not be complete without talking about high school exit
examinations (Maturita). These exams have been an inherent part of the educational
system for more than 150 years, although in the 19th and early 20'h century they were
restricted only to academic high schools (Frantisek Morkes, 2003). Gradually, they found
their ways to technical/vocational high schools and now some lower vocational schools
can administer them as well. The high school exit examinations are school-based
comprehensive exams summarizing the high school, academic experience. Students take
the Maturita in four subjects: Czech language and literature, and a foreign language are
the two mandatory subjects; the other two subjects depend on the student's choice. The
examinations have been primarily oral; for Czech language and literature, students
additionally have to write an essay. The Education Act of 2004 newly gives principals the
opportunity to determine the form of the exams — e. g. students can combine oral, written
and practical examinations, or they can also write and defend a school-leaving thesis.
Currently, each school is responsible for preparing and administering its own exams.
Teachers determine approximately 30 areas in which students will be examined in each

subject (see example from history in Appendix B). They then devote a great portion of

62

instructional time in the last year of high school to reviewing content from the previous
years to help their students prepare for the exams.

The exams are administered at the end of the senior year, typically in May or
early June. Each student is relieved from instruction for a week prior to taking the exams.
Then s/he comes to school for an assigned half-day to sit for the exam in all four subjects.
On the day of the exam, students come to school dressed in formal clothes, and for each
subject individually draw a topic out of a hat. Before coming in front of an examination
jury, they receive 15 minutes of preparation time without the possibility to use any
reference materials or notes. The exam itself also lasts approximately 15 minutes during
which students are expected to talk about the topic they drew and answer any questions
that the their subject teacher and the jury ask. After completing the exam in the last
subject, the jury convenes for evaluation and announces the result, grading performance
in each subject individually.

With the changes in Czech education over the past decade and a half, these
traditional high school exit examinations have become a contested issue. Prior to 1989,
the educational system was more uniform and the exams were believed to be equally
challenging in all schools that gave them. But since the liberalization of the school
market after 1989, the secondary school exit examinations seem to have grown as diverse
as the schools that develop them. Complaints about the high school exit exams have
come from all directions and frequently private high schools are being blamed for
lowering the standards. School principals complain because they believe they have been
losing students to some competing (private) schools, which are promising the credential

of a high school diploma with Maturita for less than the public academic high schools.

63

And universities started complaining because with the numbers of applicants that
multiplied after 1989, unreliable exit exams did not help them in any ways to select
students. The exit examination results do not carry any informative value about what the
students actually know and thus cannot be considered as a valid measure in the admission
process. Finally, a team of OECD experts that reviewed Czech education in 1995-96 also
criticized the extant examinations as solely school-based and incomparable; and perhaps
more importantly as a waste of energy, time, and resources because the exam results are
not used as a measure of quality or an instrument that would point to any direction of
future development of the school (OECD, 1996).

The Education Act of 2004 introduced a signiﬁcant change in high school exit
examinations. They are to have two components: a common (state-controlled) and a
proﬁle (school-based) part. The Ministry of Education will introduce a set of
standardized tests for the common part of the exams, and schools will develop their own
exams, depending on the school's proﬁle and focus. The new exit exams were to be
launched in the academic year 2007-2008 but the reform sparked a controversy, and has
been put on hold. It has been evolving since mid 19903, long before it was written into a
law, and its goals have expanded and changed over time. Although tests are being
developed annually, it is still not clear what the reform should do, i.e. whether the new
tests should serve as a school evaluation tool, whether they should serve as minimal
standards that students would be required to reach, whether they should unify curricula
among different types of schools, or all of these. The most recent education minister

advocated for a postponement of the reform until 2010.

64

Higher education and university entrance examinations

Achieving Maturita is a required prerequisite for applying to a university.
Maturita is thus a relatively high-stakes exam although the overwhelming majority of
students who progress through schools that offer Maturita usually pass. But even higher
stakes are attached to university entrance examinations. In the absence of any national or
standardized university entrance examinations, the content of university entrance
examinations is determined locally, by individual schools, departments, and study
programs. Universities have limited numbers of seats and thousands of applicants that
they have to keep out, so many entrance examinations are designed to weed students out
rather than select them in. Often, the exam tests look like trivia quizzes, but they exert an
enormous inﬂuence on curriculum at lower educational levels, particularly academic high
schools, which view it as their job to prepare students for university education. Thus, any
discussion of curriculum in academic high schools must tackle higher education and the
university entrance examinations as a mechanism of surrogate content control.

As mentioned earlier, the proportion of students who attend schools leading to
Maturita nears 60% of a given age cohort and only 60% of these students who have
Maturita apply to universities (Mateji’r & Strakova, 2004). However, not all get past the
university entrance examinations or perform well enough to get in. Matejﬁ (2004)
estimated that less than in the end, only one quarter of all students from the l8-19-year-
old age cohort (fresh secondary school graduates) enter universities. The overall
proportion of admitted students is higher because it includes students from other age .
cohorts as many reapply year after year until they succeed getting in; some programs are

easier to get in than others and according roughly 18% end in study programs or

65

universities that do not represent their preferred choice (Matéjﬁ & Strakova, 2004). The
situation is quite peculiar: in a country that has one of the highest secondary attainment
rates in Europe (nearly 90% people attain full secondary education), in the end only 12%
graduate from universities (Hruba, 2004; OECD, 2004). This number places the Czech
Republic behind the OECD average of 23% and US. average of 38% (OECD, 2004). The
situation has been gradually changing, and every year universities slightly increase the
number of students they admit. Also, the structure of university studies has been
changing — in the past, only long 5-year programs existed, leading to a Master's degree
but with the introduction of Bachelor's studies as the ﬁrst level of university education, it
is likely that more students will complete the shorter Bachelor's programs and the number
of graduates will increase. Nevertheless contrasting the current numbers of university
graduates in the Czech Republic with other nations, the difference is striking.
Historically, Central and Eastern European higher education has been selective
(Mauch & Sabloff, 1995), and the paradigm of university as “elite” institution is widely
accepted by the society. During the communist times, education was skewed towards
vocational training and people pursued higher education more for personal enrichment
than for any ﬁnancial rewards. The market liberalization following 1989 changed the
value of education, and university degrees began to count as an investment into human
capital that can yield high earnings (Cerych, 1999; Freeman, 1995; Koucky, 1996;
Kozma, 1998; Mauch & Sabloff, 1995; McMullen, 2000). The strong economic
motivation that higher education suddenly acquired led to a sharp increase in demand,
and universities have opened up as their capacities allowed. However, their capacities

were still insufﬁcient and they have not been able to meet the demand. Even though the

66

number of accepted students nearly doubled between 1997 and 2005 (see Table 3), there
are still thousands of applicants who are left behind although they would qualify for
admission, i.e. they pass the entrance examinations but with the limited seats, some
universities and programs can afford to accept only a certain number of those who topped
the list.

Table 3 - Numbers of university students between 1997 and 2006
Year 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06

 

Number
of 177,723 187,148 198,961 209,298 223,008 248,756 274,192 282,958 296,435
students
(Czech Ministry of Education, 2006)

Part of the problem of limited access can be attributed to ﬁnances — public
universities are not allowed to charge tuition and they are fully dependent on ﬁrnds from
the state budget, which are constrained. University professors are immensely underpaid,
and many capable academicians and young graduates choose to work for private sector or
leave for the West. Because of the constrained budgets, universities are unable to
substantially expand their capacities, attract good quality teaching force, and accept all
students who would qualify for admission.

To some extent, the organization of university studies has also been problematic.
Until 1998, studying at a university meant studying in a single ﬁve-year program that led
to a Master’s degree. The higher Education Act of 1998 introduced a Bachelor’s degree
but for a number of years, the bachelor programs were not successfully integrated into the
higher education system and ran parallel with the long 5-year Master programs, which
prevailed. Many undergraduate programs thus found strong competition in the long

Master programs and lacked continuation in short Master programs, which were largely

absent. As a result, many undergraduate programs often led to a dead end; also because

67

the society had not learned to ascribe much value to bachelor's degrees. The situation
began to change with a 2004 amendment to the Higher Education Act. The long 5-year
programs are now being gradually phased out, and connecting short Master programs
introduced (Czech Ministry of Education, 2006), with the consequences that
undergraduate education has been expanding. These changes are taking place in response
to the Bologna declaration that the Czech Republic signed and that bounds signatory
countries in Europe to create a common European Higher Education Area where degrees
are mutually recognized and organization of higher education converges towards the
same model. In the Czech Republic, the clearer demarcation between undergraduate and
graduate studies should foster a more balanced educational system that is more apt to
effectively regulate supply and demand.

Establishment of private higher education institutions has affected the situation of
limited access to tertiary education only marginally. Most private universities have not
functioned as serious competitors to the public universities because they were not
accredited to offer degrees equivalent to the degrees conferred in public universities.
Additionally, most students cannot afford to pay the tuition so public university largely
remains the ﬁrst choice. The 2005 annual report on conditions in higher education in the
Czech Republic indicated that 91.7% university applicants applied for admission to
public universities while only 8.3% applied to private higher education institutions
(Czech Ministry of Education, 2006).

Under the given circumstances, universities and study programs turn to stringent
admission procedures that help them weed students out. This is not equally true about all

universities and study programs. There is a hierarchy in popularity of different schools

68

and study areas. For example, law, economics, and social sciences are in high demand,
and thus they tend to have the smallest number of available slots in proportion to the
number of students who apply. Technical universities on the other hand may not even
deploy entrance examinations, because they are likely to have enough seats to satisfy all
their applicants, although their drop-out rates are high after the ﬁrst year -- roughly 30%
(in some schools as many as 50%) students leave because they cannot keep up with the
demanding curriculum (Czech Ministry of Education, 2006).

As discussed earlier, the entrance examinations tend to be developed locally and
they vary from institution to institution, and among study programs. Czech higher
education is highly specialized in the sense that it does not provide any general liberal
arts education (a responsibility of secondary education) but offers studies within
delineated boundaries of a speciﬁc study program that students must select prior to
applying. Students generally take entrance examinations in subjects that pertain to their
chosen ﬁeld. For instance, students aspiring to go to medical school typically take
entrance examinations in biology, chemistry and physics. Students applying to
architecture may have to ﬁrst take talent examinations (e. g. examinations that involve
drawing); if they succeed, they proceed to entrance examinations in mathematics,
descriptive geometry, art history and architecture. Students aspiring to study a foreign
language take written and oral examinations in the foreign language, history and
literature of the areas where the language is spoken and so on.

In addition to the subjects pertaining to selected ﬁeld of study, universities also
include foreign language tests and a test of " general knowledge" which can incorporate

virtually any subject and any kind of information. But even within the individual

69

subjects, it is difficult for students to know what to prepare for. In interviews with
teachers, many complained about the university admission practices and described the
tests in ways that echoed to the following quote of a history teacher:
My poor students... They attended seminars and collected entrance tests from
previous years and then they would come to us [history teachers] because they did
not know and we did not know either. Those were awful things [on the tests], for
example details from Bulgarian history or the names of Parisian Communards —
not the main ones, those you would know. . .also something about WWI, but it

was a battle that we could not ﬁnd anywhere...

There are virtually no rules; universities and university departments entertain
complete autonomy in setting up their admission policies and procedures. The
development of the university entrance exams often falls on faculty members in
individual programs and departments, many of whom have had no preparation and
expertise in test development. Unsurprisingly, in the past, some university entrance tests
were found to have low reliability, poorly constructed items containing mistakes, or
questions asking for knowledge that had no justiﬁable connection to the selected program
of study (Scio, 1999). In the words of one university professor: "The university entrance
exams are completely nonsensical. We all know that. It’s still the same ...everywhere.
Still the phone books [meaning long lists of trivial and disconnected information],
everybody knows it is non-sense but with the numbers of applicants. . .". The tests
typically include sections that call for factual knowledge, and in that sense they drive

secondary schools to emphasize factual knowledge and memorization of large quantities

70

of information. The focus on factual knowledge in Czech education is strong and it

appears to have no limits. As a ministerial ofﬁcial described it:

It’s a crazy vicious circle where the teachers at academic high schools for

example prepare their students for the entrance exams to the Law School and then

suddenly the students are prepared for the tests, so the Law School has to come up
. with even more difﬁcult tests because they can accept only one tenth of the

applicants. So the academic high schools start teaching more non-sense. ..

Summary

Czech education takes pride in the positive developments in pre-schools that show
more child-centered pedagogical approaches. Other sources of national pride include
well-established vocational schooling, and a dense network of publicly funded extra—
curricular art schools where many Czech children learn to play an instrument or take art
lessons with highly qualiﬁed teachers. Generally, in comparison to many of their Western
European counterparts, Czech teachers are highly qualiﬁed — by law they are required to
have a Master’s degree to teach at all educational levels except pre-schools.

As a recently conducted survey showed, the Czech general public is largely
satisﬁed with the educational system (Strakova, Basl & Vesely, 2006). Czech students
fare relatively well in international studies like PISA or TIMSS. The 2003 PISA results
were especially satisfactory, placing the Czech Republic among the top performing
countries in sciences and mathematics and average in literacy skills (OECD, 2004). But
when closely analyzed, researchers ﬁnd that the same international studies also point to
problems underlying Czech education. Disparities in student outcomes according to the

type of school (academic, technical-vocational, lower-vocational) are alarmingly large:

71

students in the lower vocational schools are far below their counterparts in the academic
high schools (Bartova, 2004; Matejﬁ & Strakova, 2005b; Strakova, 2002). These
disparities count among the largest in Europe and closely correlate with family
background (Cerych et al., 1998). Schools do not perform a ﬁrnction of a social equalizer
but instead, they seem to contribute to an increasing gap between students from
advantaged (educated) and less advantaged family backgrounds. In addition, while the
overall results in international comparative studies may appear to cast a positive light on
the Czech educational system, they also reveal that Czech students have difﬁculties with
tasks based on creative and independent thinking (Simonova & Strakova, 2005).

The Czech education system fails to create equal opportunities for all children but
the society at large does not perceive it as a major problem that needs to be addressed. As
several interviewees pointed out, the Czech society seems to largely embrace the belief
that some students are apt for academics and others are not. Discourse on equal
educational opportunities is virtually absent and any efforts to raise the issue tend to be
dismissed as attempts to reinstate the “communist equality” — a notion that has negative
connotations, particularly within the more educated circles of the society (Matéjﬁ &
Strakova, 2005b).

Thus, Czech educational system continues to be highly stratiﬁed and elitist — a
phenomenon enforced through stringent selection mechanisms, typically in the form of
entrance examinations from one level of education to the next. Driven by the entrance
tests but also inﬂuenced by cultural and historical traditions, teaching in Czech schools
emphasizes knowledge of facts. Instructional practices rely on the deeply embedded

content-driven educational model and the system does not favor alternative, more

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student-centered practices, which are restricted to a minority of reform-oriented schools.
"Teachers set lesson goals exclusively in terms of content and do not consider it their
responsibility to develop students' skills and attitudes" (Simonova & Strakova, 2005, p.9)
The education system as a whole produces students who have learned to reproduce
information from diverse academic disciplines but who have difﬁculty connecting the
different pieces of knowledge they posses and apply it to real life problems (Botlik &

Souéek, 2002; Matejﬁ & Strakova, 2005b).

Those who would like to see a ﬁrndamental change in Czech education view the
prevailing content model of teaching and learning as inadequate, out-dated and in need
for change but informal content control mechanisms such as entrance examinations, and
some university entrance examinations in particular, typically based on factual
knowledge, make it difﬁcult for teachers to move away from content-driven education.
The cunicular reform, which attempts to reconﬁgure the system and bring attention to the
skills and competencies that Czech students are lacking, is thus facing major hurdles that

will not be easily overcome.

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CHAPTER 4: POLICY GESTATION

The previous chapters described the historical and political context of Czech
education and current issues that the educational system faces. This chapter marks a shift
from focus on the contextual factors of policy to the policy itself. To match it with the
conceptual framework introduced in Chapter One, this chapter leaves the realm of the
political era and education state and moves in the arena of the policy process represented
by Bowe and Ball's policy triangle model. The goal of this chapter is to capture the
interplay of the politics, policy actors and ideas as they manifested themselves in the
development of the curricular reform. In chronicling the circumstances that led to the
policy development, the chapter begins with an account of the chaotic conditions that a
country transitioning from Communism to democracy experienced through the 19903 and
that prepared the ground for the educational transformation. The idea that something
fundamental should change in the Czech education system has been present ever since
the collapse of the communist regime, but in the midst of other policy issues, it has not
gained much prominence until more recent years. The development of a strategy and
goals for transformation thus took an unusually long time. This chapter chronicles that
time and interprets the policy gestation in the light of Kingdon’s theory (1995) on how
policies arrive at governmental agendas.

Towards an overarching educational strategy

Undeniably, the landscape of Czech education has transformed signiﬁcantly over

the past decades. The changes were more a result of spontaneous reactions to the past and

organic adjustments to the new conditions than a product of carefully thought-out

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decisions that would steer the transformation towards a particular vision. In developing
educational policies, the Czech Republic was lagging behind other post-communist
countries (Mitter, 2003) and Czech reformers were short of seeing the more substantial
changes in teaching and learning that they had hoped would unfold. In the turbulent years
of the 19903, education stood secondary on the policy agenda to economic and social
reforms. For most of the 19903, the Ministry of Education appeared to have functioned in
the absence of a plan that would direct its activities and policy-driven change processes.
The situation was exacerbated by a high turnover of Education Ministers. Since 1990, the
nation has seen 10 Ministers of Education — when averaged, this would give each
Minister approximately 1.7 years in the ofﬁce. As the Ministers were changing, so were
the agendas. A university professor involved in the educational transformation
characterized the ﬁrst 10 years of transformation in the following way:
Although lots of things were here, it was necessary that one of the
Ministers. . .would take the positive [aspects of education in the CR]... of course,
the state had a decisive role, the school committee in the parliament etc. but they
should have agreed on something and create a vision where to begin and where to
go, why and in which direction Czech education should be steered over the next
10 years. And then take that as a starting point for all organizational, structural,
legislative changes. That should have been done at the beginning. It was not and
instead education was extreme in that each year there was a new Minister and
depending on how it was polarized politically, whenever there was a new
minister, even if the previous minister had done something good, the new minister

went in the opposite direction. And that complicated the process of

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transformation. At a time when teachers were enthusiastic, when there was desire

to change things... a great deal of energy was wasted because of the chaos and the

aimlessness.
"Quality and Accountability"

The development in educational policy was sluggish but that is not to say that
there were no attempts to create a comprehensive approach to change. Non-governmental
educational organizations and associations were the ﬁrst to put proposals on the table but
they had no political leverage that would allow their voices to be heard. By default, the
task was up to the Ministry of Education and individual Ministers who, to a varying
degree, had the power to move ideas on political agendas. An early attempt on the side of
the Ministry to draft an overarching strategy can be linked to a report titled "Quality and
Accountability", which was released in 1994.

In this document, the Ministry tried to identify problems facing Czech education
and craft solutions to them. It is interesting to note that the brief, 30-page report was
framed primarily within the discourse of Czech educational history, achievements since
1990, and continuation of transformation.

The transformation of our education system is now entering a new stage. In this

stage we have to add new qualities and objectives to the results already achieved:

we have to balance and stabilise the education system, articulate and rationalise
its structure, place emphasis on its quality and evaluation and establish clear rules

which will not stiﬂe initiative and creativity. (Czech Ministry of Education, 1994,

p.16)

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The report noted that Czech education still carries the legacy of the 19'h century
educational model with heavily centralized governance and limited access to higher
levels of education. Since 1948 "the Czech education system along with the whole of
society was gradually distorted, even though its foundations remained and many teachers
sought to maintain its traditions and standards. Contamination by incompatible elements
of a foreign model [Soviet education] and a massive ideologisation which affected
especially the social sciences and humanities led to uniformity, and to a drop in the
standards achieved" (p.4). The report positioned the Czech Republic as a country that was
"isolated from the developments in the democratic world", which were described in terms
of rights and freedoms of the individual, the 'human factor' as a driving force for
development, and 'lrigh-quality education and training for all'. The proposed remedy for
the deﬁciencies of the past can be summarized as: further democratization,
decentralization, and diversiﬁcation of the system.

Within the most common discourses that involved democratization,
decentralization, and diversiﬁcation of the system, the strategy went on to propose
signiﬁcant changes in curriculum. This is where the seeds of the current curriculum
reform based on a two-tiered curriculum model can be found. The strategy established
that the state will develop general educational standards and schools will submit their
own "educational pro grammes" containing "educational goals, the structure of time
allocation and subject-matter, the method of evaluation of pupils and the way in which
the programme is completed" (p.29). The new curricular policy was envisioned to lead

towards "diverse educational supply and greater choice of educational paths" (p.18).

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Although the document referred to itself as the "starting point of educational
policy", it remained largely unnoticed and it never performed the function it had
proclaimed. Not only did the new curricular policy never materialize during the 19903, it
wasn't even talked about.

New Educational Standards

Various progressive education groups and associations continued calling for a
more substantial change. The curriculum reform proposed in Quality and Accountability
was not yet happening but in 1995/96 the Ministry published new Standards for
Education in primary and secondary schools (Polyzoi & Cema, 2001a). These standards
somewhat relaxed the content demands of the old national curriculum but they kept the
form of content outlines, i.e. the traditional lists of topics that imply mastery of factual
knowledge as the ultimate goal of education. They allowed teachers to adjust up to 30%
of the course content and schools could modify up to 10% of the overall curriculum (i.e.
distribution of time to individual subjects) (Polyzoi & Cema, 2001 a). However, that has
produced little change. Under the pressure of high stakes entrance examinations from one
school level to the next, teachers felt that they could not substantially reduce the content
and use their instructional time more effectively. Additionally, they still found the newer
standards too overloaded in content. In short, these measures were not sufﬁcient to
generate the fundamental change that the education activists had wished to see and
schools continued to prioritize transmitting large quantities of factual knowledge at the
expense of dialogic, democratic education that would encourage students to think and

form their own opinions (Botlik & Soueek, 2002; Strakova, 2002).

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People commonly continue to describe education in Czech schools as cramming.
In describing the educational system, many Czechs would use metaphors such as that
schools focus on producing walking encyclopedias rather than independently thinking
individuals, and that the national content outlines resemble phone books, i.e. they tend to
be long lists of disconnected facts. But these characteristics also constitute the Czech
grammar of schooling. They are familiar to all and they represent values that many
people still adhere to (i.e. the view that an educated person is a person who knows a lot of
things). Thus for many, content and curriculum were not the burning issues that needed a
solution. But other educational matters gained saliency, namely the problem of high
school exit examinations alluded to in the previous chapter, so the curriculum reform was
buried for several more years.

Curricular reform in the shadow of high school exit examinations

In mid 19903, everybody seemed to be calling for a change in the high school exit
examinations. Principals wanted to see standardized tests that would compare schools and
show which schools were better and which worse; universities also seemed to favor the
idea because the existing highly variable exit examinations did not provide them with
much usable information about students' achievement. The calls from the bottom of the
educational system coupled with 1996 OECD country report's criticism of the extant high
school exit examinations. The report criticized the examinations for being solely school-
based and incomparable; and for wasting energy, time and resources because their results
were not used as a measure of quality, or an instrument that would point to any direction
of future school development (OECD, 1996). Finally, the reformers did not completely

oppose the idea of reforming the exit examinations either. Since the curricular reform was

79

not happening, they believed that assessment measures that everyone seemed to want
could serve as an instrument for changing the curriculum. So they too supported the
proposal. An education professor who was engaged with various stages of the policy
formulation commented that:

...[the reformers] really seemed to think that they could change the quality of

teaching in secondary schools. The idea that the high school exit exam could

dictate to teachers to teach more intelligently, that was there. I think that at the
beginning, they certainly did not think that the exit tests would only measure more
accurately what is already being done in schools, which became clearly evident
some 2 years later.

Policy makers also thought that where they saw no possibilities to inﬂuence fully
autonomous universities and their entrance examinations, standardized high school exit
tests might help. The hope was that state exit examinations would yield comparable
results, which universities could deem reliable and valid. With such measures of high
school knowledge, there would be less need for universities to continue their stringent
practices of weeding students out by means of entrance examination tests that often ask
for knowledge of trivia. Consequently, selection of students to universities might be fairer
and more efﬁcient. In short, the proposal to reform high school exit examination became
a garbage can proposal (J .G. March, 1974), offering solutions to a number of different
problems including unregulated competition between secondary schools, curriculum
change, and university entrance examination.

According to the accounts of several interviewees, one ministerial ofﬁcial adopted

the idea of exit exams as his pet project. He was said to be a capable manager who had

80

sufﬁcient political power, and hence was able to establish a new institute under the
umbrella of the Ministry -- the Center for Reform of High School Examinations — to
exclusively take charge of the high school exit examination reform. In the words of an
educational researcher who was involved in work of the Ministry in an advisory role, this
person was:

...obsessed with the idea and he pushed it through to the Ministry... so somehow

it happened and it grew on the Ministry. He was quite capable so he ensured that

an institute was established that would take care of the exit exams he then went
on to do something else but the exit exams [the idea of standardized tests] have
somehow continued to live in the system...

What was not happening with the idea of the curricular reform was happening
with the high school exit exam reform — extant examinations were clearly identiﬁed as a
problem and many voices were demanding a solution. The strong voices at the bottom
calling for a ﬁx were supported and legitimized by external forces (OECD) and resonated
with policy makers, who were under pressure to respond to their constituents. In
Kingdon's terms (1995), the problem, policy streams and politics came together, and a
window of opportunity opened for the high school exit examination reform to
materialize.

The new Institute for Reform of High School Exit Examinations began
developing pilot tests, and in 2001 published test catalogues for each school subject.
These catalogues were subsequently distributed to schools, which were led to believe that
standardized tests would be launched soon. As the reform was taking a life on its own,

opposition against it grew. The ﬁrst pilot tests were far from the kind of transforrnative

81

tests the reformers had envisioned. They mirrored the overloaded content covered in
schools on the grounds that students had to be tested on the content they had studied in
school (i.e. not on skills that school was not leading them to develop). The content in the
newly published catalogues was thus not signiﬁcantly different from the detailed national
curriculum that many wanted to see revamped. Those eager to see a fundamental change
began to worry that rather than pushing for change, the exit exam reform would preserve
the status quo, and thwart any attempts to change curriculum and instructional practices
so they fought to stop policy makers from institutionalizing the reform. Within these
colliding streams, the space for the curricular reform began opening again.

The high school exit examination reform has been put on hold and its launch has
been postponed several times. The idea of high school exit examination reform is now
fully accepted in the system and continues to live with the Institute, whose name has been
changed to Center for Evaluation of School Results and whose activities have been
expanded to evaluation and assessment of school outputs after 5'h and 9m grade. In more
precise terms, the Institute has developed into a state-run testing agency that continues to
design pilot tests for the future state secondary school exit examination, while also
developing and administering tests for 5'h and 9'h graders as part of new school evaluation
movement. But the disputes over the standardized exams have continued. The Education
Act of 2004 afﬁrrned that in the future, state exit tests constitute a part of the high school
exit examination, but it remains unclear when the reform will be launched on full scale,
and how the tests will be conceptualized. The ﬁrst tests were scheduled for 2008 but
elections in 2006 reconﬁgured the political scene once again and the new Education

Minister has advocated for further postponement of the tests. The Minister argued that at

82

the current stage of development, the tests could do more harm than good because they
are not ready and need more work. The Parliamentary School Committee has approved
the proposal to postpone the exams and in summer 2007 the Senate reafﬁrmed the
decision. It has become clear that the standardized tests will not be launched before 2010
or later (CTK, 2007).
How the idea of reforming curriculum resurfaced again

In contrast to the high school exit examination reform, which emerged more
organically with a strong push from the bottom of the policy scene, the ideas of the
curricular reform had to wait for a new window of opportunity to be re-introduced and
noticed. In the second half of 19903, the high school exit examination reform topped the
educational policy agenda and there was a great deal of hustle and bustle with the
establishment of the Institute for Reform of High School Exit Examinations, development
of ﬁrst tests, pilots of the test, and ensuing debates which all those activities sparked.
While all this was taking place, the Czech Republic still had not adopted any strategy for
the overall educational transformation. The educational system continued to operate
under an amended Education Act of 1984, and although policy makers thought it
necessary to develop a new bill and re-think the existing paradigm of education and
schooling in the Czech Republic, the events were progressing slowly and piecemeal
policy making continued to prevail. The breakthrough for the strategy, and coincidently
for the curricular reform came during the term of Education Minister Eduard Zeman who
served in the ofﬁce from 1998 to 2002.

Zeman made it his goal to initiate a comprehensive strategy that the education

system clearly needed. This presented an opportunity for the reformers to contribute to

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the political debates, and for the curricular reform to resurface. Under Zeman's
leadership, the Ministry ﬁrst developed goals for educational policy, which were
approved by the government in 1999 as the ﬁrst step towards the new strategy. The
Minister then proceeded to announce "Challenge for Ten Million" —- an invitation for the
10 million inhabitants of the Czech Republic to participate in a public discussion and
express their views on education in the Czech Republic (White Paper, 2001). The
governmental goals, the outcomes of the public discussion, analyses and assessments
carried out by foreign experts, and other key policy documents which emerged at
approximately the same time provided the foundation for the development of an
overarching strategy titled National Program for the Development of Education.

The strategy, commonly referred to as the White Paper, was authored by a team of
respected educational experts, researchers and university academics under the leadership
of education professor Kotasek. The Czech government approved it in February 2001 and
by doing so, revived the ideas of internal school transformation and cunicular reform.
The White Paper reintroduced the curricular reform as one of the key elements of
educational transformation and outlined key premises of the reform:

1) Space is opening up for further development of schools' autonomy, for full use

of their potential, for greater development of teachers' creative abilities, for

greater ﬂexibility of the education system, and for greater effectiveness of

education. . .

2) ...The new conception of curriculum, which is not based simply on acquiring

as much factual knowledge as possible, will be used in developing both the

framework and school educational programmes. . .Education will have a new
orientation: to learn how to know. . .avoiding a ﬂood of trivial information but
learning how to process information, turn it into knowledge and apply it, being
able to think and assess critically; to learn how to act and live together...to learn

to be...At the same time, the important things are a quality system of values, the
development of adequate sociopersonal characteristics, an understanding of one's

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own personality, respect for others, the ability to understand the spiritual
dimension of life. ..

3) ...A number of new topics are emerging, such as European integration,
multicultural education, environmental education. . .Links between subjects,
integrated teaching and new forms of teaching will be applied, facilitating inner
differentiation and even individualization of education.
(White Paper, 2001, p40) (italics in the original)
The 'White Paper' versus 'Quality and Accountability'

The White Paper offered an encompassing view of transformation that spans from
school administration and ﬁnancing to internal school transformation, i.e. "changes in
educational content, methods and forms of instruction but also a change in the school
climate and environment (p.18)". The transformation was envisioned as a process that
will lead to the development of schools as houses of creativity and innovation,
marshalling a model for a democratic society where students have a stronger voice and
teachers act as their partners.

In contrast to the 1994 document Quality and Accountability, which argued for
educational transformation from the point of view of Czech historical continuity, the
White Paper framed its arguments in an international education perspective. The key
ideas stayed the same but they were wrapped in a new package. Anyone who would look
for detailed references to the national educational heritage would not ﬁnd much in the
White Paper. The ﬁrst paragraph of Chapter 1 of the document begins with words: "We
live in a time of major and unpredictable social changes whose impact goes far beyond
our own country" (p.13). In this vein, the strategy goes on to formulate general aims of
education primarily with regard to the international context in which Czech education

ﬁnds itself. The text states: "the basic trends of the development of education systems in

developed democratic countries will be projected into the main strategic guidelines of

85

Czech educational policy" (p.19). The discourse positions the Czech Republic as a
recipient of global trends rather than an active participant in their formation. Global
trends are implicitly taken for granted, and as something that Czech educational policy
needs to mirror.

Further, the White Paper brought in the global discourses of knowledge society,
information age and most importantly lifelong learning, the latter providing the main
frame for the argument for change:

A new concept of lifelong learning for all has emerged, whose implementation

has become a goal for both international government organizations (European

Union, Council of Europe, OECD and UNESCO) and all developed and

developing countries. Therefore we too have accepted it as a goal (p.17).
According to the strategy, the implications of pursuing lifelong education as a goal are
far-reaching. It means "a profound transformation of an education system that is as
radical as the introduction of compulsory schooling was at the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution two hundred years ago" (p. 1 7). The strategy wamed that:

...if we do not deliberately undergo a long-term programme of changes. . ., the

education system will gradually cease to be able to resist to external impacts such

as bullying, drugs, violence, further weakening of families, consumerism and a

passive way of life, civic detachment, political and economic destabilisation, or to

try and compensate for these. It will no longer reﬂect the development of society,
or be responsive to its continual new demands. Thus the only way to become an

equal and fully-ﬂedged member of a globalized world will be closed to us (p.20)

[italics in the original]

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External political pressures and migration of discourses

The document's use of globally converging discourses of knowledge society,
information age and most importantly lifelong learning demonstrates how discourses
travel and how they are re-appropriated in national contexts. Lifelong learning emerged
as a new concept in Czech policy texts in response to trends in the European Union (e. g.
in 'Czech education & Europe: Pre—accession strategy for human resource development,
1999'), which the Czech Republic was aspiring to join at that time. While for the Czech
Republic, it was a newly emerging discourse; its history had been longer in international
and transnational contexts represented by UNESCO, OECD, and the EU (Education
Policy Association, 1999). Using Norman Fariclough's terminology (Fairclough, 2005), it
can be said that Czech policy makers re-contextualized the discourses circling in OECD,
UNESCO and EU's documents, and appropriated them for their own purposes.

The excerpts from the White Paper showed that the international context played
an important role in Czech educational policy making. Under the given circumstances it
would be surprising if it didn't. In 2001, the Czech Republic aspired to enter the European
Union, which it did as of January 1, 2004. Accession to the EU required the Czech
Republic to harmonize laws and regulations with those of the EU, and meet a number of
requirements that the EU set. The strong desire "to return to Europe" had characterized
the development in the Czech Republic ever since the collapse of communism in 1989.

As the Czech pre-accession strategy stated:

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...it will be necessary to introduce into Czech education certain principles,
strategies and concrete measures which are characteristic of the development of
the education systems of modern European democracies, and which have been
adopted by the European Union as recommendations, and implemented in
European programmes. It is imperative that the Czech Republic be imbued with,

or at least, inspired by them (Education Policy Association, 1999)

The policy developments in the Czech Republic undeniably show traces of
inspiration by the referred principles and trends. Clearly, there were political motives that
helped the appropriation of the new discourses but that may not be the whole story.
Global discourses have become a strong rhetorical tool serving to legitimize policy ideas
while at the same time promoting them. Edwards et a1. (2004) closely analyzed the use of
the discourse of lifelong learning in a UK Green Paper The Learning Age (Edwards,
2004), and showed how the discourse created a crisis narrative that would appeal to a
range of different audiences. Hardly anyone could argue against the beneﬁts of lifelong
learning. "Lifelong learning is positioned to harness the desires and values of those
working in the terrain; it attempts to seduce" (Edwards, Nicoll, Solomon, & Usher, 2004,
p.144).

In a similar vein, the White Paper also operated with the same crisis narrative that
served to establish the reality of the importance of lifelong learning, legitimize various
proposals for educational transformation, which all appeared to ﬁt within the discourse of
lifelong learning, and justify the necessity of fundamental reform.

It is tempting to suggest that the cunicular reform as part of the envisioned

educational transformation could have been designed as a symbolic policy to appease

88

those who wished to see it enacted as well as foreign policy circles watching that the
Czech Republic followed all the necessary steps for integration into the EU. But I do not
think that it is the case. First, the White Paper was not merely a document created by
politicians, done to people, and void of the voices of educational activists and
progressives who were calling for a fundamental change. On the contrary, the team that
authored it consisted of many who could be described as reformers, i.e. people who have
been striving for a deep change. Secondly, the ideas of the curricular reform did not stay
on the paper but began to materialize in a concrete policy text of the new Frameworks
that teachers will have to respond to in their locally produced curricula. Thirdly, even if
the discourses had symbolic political functions, new discourses can become
institutionalized and shape change — they do not simply reﬂect the social reality but co-
construct it. As Edwards et a1. stated (2004): "We are positioned by this rhetoric and
position ourselves in relation to it. The rhetoric is therefore very real and very powerful
and should not be dismissed as merely spindoctoring" (Edwards et al., 2004, p.149).
Origins of the ideas

As discussed in the previous section, when compared to Quality and
Accountability, the White Paper framed the strategic changes it proposed in a new and a
distinctly different discourse. However, that does not mean that the ideas changed. The
White Paper preserved the key concepts outlined in Quality and Accountability and
developed them into a greater detail. In regard to the curricular reform, the premises of a
new multi-tiered curricular system continued to hold: the state will be responsible for
deﬁning a national cunicular framework, and schools will have to write their own

curricula, thus constructing their own ways of fulﬁlling the national frameworks. The

89

change of curriculum is envisioned so that it "is not based simply on acquiring as much
factual knowledge as possible" (Czech Ministry of Education, 2001, p.40).

The new idea not yet present in Quality and Accountability but highly prominent
in the cunicular reform relates to the concept of key competencies as the new goal of
education Key competencies are expected to serve "as an instrument for transforming the
encyclopaedic conception of education" (p.41) and thus help to accomplish the change
away from narrow focus on factual knowledge. The White Paper equated the path
towards this goal with further decentralization of the system, increased school autonomy
and teacher professionalization. But by introducing key competencies, it has also formed
a new discourse of competencies, and terminology previously unknown to the Czech
policy audience. This discourse further exempliﬁes the earlier discussed re-
contextualization and appropriation of transnational discourses — in this case, the
discourse is clearly connected to recent educational policies of the EU and OECD
publications (Rychen & Salganik, 2001). I will pay closer attention to competency
discourse in the Czech Republic in Chapter Five.

Apparently, with the recently institutionalized curricular reform the idea of
decentralized curriculum re—emerged in the Czech Republic but where did it come from
in the ﬁrst place? Some interviewees saw its evolution as a natural response of the system
that had been too tied up by strong centralized governance. In the words of a ministerial
ofﬁcial:

The ideas emerged because they were necessary. Simply, the system and the

content outlines from the pre-revolution times were outdated and there were

90

expectations that things will get re-evaluated, that a new content, conception and
purpose of education will be worked out.
While it was certainly true that the educational mechanisms deployed during the
communist times were out of synch with the new political era, asking teachers to develop
their school curricula — an activity for which they had been historically unprepared —
appears to be a major change in course that signals more than an evolutionary continuity.
Undeniably, other forces had interfered. Interviewees agreed that although there was a
need to challenge the existing status quo, the ideas for accomplishing the task were
instigated by foreign (Western) educational models. The following quotes illustrate that
notion:
I think that the original impulse was rather foreign, although not uncritically
accepted. But to say that the reform speciﬁcally stems from how things were
developing here, at least in the minds of those who launched it, I would not say
that. Teachers' work with existing content outlines certainly was not something so
shameful that it would need a change. The historical situation does not pressure
anyone and people would happily continue doing what they had been doing
before.

(education professor)

...experiences from abroad and foreign pressures were perhaps most effective [in

propagating change]. Experience of the countries that we wanted to catch up with,

mainly Scandinavia, Denmark, the UK, those were the key drafters. And then,

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there were foreign experts who were coming during the 903, from OECD and they
provided some recommendations...

(education professor, advisor to the Ministry)

...since we have become part of the EU, adjusting to global trends is perhaps
unavoidable. . .
(high ranking ofﬁcial ﬁom the Ministry of Education)

These three quotes suggest a strong inﬂuence of foreign pressures on policy-
driven change in Czech education. One might be inclined to say that the Czech reforms
are indebted to global and international trends. However, that is only a part of the story.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the international forces combined with internal
needs and shaped policy ideas in ways that accommodated both. Scholarly literature
documented the challenges and virtually the impossibility of separating the "outside" and
"inside" forces that drive national policy making (Anderson-Levitt & Alimasi, 2001). The
curricular reform in the Czech Republic displays the same muddiness and blurring of
boundaries. The policy ideas have been shaped and reshaped by their contexts. Clearly,
some impulses came from elsewhere but the appropriation of new ideas and discourses
that accompanied them was quite deliberate. The Czech Republic is explicitly trying to
adjust to new transnational trends, catch up and be in the know, but also tune its
educational system with the existing socio-political conditions in the country.

The curricular reform and new Education Act
Once the White Paper was approved, the Ministry was prepared to begin

translating its ideas into a new Education Bill. The ﬁrst draft of the bill came in 2001

92

relatively soon after the publication of the White Paper. In this bill, the curricular reform
played only a marginal role but the high school exit examination reform was at the fore
(Mezera, 2001). This mirrored the public standing on both reform proposals — the exit
examination reform was highly visible and publicized; the newspapers wrote about it;
some secondary schools had participated in the pilot of exit tests, and various interest
groups were taking a stand on the issue. In contrast to that, the curricular reform was
largely unheard of with the exception of educational activists, educational experts, and
academicians who stood at its inception.

By the time the bill was drafted, the controversy over high school exit
examination fully unfolded. The goals of the reform were in conﬂict with one another
and the purposes unclear. For example, the high school exit examination reform was
claiming to strive for a minimum standard of common knowledge for all students but
there were also hopes that exit tests may replace university entrance examinations and
serve as instruments of student selection. Aside the high school exit examination
controversy, there were other problems with the bill. Namely, it proposed to abolish
multi-year academic high schools but that idea ran into strong resistance of the elites. In
all, the bill had slim chances for survival and predictably, it was rejected. The entire
document appeared problematic. There were numerous procedural mistakes, conceptual
tensions, and a number of unresolved issues that still needed to be addressed. In the
words of a journalist who writes about education: "The bill has evolved into a document
that is inconsistent and unbalanced, where some of its sections are contradicting goals

and principles outlined at its beginning. It has become a bill about schools, i.e.

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institutions, rather than a bill about education, which is what its title states" (Hruba,
2001/2002).

In 2002, Education Ministers changed and the new Minister Petra Buzkova was
determined to have a new bill passed during her term in the ofﬁce. Although she earned a
reputation of a Minister who did not understand educational matters, as a lawyer and a
skilled politician, she was able to take charge of the new bill and reshape it so that it
would gain consensus among different stakeholders. The rewritten bill came before the
Parliament in 2004 and the curricular reform gained a more prominent role in it. Next to
the state high school exit examinations that remained in the picture, the curricular reform
formed the backbone of the bill. While the state exit examinations polarized the political
spectrum, hardly anyone would disagree with the idea that schools and teachers should
have increased decision-making authority in curricular matters, which is essentially what
the curricular reform involved. In a contested terrain, the curricular reform found little
opposition and represented the piece of the legislation that most people could agree with
and thus worked as a unifying element and a point of conﬂuence where consensus could
be reached. As one university professor said: "the Ministry used it as an argument to get
the bill passed". Whether that is really true is disputable but it is plausible that the
curricular reform might have functioned as a selling point and contributed to the
successful passage of the new Education Act.

With the new Education Act, both reform proposals were reafﬁrmed and
institutionalized. The Act came into effect in January 2005. By that time new
Frameworks for pre-school and primary education had already been written, piloted and

approved and in line with the new Act, schools were expected to develop their own

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curricula for their ﬁrst graders in elementary and middle schools, and start teaching from
them within two years, i.e. in the 2007-2008 academic year. The pilot version of
Frameworks for academic high schools is currently awaiting a ﬁnal approval after it has
been tested in 16 high schools in the country. If these Frameworks are approved before
the end of 2007, academic high schools will have to join in and develop their own

curricula by 2009.

Summary

The gestation of the cunicular reform has been a lengthy process. The idea to
introduce a two-tier curricular model and transfer more decision making authority to
schools has been ﬂoating around at least since 1994 when it was described in a report
Quality and Accountability — the ﬁrst attempt of the Ministry of Education to outline a
comprehensive strategy for the development of education in the Czech Republic.
However, the report remained unnoticed and education continued to evolve organically in
directions that were not systematically steered towards any particular goals. There was no
sense of crisis in curriculum, and thus no urgency to look for a solution.

In contrast, high school exit examinations came to be identiﬁed as a major
problem that needed to be ﬁxed so policy makers' attention focused there. The reform of
high school exit examinations could draw on strong support in all levels of the policy
system. The bottom called for national standardized tests that would yield comparative
results among secondary schools; the top had political interests in advancing the reform
because it was recommended by foreign experts; and education activists also supported

the idea in hopes that national exit tests would create pressure for change in curriculum

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that was otherwise unlikely to happen. Gradually, high school exit examination reform
became the prevalent reform movement of the late 19903. It took a life on its own — a
new Institute for Reform of High School Exit Examinations was established under the
umbrella of the Ministry of Education and ﬁrst pilot tests started to be developed.
However, their quality was dubious and faced heavy criticisms of the activists who saw
that rather than promoting change, the tests were reinforcing the existing status quo
because they were modeled on the existing content-driven curriculum. All this was
happening in the absence of any overarching strategy or a goal.

Education activists continued calling for a substantial change and when Minister
Zeman came to ofﬁce in 1998, he responded by focusing on the development of a
comprehensive educational strategy. He initiated a debate on educational change and
entrusted a team of educational experts and academicians (many of whom sided with the
activists’ views) to author the strategy known as the White Paper. The White Paper laid
down the basic principles of the transformation, including the idea of a national high
school exit examination and further decentralization in curriculum, among other things.
As Zeman's term was coming to an end, the transformation principles and namely the
national high school exit examinations were translated into a new Education bill in 2001.
However, the bill was rejected and Zeman left the ofﬁce without the record of much
needed new Education Act. Minister Buzkova who came after Zeman was more
successful. During her cycle, the bill was reworked and passed in 2004, this time with
stronger emphasis on the curricular reform, which was marginal in the previous bill.

The progression of events of how the curricular reform developed since early

19903 and eventually gained prominence in the Education Act of 2004 can be explained

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with Kingdon's theory on the policy process. Kingdon (1995) proposed that for policies
to appear on the policy agendas, three things must coincide: streams of problems,
policies, and politics must come together. The three streams ﬂow through the system
independently of each other and only at critical times when windows of opportunities
open, they become coupled. In other words, the policy process does not show rational
linearity in that participants ﬁrst identify a problem, then seek solutions to it, generate
alternatives, and move the best one on the policy agenda. Policies often precede problems
and even when it happens that an existing policy proposal can be attached to a salient
problem, the political climate may not be receptive and the policy would still not make it
on the agenda. Many things happen separately and become coupled at critical times
(p.206).

From Kindgon's perspective, the curricular reform can be viewed as a policy
solution to a problem that, for the large part of the 19903 was not really seen as a
problem. There was no apparent crisis with the existing curriculum that needed to be
solved and policy makers were busy focusing on other issues, such as the high school exit
examinations. When the time came under the leadership of Minister Zeman to develop an
overarching strategy for the development of Czech education, the ideas of the curricular
reform re-emerged. The basic principles of the curriculum reform were very similar to
those outlined in Quality and Accountability in 1994 but there was an apparent discursive
shift. The White Paper framed the rationale for a fundamental transformation in global
and more speciﬁcally European discourses of lifelong learning, knowledge society, and
information age. All these discourses were new to the context of education in the Czech

Republic but they carried a sense of urgency that helped to legitimize proposals for

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change. In Kindgon's terms, the policy found a problem to be attached to -- the strategy
that needed to be developed provided the space where the curricular reform could exist
and the overall climate of the end of 19903 with the Czech Republic's plans to return to
Europe as a member of the European Union justiﬁed the reform as a valid effort to
further democratize Czech education and bring it up to par with its Western European
counterparts.

Still, the ﬁrst bill of the new Education Act of 2001 largely ignored the curricular
reform. Kingdon’s third stream, the politics, at that time dominated by the contested idea
of national high school exit examinations, was not yet fully receptive to the reform. The
political soil became more fertile in 2004 with the second Education bill. The year 2004
was also the time of the Czech Republic's ofﬁcial integration into the EU and the
concepts proposed in the new curricular policy (and in the White Paper) were closely
aligned to the ideas on educational policy promulgated in the EU. But perhaps more
importantly, in the new Education bill, the curricular reform represented the least
controversial section and functioned as a platform on which policy makers could ﬁnd
consensus needed to pass the bill. The window of opportunity was open, the problem
existed (passage of the new Education Act), the solution (the curricular reform) was on
the table, and the political climate was receptive to it. Thus, the curricular reform
ofﬁcially made it on the agenda and became an important element of the new Education
Act of 2004.

With the passage of the Act, it became evident that the policy ideas were to be
materialized in practice. The Act mandated that each school produce its own curriculum

to respond to the new national curricular frameworks. The Act came into effect in

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January 2005 but the implementation of the reform was staggered with primary schools
being asked ﬁrst to develop their curricula by 2007 and other school levels to follow. In
the meantime, the reform was piloted in 16 academic high schools around the country,
with three of these schools serving as data collection sites for this study.

With the passage of the Act, the curricular reform was sealed for policy makers
who then handed it down to implementers to ﬁgure out. The implementers will have to
make sense of the reform from the concrete policy text, namely the new national
Frameworks that embody requirements on what locally produced curricula need to
include. Next to the Frameworks, other representations of the policy, 6. g. a handbook on
curriculum development, newspaper articles, seminars and information disseminated
about the reform will likely guide teachers and school principals in their response to the
policy. The next chapter will thus explore how the reform ideas are presented in various
texts that have been circulated among those who will enact the policy, what messages are
conveyed in policy documents related to the reform, and how these messages travel

through various information channels to the ﬁeld of policy practice.

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CHAPTER 5: THE POLICY AS TEXT

Previous chapters dealt with the context of Czech education and forces that
affected the policy development process. This chapter examines the policy itself, i.e. the
written text of the new curricular frameworks. This text pops up in school principals'
ofﬁces as the main representation of the policy and the main clue to the reform. The text
plays a central role in the implementation process and needs to be examined for its
content, structure, and underlying assumptions. Texts gain meaning when they are read
and interpreted by their audiences so the chapter does not examine the text alone but
zeroes in on the text's representations in the media as well as its readings by school
principals and teachers.

The Frameworks have been authored by the Institute for Research in Education —
an organization under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education — and piloted at all
school levels. This study speciﬁcally focuses on the Frameworks for secondary academic
education, mainly because the time of the data collection coincided with the Frameworks'
pilot project in sixteen academic high schools around the country. In the absence of
supporting curricular materials, lesson plans 0r guidebooks, these schools relied on
consultations with the Institute and the text of the Frameworks to construe their meaning
of the reform. They were expected to test the Frameworks but there was also an
additional expectation that teachers in these pilot schools would contribute to a Handbook
on development of school curricula, which would help other schools with the curriculum-

writing process when the reform is ﬁrlly launched.

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The content of the new Frameworks

Key competencies, attainment standards and content

Following the approval of the White Paper in 2001, the Ministry entrusted one of
its institutes — the Institute for Research in Education (V yzkumny ustav pedagogicky —
VUP) — with the development of curricular frameworks for each school level, i.e. pre-
school, primary and secondary academic.l The team of the employees of the Institute
worked to ensure that the ideas of the curricular reform articulated in the White Paper
were translated into the new Frameworks. In line with the vision presented in the White
Paper, the most signiﬁcant characteristic of the Frameworks is their new conception of
education. In the words of one academician:

Czech school is built upon knowledge. . .that has become a target of criticism,

justiﬁably. This is going to change... The F rarneworks represent the ﬁrst effort in

the Czech Republic to understand curriculum as a function of what a student

needs to attain, not just a list of content topics [one has to know].
The new deﬁnition of educational goals has been articulated in terms of so called key
competencies (a term previously not used in Czech education) whereas key competencies
are deﬁned as "knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes and values that are central to an
individual's personal development, his/her active integration in society and future life
ﬁrlﬁllment" {VUP [Institute for Research in Education], 2006 #342, p.8}. In other
words, instead of a detailed outline of content coverage as has been the norm, the new
Frameworks emphasize schools' function to develop students' competencies that will

prepare them for lifelong learning. Schools will be required to focus on ﬁve key

 

' Frameworks for technical/ vocational and lower-vocational secondary schools are being developed by
another ministerial institute — the Institute for Vocational and Professional Education

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competencies to: 1) know how to learn; 2) solve problems; 3) communicate; 4) develop
social and personal skills; and 5) develop civic skills.

Next to key competencies, which represent the most general level of the
Frameworks, the document sets attainment standards for each of the 14 subjects that were
covered in the previous curriculum. For example, in the subject Czech language and

literature, the standards begin with statements such as:

I> The student distinguishes varieties of national language and appropriately

uses them according to communicative situations

I> In analyzing selected texts, the student will be able to describe basic
characteristics of Czech language and explain the principles of its
evolution and current evolutionary tendencies

(Institute for Research in Education, 2006)
The attainment standards establish what a student should be able to do; some of
them imply activity based education, some also speciﬁc content. For example, the
formulation that a student will be able to "describe basic characteristics of Czech
language and explain the principles of its evolution" suggests content coverage of what
the previous curriculum listed under the topic:
Introduction to studies of Czech language and methodology
Czech language — national language of Czechs; formal and informal languages.
Norms and codiﬁcation.
Development of Czech language. Indo-European languages. Slavic languages and
their classiﬁcation.
Slovak language and Czech language.
(Czech Ministry of Education, 1999, p.33)

Following the attaimnent standards, the Frameworks then identify content. When

compared to the previous prescriptive curriculum, these lists of content topics are less

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detailed. For example, the old curriculum named speciﬁc literary movements (e. g.
futurism, expressionism, Dadaism, surrealism, Anglo-American modernism) that teachers
were expected to cover in the subject 'Czech language and literature'. The new
Frameworks require that: "A student will be able to describe fundamental characteristics
of key periods (in Czech and world literature) and signiﬁcant literary movements, and be
able to name their representatives, and characterize and interpret their contribution to the
development of literature and literary thought" (Institute for Research in Education, 2006,
p.15). The list of content that follows does not name speciﬁc movements as the previous
curriculum did. Instead, it broadly states: "literary tendencies and movements" (p.15),
leaving it up to the teacher to determine what to consider signiﬁcant and subsequently
cover in instruction.

In sum, when comparing the Frameworks with the old curriculum, the new
components are key competencies and attainment standards. The Frameworks still outline
content but they do so in shorter lists and more general terms, handing down the decision
on details of units and topics to teachers. Speciﬁcally for 'Czech language and literature',
there is another novelty that did not exist in the previous curriculum -- the Frameworks
introduce communication and interpretation of texts and new areas of study, and give
them the same prominence as they do to literary history, which dominated the old
curriculum.

Subject integration, cross-curricular themes and instructional time allocations

The new Frameworks also introduce changes in organization of instructional time

and instruction. They further relax instructional time allocations and bring attention to the

possibility of integrating subjects. The old curriculum listed fourteen subjects (courses)

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and set minimum instructional time per week for each. In contrast to that, the
Frameworks group thematically related subjects such as biology, chemistry, physics,
geography and geology into bigger content categories, and set time allocations for the
category as a whole. This gives some ﬂexibility to schools to determine how much
instructional time they will allocate to each subject within the category.

The eight categories include: 1) Language and language communication; 2)
Mathematics and its application; 3) Man and nature; 4) Man and society; 5) Man and the
work world; 6) Art and culture; 7) Man and health; 8) Information and communication
technologies. For example, the Frameworks establish that during the four years of high
school, students must have accumulated twelve hours of instruction per week in the area
"Man and society (history and social science)". Schools will decide how to divide the
time between history and social sciences; if both subjects will be traditionally kept as two
separate courses or introduced through new courses. The schools will also have the
authority to decide in which years the content for these subjects will be covered. The old
curriculum was more prescriptive — schools had to offer a total of at least six hours of
history (two hours per week for the ﬁrst three years, i.e. 2+2+2) and six hours of social
sciences (1+1+2+2).

The new arrangement of subjects into larger content categories has spawned some
misunderstandings. Sometimes journalists, and consequently teachers who learn about
the reform from newspapers think that the content categories are synonymous with new
subjects or courses, and that they have to integrate several old subjects they perceive as
distinctly different into one. To give an example, the Frameworks do not require that

subjects such as chemistry and biology are collapsed into one course but if schools wish

104

to do so, they may. If they choose to maintain the traditional organization of subjects
(courses), the groupings suggest connections between the subjects within the same
content category.

Another new characteristic of the Frameworks are so called 'cross-curricular
themes'. These are themes and topics that had not been formally incorporated in the old
curriculum. They include: 1) personal and social education; 2) education for thinking in
European and global contexts; 3) multicultural education; 4) environmental education;
and 5) mass media education. For each theme, the Frameworks provide a list of topics to
be covered. Schools' job is to infuse their curricula with these themes in any ways that
suit them, whether it is introducing the themes through projects, diffusing them into
existing subjects, or creating new courses.

In all, the Frameworks represent a relaxation in organization of subjects/courses,
instructional time allocations, and content, giving schools more ﬂexibility in how they
will structure their curricula. At the same time, they introduce new themes and topics that
schools must incorporate in their curricula. The text of the Frameworks itself summarizes
its function in the following four bullet points.

The Frameworks:

0 Establish only basic parameters for organization of education and hereby create
a wide space for variability in designing local school curricula;
0 Signiﬁcantly reduce the amount of normative components in the direction
towards the higher grades [of academic high schools] and thus enable schools to
more effectively enact their educational purposes and ﬂexibly reﬂect educational
needs and interests of their students;
0 Delineate minimal instructional time allocations for individual content areas;
0 Enable integration of content.

(Institute for Research in Education, 2006, p.79)

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The text as a discourse

The Frameworks like any other policy text carry with them what Bowe and Ball
(1992) described as "possibilities and constraints, contradictions and spaces" (p.15) and
leave it to the implementers to determine the outcomes. But policy texts are also
instances of social action (Luke) and as such they represent underlying assumptions and
articulate a set of beliefs about how education change can be achieved. There are three
key assumptions that were present in the White Paper and continue to resonate
throughout the Frameworks.

First, the relaxation of state requirements in the realm of curricular decisions (i.e.
content, subjects/courses taught, time allocations for individual content areas) is a
manifestation of the idea that diminished control of the state and enhanced autonomy of
schools and teachers will lead to changes. The reform claims to greatly augment teachers'
autonomy on the premise that schools and teachers will be able to better draw on the
resources they have available, and thus become more effective in serving their students;
greater autonomy is linked to improved effectiveness and efﬁciency. The pursuit of
autonomy in the name of increased effectiveness and efﬁciency are instances of neo-
liberal discourse that has been present in the Czech Republic since 1989. The autonomy
discourse also entails the belief that autonomy will empower teachers, unleash their
creative potential and initiate bottom-up change. The underlying assumption here is that
the existing content outlines constitute the core of the problem and schools' augmented
freedom will solve it. There is also an embedded belief that teachers have the creative
potential to change things, that they want to reduce the content overload and do things

differently, and that they have the capacity to initiate the desirable changes. In all, the

106

discourse of autonomy exempliﬁes a shift from state control to individual management,
and from central planning to decentralized governance, which is believed to be more
efficient and effective.

The second big idea embodies the view that if educational goals change, the
instructional practices also will be likely to change. The starting point was that current
school instruction is ineffective and irrelevant to the world we live in. The traditional
goals of Czech education have rested on the 19'h century concept of erudition (Kotasek,
1992) stressing memorization of large amounts of factual information (Spilkova, 2004).
In the world at the threshold of the 21" century, the body of available information
continues to grow and schools can no longer encompass it all. Thus, they need to shift
their orientation on something other than providing students with information, asking
them to memorize it. The new goals, formulated in terms of "key competencies" should
steer teachers' attention from knowledge as an end to knowledge as a means to a new end
— students' preparation to apply what they know in day-to-day life. The assumptions that
underpin this idea are that teachers will notice the new goals, rethink their work and
apply different instructional practices. The key competency discourse marks a shift in
traditional conceptualization of education but it is also a manifestation of global
discourse, showing that the Czech Republic is in the know because it follows global
movements and trends set out by European educational policy, which established key
competencies as an objective for the member states in pursuit of "Europe of knowledge"
(Eurydice, 2002).

The third big idea represents the view that schools should lead students to connect

different pieces of knowledge and information together to become well-rounded

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individuals. Education should lead to formation of social attitudes, values and behavior,
and pay attention to themes such as multicultural or environmental education that are
pertinent to the context we live in. The reform introduces a set of ﬁve "cross-cutting
themes" and obliges schools to diffuse them across their school curricula. These themes
should build connections between subjects while encouraging cooperation between
teachers. The assumed effect is that in order to determine how to include cross-cutting
themes into their school curriculum, teachers will have to collaborate and work as a team.
The discourse of connections and collaboration again manifests a signiﬁcant shift in
beliefs about teachers' work. Traditionally, boundaries between subjects have been
clearly demarcated, schools focused primarily on cognition and teachers have worked as
experts in their ﬁeld without being pushed to exchange ideas and collaborate. The
Frameworks envision a new kind of teacher, who thinks conceptually beyond subject
boundaries, shares information with his/her colleagues, and collaborates with others to
avoid duplicity in subject content and reinforce connections between subjects.
Clash of ideologies

As discussed in the previous chapter, the curricular reform was unnoticed for a
relatively long time. There was little sense of urgency among the general public to ﬁx
curriculum because the existing curriculum was not necessarily viewed as a burning issue
that needed an immediate solution. The Frameworks emerged in silence and most people
would have likely never heard about them until now when the mandate that schools
produce their curricula has come into effect. But educational associations and various
interest groups followed the evolution of the reform, and one association in particular

vocalized its stance on the new Frameworks in the popular media, thus attracting

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attention of the general public to the reform. The association in question was an
association of history teachers (ASUD) and it represented voices of opposition against the
reform and the Frameworks.

ASUD protested against several points in the new Frameworks. The Frarnework's
organization of subjects into the larger content categories and the implication that
subjects could be integrated appeared particularly scandalous. The commentary that
ASUD offered on the ﬁrst version of the F rarneworks stated:

Although the purpose to integrate subjects has been denied or trivialized by the

employees of the Ministry and the Institute for Research in Education, it is

possible to ﬁnd this requirement and reconrrnendation in several places [of the
frameworks]. We reject this idea. . .under the current conditions, we cannot accept
it... Integration of history with other social sciences taught at academic high
schools would be a path to dilettantism.

(ASUD, 2003, p.15)

...in the new conception of education, systematically conceptualized history
teaching may disappear from schools. We consider this a serious threat to the
process of forming historical consciousness in young generations, a violation of
the right of all students to conceptual and meaningﬁil information about the
development of the world, Europe and our nation. . .F or that reason, we appeal to
preserve history as an independent subject...

(ASUD, 2003, p.14)

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These quotes illustrate the challenge the reform ideas pose to the established ways of
thinking about content and teaching in Czech schools, and teachers' job and identity. If
the reform is indeed asking teachers to integrate subjects (which it is not — it only makes
it possible), then it is asking them to redeﬁne themselves. Such a demand may
understandably be threatening to many. A disciplinary power struggle comes through
ASUD's concerns as well - the history teachers were concerned that history may be
erased from the school curriculum altogether if integrated with another subject and that
historians might lose their voice in constructing educated citizens. The history teachers
decided to ﬁght to show that their subject is as important as other subjects, and that it
should deserve an independent status. Perhaps the image of curriculum with integrated
history was also daunting because it would compromise the traditional notion of an
educated person.

What is perhaps more signiﬁcant - ASUD also protested against the state's
transfer of curricular decisions into teachers' hands:

We consider the request that teachers will develop their own curricula ill-

conceived and wrong; it can be assumed that it will lead to either following the

old curriculum or textbooks, which are not (or do not have to be)

approved. . .Teachers use their time to full capacity to prepare methods - select

instructional practices, materials, motivate and assess students etc. . .Historians

focus only on particular segments of history and teachers are expected to know all

historical periods and literature. . .but they have neither the capacity nor resources

and information. . .The proposed solution clearly transfers the responsibility for

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content and educational outcomes from state (the Ministry) to schools and
individual teachers who can be easily blamed for subsequent failures.
(ASUD, 2003, p.16-17, brackets and bold in the original)
We see teachers' freedom somewhere else (namely in motivating students,
selecting suitable materials and instructional methods, assessment, regional
history, students' interests etc.) and we do not view expert advice on selection of
speciﬁc content as limiting and constraining but as qualiﬁed and necessary help —
such that teachers abroad receive.
(ASUD, 2004, Nase hlavni namitky,b), brackets and underline in the original)
When reading the objections to the reform ideas, it becomes apparent that a clash of
ideologies is at stake, namely beliefs about the role of the state in education. The new
Frameworks signify a move from a state run educational model to a model where the
state coordinates and monitors results but schools and teachers take on an increased share
of responsibility for the topics they will choose to cover. The reconﬁguration of
responsibilities implies further changes in the role of other educational stakeholders, e. g.
regions and text publishers. ASUD feared that this liberalization would lead to chaos and
decrease in educational quality; the proponents of the Frameworks on the other hand
expressed distrust in state's governance and hopes that less state control and more local
control will improve things. This clash of ideologies appears important but it did not
come through very strongly in the debates encircling the reform as these debates turned
into ﬁghts over time allocations and subject integration.
It is interesting to note that ASUD was the only interest group that came forward

openly protesting against the reform. One might speculate that the protest came from a

111

misunderstanding of the reform, particularly in regard to integration of subjects.
Although other associations and interest groups did not join the protest, observations of
statements that appeared in the media, and interviews with teachers and principals
suggest that ASUD's stance on the issue is not isolated, particularly in respect to the
state's role in education. A number of teachers believe that by handing down curriculum
writing to schools, the state is ridding itself of responsibilities that belong to it. It is not
uncommon to hear a teacher say that his/her job is to teach, not to conceptualize the
content.
Implementation strategies and support mechanisms
Among other things, ASUD raised questions about the preparedness of the
country for the big transition from centralized to decentralized education, and vocalized
its concerns about the Frameworks' implementation.
...We consider the proposal unacceptable for the following reasons:
a) insufﬁcient conceptualization of content of history — of goals, concepts, facts,
methods etc.;
b) transfer of develcmment of content outlines from experts (philosophers,
historians, educators, and teachers) to individual teachers
c) insufﬁcient space for history for all students in academic high schools
(1) lack of preparation of teachers in universities, failure to secure suitable
conditions for instruction (ampliﬁed by the proposal to dissolve the network
of teacher—education centers)
e) ill-considered liberalization of instructional content on a scale that would lead

to damaging students in their preparation for university entrance examinations

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(unless a new system is pursued); content has not been established, in spite of
the fact that the Center for Reform of High School Exit Examinations has
engaged in costly projects —— probes, tests, pilots of the tests etc.

Since 1989, no conception of teaching history in a democratic society has been

developed. We consider it necessary to give this task to scholarly history institutes

as a prerequisite for other actions.
(ASUD, 2003, p.18) [brackets, bold and underline in the original]

Ever since the reform has begun to materialize, educational associations, experts
and academicians have expressed concerns that the state had failed to secure support and
funding for the reform's implementation. In 2004, in efforts to cut budgets, the Ministry
abolished its network of teacher professional development centers and encouraged
regional administrative units to take over the support of their local centers, and thus
determine their fate. The Ministry ran into heavy criticisms for that. hr words of one
university professor: "the professional centers could have helped with the implementation
but the Ministry has knocked off its only instrument that would allow it to inﬂuence
schools."

On another level, the Ministry has been criticized for failing to organize any
information campaign that would introduce the reform to the general public including
teachers, and explain the reform's purposes and goals. If an information campaign
happened, then it was partially indebted to ASUD's initiatives. The association sent its
protest to a number of popular newspapers and ASUD's representatives were interviewed
on TV (ASUD, 2003). The vocal protest sparked some discussions although many

conversations stayed in the realm of professional journals and on-line journals which

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function as outlets for debates among teachers, educational experts and academics but do
not reach wider audiences.
The language of the Frameworks

The text of the Frameworks itself spans close to 100 pages and takes the reader
straight into the matter of the new curricular model without trying to provide any
rationale why such a model is being introduced. Expectations are stated as a matter of
fact: "The purpose of education in academic high schools is not to transfer the largest
volume of isolated information, facts and dates to students, but to equip them with a
systematic and balanced structure of knowledge, teach them how to classify information
into a meaningful context of daily life and motivate them so that they would want to
continue developing their knowledge and skills through their lives" (Institute for
Research in Education, 2006, p.7).

The discursive shift discussed earlier (i.e. the concept of key competencies vs.
content, life-long learning and so on) has been evident not only in the ideas and beliefs
that the Frameworks represent, but also in the language the text uses, namely in the new
terminology that it introduces. The Frameworks quite visibly display the discursive shift
that is characteristic for the entire reform. Overall, the text is not very reader friendly. Its
tone is informative and managerial, and the language highly technical; in some instances
even foreign to Czech educators. The technicality of the text manifests itself in the use of
new terms such as key competencies (klic'ové kompetence in Czech), attaimnent
standards, cross—curricular themes (priifezovd témata in Czech), educational strategies,
content areas, content disciplines etc. — which are not easy to understand even when the

words are familiar. The authors of the Frameworks seem to be aware of it since they

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provide a four-page glossary in the end of the document to help readers make sense of the
different expressions used.

People in policy circles seem to have grown accustomed to the new terms but
teachers and principals are struggling with them. Some of the terms are words that are
completely new to the readers (i.e. the principals and teachers who will have to decipher
them). For example, the term "curricular" alone poses some challenges. To teachers in
non—pilot schools who largely had not even seen the new policy at the time when they
were interviewed (Fall 2005), the new terminology meant virtually nothing. When asked
if they had heard about the "curricular reform" — a term that policy makers commonly use
— it turned out that for the interviewed teachers, it was the ﬁrst time that they encountered
the word "curricular" and some were even surprised by it. The following excerpt from an
interview illustrates this point:

I: Have you ever heard anyone in this school mention the "curricular reform"?
T: No. The word [curricular] scared me when you said it. I really don't know.

Another teacher replied saying: "I don’t understand the word "curriculum"
"curriculum" for me is something like a run or a cycle so I don't know how to understand
"curricular reform".

The discomfort with the word kurikulum and the language of the reform in
general was also evident in some of the survey data collected from pilot-school teachers.
In response to an open-ended item asking teachers to list ﬁve words they associated with
the "curricular reform", several teachers wrote things such as “too many foreign words,”
“pseudo-scientism,” “Curriculum vitae,” or “Biography”. The last two expressions
speciﬁcally point to the semantic problems with the word kurikulum. Most Czechs know

this word primarily from the expression "Curriculum vitae" but not as something that

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would be related to education. Traditionally, teaching and learning in Czech schools have
been governed by uéebni osnovy a ueebni pldny, which I loosely translate as content
outlines and instructional time allocations. People do not seem to understand why the
word kurikulum is now being used and what it might mean. As one teacher put it: "I don’t
know why it is called that way. The name is misleading, it does not explain anything".

Even among teachers in pilot schools who were immersed in the reform,
complaints surfaced in regard to the language of the Frameworks. "In some places, it was
so difficult that one had to read it three times before one could understand what it is
about. You really need to read it with a commentary", said one interviewee. Another
respondent described her encounter with the policy text in the following way: "When I
ﬁrst read the Frameworks, I was thinking: am I so stupid that I don’t understand it or
what? It’s all words, words, words, mainly foreign words so that it looks grand..."

While the word kurikulum is mainly used to qualify the reform and does not
necessarily mean that implementer's lack of understanding of the word will thwart the
reform efforts, it points to a phenomenon which has unfolded around the reform as
people are trying to make sense of it -- the language of the reform seems to obfuscate and
complicate its implementation, which is admittedly still in early stages. A more important
example of language that constitutes the essence of the reform is the term klirfové
kompetence - key competencies. Similarly to the word kurikulum, the term kompetence
has featured in Czech language, but under a different denotation than the reform
introduces. A common understanding of kompetence is authority or jurisdiction as in a
sentence: An administrator is kompetentni to issue a permit, in other words: An

administrator has the authority to issue a permit. A glossary on a web page administered

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by one of the Institutes of the Ministry of Education provides this commonly known
deﬁnition but additionally lists a deﬁnition for kliéové kompetence (key competencies),
which constitute "fundamental knowledge, skills and abilities that can be universally
applied in common working and life situations" (Institute for Information on Education
(U stav pro inforrnace ve vzdelani), 2007).

Taking the reform's language into account, the implementers are facing additional
challenges. They are being asked to develop an understanding of their new
responsibilities and new concepts but their meaning making is contingent upon
deciphering language and words that are also new.

Political signiﬁcance of the language

The use of the new terminology is rather signiﬁcant. Language has power -- it
creates a certain reality, it evokes meanings and images that affect people's beliefs, and it
also employs linguistic devices that function as political symbols (Edelman, 1971).
Edwards at al. (2004) argue for locating educational practices and policies within rhetoric
because they view educational policy inherently as a rhetorical practice that is not neutral.
If we understand rhetoric primarily as an act of persuasion, then we must ask: who is the
policy trying to persuade and about what? Since the policy does not speak the language
of teachers, the international context inevitably comes into play again. As discussed in
the previous chapter, international forces played a strong role in the formation of the
curricular policy in the Czech Republic, and the use of terminology such as 'key
competencies' provides evidence for the traces of foreign inﬂuence. The Czech Republic
was aspiring to join the European Union and that meant harmonizing the nation's policies

with those of the EU. While the EU does not have an official educational policy that

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would be binding to its members, it has been increasingly exerting a great deal of
inﬂuence over national decision making in educational matters. The EU advocates
principles of co-operation, exchange of information, and mobility of people. It also
publishes statistical reports and national reviews, which together with information
disseminated by OECD and international comparative studies help to shape an emerging
European educational culture.

So far, EU's most remarkable step towards creating a common European
educational policy has been embodied in the adoption of the “Lisbon Strategy” in 2000.
The Strategy called for Europe to become "the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-driven economy by 2010" (European Council, 2000) and education was
identiﬁed as key to success in attaining these goals. The EU encouraged its Member
States to align their educational systems with the demands of a knowledge-driven
economy and society. In the years that ensued 2000, the Lisbon Strategy has generated a
host of documents, among them a concrete outline of strategic goals and objectives, and a
detailed work plan for implementation. "Key competencies" were identiﬁed as one of the
main objectives that the Member States should strive for in their educational systems and
the Members States agreed that they would steer their educational systems towards the
set goals.

With the Czech curricular reform's attention to the "key competencies," it is
obvious that the policy makers fulﬁlled their task. From a distance, it may look like an
act of policy borrowing and imitation but it has been argued that such actions go beyond.
Policy borrowing has been described as a process "when policy makers in one country

seek to employ ideas taken from the experience of another country" (Phillips, 2004). But

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the recent developments in Europe cannot be explained in terms of transfer of ideas from
one place to another. Instead, what we see is an emerging supra-national educational
culture (Lawn & Lingard, 2002), and it is understandable that countries are beginning to
implement what they mutually agreed upon. The Czech Republic is not alone in moving
its education from knowledge towards key competencies. Nevertheless, not all Member
States have chosen to transfer the terminology alongside the ideas. For example, Ireland
and UK. feature terms such as "key skills," Italy draws on "abilita fondarnentali," and
Spain uses the term "capacidad" (Eurydice, 2002). It is then interesting that the Czech
Republic adopted the language of the Lisbon protocol when such language had little basis
in the prior experience or sense-making of Czech educators.

One possible explanation is that sharing a discourse evokes a sense of
participation in that discourse and in the case of the Czech Republic, the literal translation
of 'key competencies' into klic'ové kompetence can be viewed as a political move
symbolizing the Czech Republic's connectedness to Europe and its expression of loyalties
to the EU. Post-socialist countries are still in the process of re-constructing their identities
and they turn to their Western counterparts for inspiration and for legitimacy. Often, this
involves "adopting the language of the new allies" (Silova, 2004).

Language in search of practice

Explaining the use of 'key competencies' in terms of its political importance is
probably not the whole story. The discursive and linguistic shift can also be read as part
of new national building, in which the Czech policy makers are trying to break away
from the past and underscore the move in the new direction through the use of new

language. The term klic'ové kompetence carries no policy memory and no connotations

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evoking the communist past that corrupted many words and expressions. Kompetence
thus can be read as starting afresh.

But the new language also manifests an important conceptual shift. Because
competencies imply application of knowledge and doing, targeting the development of
competencies is expected to encourage teachers to apply more constructivist and active-
based approaches, which are largely unfamiliar to many. In that sense, the language of
key competencies is a language in search of practice. In a system that has been previously
ruled by a centralized conception of “ofﬁcial” knowledge, the new terminology could
help people notice and realize the conceptual shift. Along these lines, one teacher
articulated an interesting insight: "The reform is heavily based on change of terminology
which is supposed to lead somewhere. As far as I know, based on some theories that I
read, it stems from Whorf-Sapir theory that language affects thought. So for that reason,
the term kompetence is good." Simply put, the new discourse could be noted more easily
when it draws on new linguistic ﬁgures.

Discourses may lead to change in beliefs or habits of action although such effects
depend on a variety of factors including long-term habitus, characteristics of social
actors, and other circumstances (Fairclough, 2005). Linking the idea of discourse and
change with more conventional policy implementation literature, one might suggest that
the substantial content of the policy also plays a role as a factor that shapes implementer's
response to policy. And this is where the complexity of implementation further increases.
Policy texts tend to be ambiguous, in instances even contradictory because they respond
to various pressures and interest groups. They are rarely a product of a single author and

thus they embody different views. The Czech Frameworks are no exception. They

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represent a mix of the new and the old where the new focus on competencies is coupled
with the old notions of lists of content topics. One interviewee presented the following
view of the Frameworks:
The employees of the Institute [for Research in Education] -- they meant well.
They wanted to introduce some modern elements into our system but they did not
really know how to do that. And because they do not have colleagues who would
be able to give them some advice on that, and it is no easy thing to do... So they
copied some enlightening ideas from foreign curricula and were not able to take it
into a form when it would be possible to implement it. So there are very nice
formulas there, the key competencies are described well. No one can disagree
with the beginning. And then there is a list of content. And that's really not much
different from the old curriculum. The link between the competencies, which are
described on a very general level, and the individual subjects is completely
absent.
In context of the text as the main clue for implementation, translating the policy to
practice is a daunting task. Irnplementers encounter a number of different messages and
in the absence of cunicular guides or subject-speciﬁc guidelines for translating the
general competencies into concrete practices, they are left to construe the meaning of
change within their established routines.
Text distribution and consumption
Pilot projects
Policy makers produced the Frameworks and handed them down to a sample of

pilot schools so that they could test them in practice and generate feedback for revisions.

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There was also an expectation that the pilot would lead to the development of a
Handbook on curriculum development that will serve as a guide for all schools when full
implementation unfolds. Pilot schools thus functioned as policy brokers — it was left to
them to develop an understanding of the reform as they were responding to it, and model
their response to other schools.

The Institute for Research in Education launched the ﬁrst pilot in primary schools
in 2002. Initially, 56 schools entered the pilot but only 18 were able to complete their
school curricula according to the speciﬁed requirements and within set time frame
(Institute for Research in Education (VU P), 2005). The schools were given one year to
develop their curriculum and another year to test the curriculum in practice, gather
materials for the Handbook, and help the Institute with training lecturers who would
disseminate the information to other schools. These goals turned out to be too ambitious
for the given time frame and were not quite met. However, the pilot generated
information that helped the Institute to revise the Frameworks and draft an updated
version, which was subsequently published on the Institute's website in early 2004 and
the general public was invited to comment on the Frameworks. The public discussion was
open for two months after which the Institute proceeded to summarize the results and
draft the ﬁnal (fourth) version of the Frameworks, which was subsequently approved as
the ofﬁcial one. From the point of the approval of the ﬁnal version, primary schools
around the country had two years to develop their school curricula for their ﬁrst graders
in elementary school and ﬁrst-graders in middle school, and as of September 1, 2007,

they new curricula have become the basis of instruction.

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The Frameworks for academic high schools followed similar trajectory of
development, i.e. they were piloted, then revised, released for a public discussion, and
ﬁne-tuned one more time for the ﬁnal version. Drawing on the experience from the pilot
in primary schools where the initial number of pilot schools was found to be too high, the
Institute recruited a reduced number of sixteen high schools, and took a slightly different
approach to working with the schools. Given the high number of schools in the ﬁrst pilot,
the Institute did not have the capacity to monitor each school. The ﬁrst pilot drew on
electronic communication between the schools and the Institute. For the pilot in academic
schools, the Institute wanted to establish a closer link with the schools so each school was
assigned to an employee of the Institute who served as a liaison, ensuring information
exchange between the Institute and the participating school. The Institute's representative
monitored his/her school, visited the school-site on occasions and helped his/her school
deal with any issues that surfaced.

The pilot in academic high schools began in September 2004 with a series of
meetings for school curriculum coordinators who were beginning to learn about the
Frameworks and about the components that their school curricula were required to
contain. The task for school coordinators was to form a team of teachers in their school
who would write curricula for individual subjects as part of the whole school curriculum.
The actual curriculum writing in schools began around summer 2005 and continued until
spring 2006 according to a timetable developed by the Institute. During the time between
September 2004 and spring 2006, the Institute facilitated eight meetings for school

coordinators and there were also several subject-speciﬁc meetings for teachers. The

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Institute's employees communicated with their assigned schools and checked that the
curriculum writing progressed.
Interactive policymaking?

While the previous section suggests an open and interactive communication about
the policy text that continued to be shaped, some interviewees did not have a sense that it
was quite the case. Pilot-school teachers varied in their views of their opportunities to
inﬂuence the Frameworks and shape the policy. In some pilot schools, teachers felt
motivated to participate in the project in part because they saw it as a chance to affect
policy. But there were also teachers who completed the task by following instructions,
which they saw as set. These teachers felt that they were constrained by a number of rules
(e. g. follow a speciﬁc format in their curriculum writing, use and avoid certain verbs etc.)
with little possibility to co-create or affect the policy.

The communication was restricted to the Institute and the pilot schools, with little
information sharing outside of the closed circle. The results of the pilot were not
publicized in any media or disseminated to schools. Also, teachers varied in perceptions
of their access to information. In one high school, teachers wanted to see some examples
of the curricula written in the pilot primary schools but that proved to be a more
complicated task that they had envisioned. One teacher described it as following:

Often, when we did not know where to go and how to continue, we searched the

Internet and the pilot primary schools but we couldn't ﬁnd anything. . .I was able

to ﬁnd it [primary school curriculum] only thanks to my mother who is also an

educator [in a primary school]. She was supposed to start working on her school

curriculum so they had two sample curricula in their ofﬁce in the drawer and were

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allowed to borrow them and look inside. So that's how I was able to peek into it,

in this sneaky way, and see for example how they formulated their attainment

standards etc...
Contrary to that, a school principal in another high school felt content with her school's
access to information: "Thanks to the Institute... we were even able to see ﬁve complete
primary school curricula". These disparities could have been a result of poor
communication between the school coordinator and the representative of the Institute, or
a result of ineffective communication within schools. Regardless, this example suggests
that supporting materials were not always present, and exchange of information was not
completely smooth and open even within the closed circle of the pilot schools and the
Institute.

Researchers, academicians and educators outside of the pilot felt mostly left out
of the shaping of the Frameworks. As one academic noted, "The ﬁrst version was more or
less closed to public, the second version was brieﬂy available and the third one was only
on-line". Although Internet access is more available these days, not all schools and
teachers have an easy online access. In one of the non-pilot schools, teachers had access
to the Internet only in a small computer lab for students so they largely did not know
anything about the F rarneworks, or other materials that the Institute published on its
website. Evolution of the Frameworks similarly to the gestation of the idea to reform
curriculum was thus taking place in relative silence with the exception of the earlier
discussed reaction of the association of history teachers (ASUD) which slightly stirred
the policy scene, and helped to "publicize" the reform. Largely, interviewees continued to

complain about the lack of public discussions:

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State discussions are absent here. . .The state discusses things by opening a
conversation about a proposed document but it is published online so only people
who are able to ﬁnd it, read it and are interested in it can comment on it. . .And
usually, the period open for discussion is short so one hardly has time to read
through it all, let alone think about it. So that misses the boat. . .The broader public
does not even notice.
The discussion that was taking place around the Frameworks was "not as lively as it
could have been" as one teacher described it. Perhaps, this is no different than policy
making elsewhere but it can also be interpreted as a reﬂection of the culture where
debates and discussions had not been taking place for a long time and people did not
learn to actively participate in politics, even in cases when it concerns them. One might
suggest that the apathy of the general public in the Czech Republic may not be much
different from other places but one interviewee shared an experience from England where
he saw a distinct difference in public's participation in policy making:
When I was in England, I was fascinated by the public debates on education — that
does not exist here. Parents [here] take care of the fate of their child but issues of
education as a social phenomenon — you get zero reaction. When you talk to
teachers, they will speak about burning issues such as their [low] salaries etc. but
more abstract and general educational issues such as societal needs, there is no
chance...
Newspapers on the curricular reform
As suggested earlier, the Ministry has been heavily criticized for failing to

organize any systematic information campaign about the reform. The broader public,

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including teachers in non-pilot schools, thus relied primarily on the popular media to
learn about the reform. Education in the Czech Republic has been on the periphery of
public interest and the information in the media has been rather sparse. However, that
does not lessen the impact that the messages about the reform may have on policy
implementation and teachers' preparedness for change.

Partially indebted to ASUD's vocal protests, the public took some notice that there
was an educational reform although the messages about the reform might have been
somewhat misleading. What came through the discussions around ASUD's protest was
that the Association of history teachers believed the reform was integrating existing
subjects and that such a deed may endanger the quality of Czech education.

To get an overall picture of the representation of the reform in the mainstream
media, I searched through the archives of on-line versions of three mainstream
newspapers (Mlada Fronta Dnes, Lidové noviny, and Hospodafske noviny) and identiﬁed
34 articles (published between 2003 and June 2007) that directly pertained to the
curricular reform. Unfortunately, only a portion of all articles written on the topic
between 2003 was accessible because one of the newspapers (Lidové noviny) did not
allow for searching prior to October 2005.

Out of the 34 articles, 19 were primarily neutral in tone, focusing on informing
the public about changes that the reform is expected to generate. The other 15 articles
introduced the reform but also cautioned about constraints facing the implementation or
they directly criticized the implementation. None of the articles criticized the reform
itself. The reform seems to be accepted by the popular media as a positive development

in Czech education. Largely, it has been portrayed as a major change; several articles

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even spoke of a "revolution" in Czech education that should bring an end to the
encyclopedic nature of education in Czech schools based on memorization of large
amounts of information and cramming. "Painﬁrl cramming of historic dates and chemical
formulas will soon end in schools. Learning will be more fun and children will be able to
use the information they acquire in school in practice" (Kubalkova, 2006). On the whole,
the reform has been depicted as a move away from the old conception of education to a
new one where application of knowledge will come to the forefront. Some of the
headlines that appeared in the newspapers read: "Crarnming is over, children will mainly
learn to work with new information" (Blazkova, 2005) and "Schools are preparing for a
reform that should remove cramming" (iHned, 2006).

Many of the articles implied content reduction and signiﬁcant changes in
instructional practices. In fact, expressions such as "new style of teaching" or "teaching in
new ways" feature quite prominently although it is not quite clear what the new styles or
ways of teaching and learning should be. The reader mainly learns that the new ways will
be different from the traditional transmission of facts, that they should be more fun and
that they will focus on the individual. "Schools should get used to a completely new style
of teaching: such that will respond to individual needs of each child" (Blaikové, 2004).

The popular newspapers also prominently displayed the discourse of new freedom
granted to schools and teachers. They announced that the reform abolishes the "rigid"
and "stiff" ministerial content outlines and gives schools and teachers freedom to teach
their own way. From reading the mainstream newspapers only, one may form an

impression that the freedom is unlimited. Only some articles point out that teachers'

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decisions will be bound by "attainment standards" that establish what students should be
able to do when they complete education.

The articles generally explain that the new freedom will allow schools to proﬁle
themselves and thus distinguish themselves from other schools. They also contend that
the freedom will make it possible for schools to move content around, create new
electives, and integrate subjects if they choose to do so. Surprisingly, several articles
falsely claimed things such as "a new subject Man and Society will incorporate current
history, civic education and in part, geography" (Kubalkova, 2006).

As for the core of the reform, the "key competencies", the newspapers were silent
on the topic with the exception of one article that introduced the term "kompetence" and
explained it. Given that the reform is based on new terminology, it is striking that nearly
all articles ignored it. Nevertheless, that does not mean that they ignored the idea of
shifting educational goals although the view they offered on the subject was fragmented.
Mostly, the newspapers focused on only one aspect of the new competency goals ——
students' work with information -- and presented that as the goal of the reform.

"Cross-cutting themes" whose purpose is to bring salient topics such as
environmental education, media or multicultural education into school instruction, have
not been explicitly addressed in any of the articles with the exception of one. The idea
was largely ignored and in places where it was mentioned, the information tended to be
distorted. For example, one article (Machélkova, 2006) talked about the cross-cutting
themes such as environmental education or multicultural education as new courses that

will be introduced into schools.

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In conclusion, the reform has been represented as a major overhaul of current
education and a revolution in Czech schooling. The articles did not try to persuade the
public that the reform is important or necessary; they mainly kept a neutral and
informative tone and appealed to the readers with claims about "the end of cramming"
and "new ways of teaching". The key message that has been reiterated in nearly all the
articles was that the reform grants schools and teachers freedom in curricular decisions
and that this freedom is expected to "open up creative space" for teachers and schools,
and generate fundamental change in what is taught and how. In many respects, journalists
tended to inﬂate the scope of the freedom that schools and teachers will gain without
providing much information on the new rules of the reform. In respect to the new
language that characterizes the reform and key concepts that the reform introduces, the
media was largely silent.

The role of non-proﬁt educational associations

Somewhat alarmed by the inaccurate information that many newspaper articles
distributed in regard to the reform, and in reaction to the absence of state-run information
campaign that would explain the purposes of the reform to the Czech public, non-proﬁt
associations stepped in. SKAV, Permanent conference of educational associations, began
to organize a series of regular monthly round table discussions and seminars related to
salient topics in Czech education, inviting policy actors ﬁom different levels of the
system, including representatives from the Ministry of Education, university professors,
school practitioners, and journalists. Although these seminars have proven ﬁ'uitful and
important, the association has had limited capacities to perform large-scale information

dissemination and has been reaching out to a minority of educational stakeholders. In the

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words of one interviewee: "It’s always the same people who show up. It does not reach
out to new people. It’s generally the progressive school principals".

Other non-proﬁt educational organizations have contributed to the reform efforts
through devising professional development activities and workshops for teachers. Also,
the state has launched a professional development project titled "Coordinator", training
educators to assume the role of school coordinators in their school, and manage teacher
teams as they produce their school-based curriculum. The project has been quite
important -- it appears to be the only systematic effort to prepare at least one educator
from each school in the country for the reform. However, critics noted that it arrived late
— most school coordinators from primary schools were trained in spring 2006 when their
schools should have been nearing a completion of the school curriculum writing (primary
schools were required to begin teaching from their new curricula in September 2007)
(Zika, 2006). It is still good news for secondary schools given that the reform in these
schools will be fully launched in 2009.

Summary

The curricular reform rests on the text of new cunicular Frameworks, authored by
the ministerial Institute for Research in Education. The Frameworks mark a victory for
the education activists — the ideas they wanted to see introduced in education are ﬁnally
embedded in a national policy. The Frameworks emphasize a shift in educational goals
from knowledge to so called "key competencies"; they offer greater ﬂexibility to schools
and teachers in organization of subjects and courses, and also in selecting content they
will cover. On the whole, the reform embodies the belief that if schools and teachers gain

more authority in curricular decisions, instructional practices will grow to be more

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effective and relevant, and the quality of teaching and learning in Czech schools will
improve.

Education activists welcome the effort and view the Frameworks as a good
starting point for change. However, there is a long way ﬁom policy text to practice and in
the absence of speciﬁcations of desired outcomes and intended purposes of the reform,
teachers have to ﬁnd their own path. The main clue they have is the text of the
Frameworks. The implementation strategy has been designed to follow this trajectory: the
Institute has authored the Frameworks, pilot schools will decipher what opportunities and
constraints the Frameworks offer, and whatever conclusions they reach, they will share
with the rest of the schools in the Czech Republic. The sharing will be done through pilot
school teachers' contributions to a Handbook on developing school curriculum and to a
web portal that has been devised as supporting mechanisms for the implementation.
Principals and teachers who participated in the pilot will also share their experiences and
knowledge as lecturers and trainers of future trainers. In sum, the diffusion starts with
decoding the text of the Frameworks; school principals and teachers' interpretations are
expected to lead to the development of supporting materials for other schools. Thus, this
chapter zeroed in on the text of the Frameworks and its various representations that are
available to the general public.

The Frameworks were developed in relative silence. The reform was not widely
publicized and for a relatively long time, schools and the general public knew little about
its existence. The Institute did not make the early versions of the Frameworks available,
at least in the case of the primary school frameworks. When the Frameworks did surface,

they sparked some opposition. This opposition helped to advertise the reform because it

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featured in the media, although it gave the reform somewhat negative advertising.
Namely, the Association of History Teachers vocalized its protest because it read the
Frameworks as a major threat to the quality of Czech education and history teaching in
particular. The representatives of the Association understood that the Frameworks were
requiring schools to integrate different subjects (e. g. social science and history) into one.
They also protested against decentralization of curriculum because they perceived
curriculum and content design as the responsibility of the state, not teachers who,
according to the representatives of the association, should conserve their energy to focus
on teaching. The Association's protest was not a mere expression of discontent with the
text of the Frameworks and the reform the Frameworks represent, but an ideological
clash with the neo-liberal trends and diminished responsibility of the state that the reform
promul gates.

In absence of systematic information campaign, educators' opinions on the reform
were slanted by the protest of the Association of History Teachers publicized in
mainstream media and newspapers. As the full-scale launch of the reform in primary
schools began approaching in the 2007-2008 academic year, newspapers have produced
more articles about the reform. However, in many cases this also meant more
misrepresentations of the reform. On occasions, some articles were misleading and they
distorted the reform's ideas, namely in regard to the integration of subjects or "cross-
cunicular themes" that some articles introduced as new school subjects. But overall, the
media was largely positive about the reform although the reform's implementation has

been criticized in length. The articles informing about the reform tended to inﬂate the

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possibilities that the reform offers, and present the reform as a major overhaul of Czech
education based on signiﬁcant liberalization of powers that schools have.

Looking more closely at the text of the F rarneworks, it is somewhat
understandable why it has produced misconceptions and misunderstandings. The text is
highly technical and draws on a number of terms that need to be deciphered. In some
instances, it introduces terms that Czech teachers perceived as foreign. Namely, the
concept and the term "key competencies" which constitutes the backbone of the reform
appears problematic and further complicates implementation because it is new to the
Czech audience, and educators appear to be at a loss when they need to ascribe a meaning
to it. The text of the Frameworks reﬂects current education trends in the EU. The
observation of the trends as well as appropriation of terminology may be interpreted as a
signal to the world (or at least to the EU) that the Czech Republic is in the know, keeping
abreast with the latest trends in the EU. But the deployment of new terminology can also
be interpreted as an attempt to break away from the past and a prelude to a new ﬁrture.
The new language carries the possibility of inspiring new ways of thinking, leading to
new instructional practices. In that sense, it's a language in search of practice. But as
much as it carries that possibility, it makes implementation more challenging.

In all, the Frameworks appear to be a mix of new ideas (key competencies) and
old practices (content), and the early implementation gives an impression of an erratic
process where support comes after implementation steps have been taken rather than the
other way around. The case of the Czech curricular reform manifests disconnect between

policy and practice notoriously known in educational research. The macro level does not

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reach out enough and the micro level is waiting with suspicion to see what is going to
happen. In the words of one school principal:
The greatest mistake is the lack of communication with the people here at the
bottom. . .Early on it should have been explained why the purpose is such and
such, why the content is that way. . .and that is not really happening.
The reform ideas seem generally appreciated but if the policy makers do not
sufﬁciently communicate the rationale and motivation of the reform, the reform
implementation may lead to what Spillane et a1. termed "lethal mutations" (Spillane,

Reiser, & Reimer, 2002, p.416).

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CHAPTER 6: THE PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTATION IN A SAMPLE OF

ACADEMIC HIGH SCHOOLS

The enactment of the new Frameworks is an unfolding story. The Czech Republic
has devised the curricular reform as an instrument of change that will lead to "internal
school transformation" and improvement of quality of instruction in schools. A number
of assumptions underpin the policy and its implementation, namely that increased teacher
autonomy in curricular matters will unleash innovation and creativity; focus on key
competencies will impel teachers to search for new teaching methods; and diffusion of
cross-curricular themes throughout school curriculum will push teachers to collaborate
more closely with one another. At the same time, these assumptions have not been
articulated into any speciﬁc reform goals and outcomes. Under such conditions, the space
for implementation is wide open and the role that teachers will play in the
implementation process is particularly crucial as their understanding of the reform may
produce qualitatively different responses than policy makers anticipate. Policy research in
the past decade has paid a great deal of attention to teachers' role in implementation and
this chapter focuses on that. More speciﬁcally, in conjunction with the theoretical
framework presented in Chapter 1, this chapter explores the arena of practice, which will
focus on school practitioners' understanding of the reform as a precursor to their actions
that will ultimately determine the policy effects.

The context of practice constitutes the third tip of Bowe and Ball's policy triangle,
which stands at the center of the conceptual framework. According to Bowe and Ball,

policy texts have real consequences in practice as they are being confronted and re-

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interpreted by their readers. "Policy writers cannot control the meanings of their texts.
Parts of texts will be rejected, selected out, ignored, deliberately misunderstood,
responses may be ﬁivolous, etc. . .different interpretations will be in contest, as they relate
to different interests" (Bowe & Ball, 1992, p22). Their premises were precursors to later
theories that focused more closely on practitioners' interpretations and sense-making of
policies. Particularly the work of Spillane and Coburn brought attention to the social and
cognitive processes involved in policy implementation.

In this study, information on practitioners' interpretations and meaning-making of
the reform has been gathered in two waves of data collection primarily through
interviews with school principals and teachers. There was also a survey conducted to
provide richer descriptive information about teachers' initial responses to the reform. The
ﬁrst round of interviews was conducted in two non-pilot and two pilot high schools.
Teachers in the non-pilot high schools provided insights as to what they felt needed to be
changed in the system and what they would expect the new reform to do. However, they
largely had no knowledge of the content of the new curricular policy. Thus, the
continuation of data collection focused on pilot schools only. Out of 16 high schools in
the country that were piloting the reform, three were selected as sites for interviews with
teachers and principals, and two more participated in the teacher survey. Details about the
data collection, site selection, interviews, and surveys are included in the appendix.

This chapter reports key themes that surfaced from the interviews. It is a chapter
about teachers' reactions to the reform rather than about the teachers themselves. All
teachers who agreed to participate in the study were guaranteed anonymity. In some cases

they criticized their school leadership and were guaranteed that their principals or

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assistant principals would not be able to identify them from the study. For these reasons,
this study does not paint portraits of the participating teachers and simply reports what
these teachers had to say. Also, teachers are mostly not associated with any school in
particular unless what they say suggests that their institutional context played a role in
shaping their view. One might argue that the institutional context always affects how
people within the institution interpret the tasks they face. This is likely true but exploring
such links would be a subject for another study. This study reports themes that cut across
institutional borders and in various forms surfaced in interviews across school sites.

In each school, responsibility for the school curriculum fell on a relatively small
number of teachers. Typically, one teacher was in charge of writing curriculum for one
subject area and it was up to him or her whether s/he would manage to get feedback from
other colleagues teaching the same subject. Thus, the pool of teachers who were actually
implementing the reform in these pilot schools was relatively small, given that there are
12 core subjects (which are more or less synonymous with courses) taught in Czech
academic high schools. Some teachers were engaged in the curriculum writing because
they felt excited about the reform but most of the teachers interviewed in this study
participated because no one else in their school would or because the responsibility fell
on them as the heads of their subject matter department. Due to time constraints, it was
not possible to interview each teacher who was engaged in the curriculum writing so
interviews in each of the three pilot school focused on 3-4 teachers (Czech language,
history, and social science teachers as these subject areas tend to be most criticized for
content overload and transmission teaching that the reform is set to change). The ﬁrst

round of the two waves of interviews also included a teacher in each school who was not

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actively engaged in the reform implementation with the purpose of getting a sense of the
degree to which the implementation of the reform was or was not a whole school effort.

In all, 13 interviews conducted in non-pilot schools and 20 in pilot schools
provided data for this chapter. Themes reported here reﬂect answers to questions that
focused on the curricular policy's assumptions: teachers' autonomy, key competencies,
and collaboration within schools. When prompted to talk about their views of the reform,
teachers also discussed what they perceived as hurdles and difﬁculties of the process —
these areas also constitute the main themes that characterized the conversations. Most of
the teachers interviewed had taught in the same school for 10-15 years and were in their
mid-career. At the same time, in each pilot school one of the interviewed teachers also
happened to be a relatively new and young teacher (teaching less than 5 years). However,
the age and experience of the teachers did not point to any signiﬁcant differences in how
these teachers viewed and understood the reform. The survey was sent to teachers in ﬁve
pilot schools and generated 89 responses (53% response rate), which were used to
triangulate the information from the interviews and to provide a fuller portrayal of pilot
school teachers' reactions and attitudes towards the curricular reform.

A note: How will school curricula be judged?

The reform is built around a mandate requiring schools to produce their own
school curricula, assuming that the process of school curriculum writing will lead to
improved quality in Czech education. There are countless interpretations of the notion of
increased quality exist. Newspapers tend to equate the reform primarily with less
cramming, new teaching styles, and development of students' skills to work with

information. Policy makers present even a wider variety of perspectives of assumed

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goals: improved quality means focusing on individual students; making connections
between different subjects; establishing cooperative working environments where
teachers collaborate; changing the power distribution in the traditional student-teacher
relationships; better preparing students for the job market; effectively utilizing available
resources and so on. The following quote illustrates how broadly some state ofﬁcials
viewed the reform's intentions. In the words of an administrator from the Czech School
Inspectorate:

You can see that the reform steers towards personal development of students and

if our students ﬁnd jobs at the European market, if they are willing and able to

work in other countries because they for example know foreign languages, then it

will show that the reform has been successful and right.

A high ranking ofﬁcial from the Ministry of Education characterized the reform's
goals in the following way:

The goal is to create a new type of curricular document where the core of the

change lies in moving from one centrally created document, the content outlines,

to a two-tiered curriculum...Contrary to the previous documents. . .the formulation

of the new documents [the school curricula] emphasizes so called "competencies",

abilities not just to know a particular area but also actively use it in various

situations.

These quotes suggest that the vision of what the reform should do is rather
blurred. The absence of speciﬁcation of intended outcomes creates an open space for
interpretation and action. The reform is practically handed down to teachers who will

draft solutions to it and determine its effects and outcomes.

140

One wonders how the effects and outcomes will be judged. Compliance with rules
and regulations have been traditionally monitored by Czech School Inspection, which is a
state institution that played the role of the education police. The political reconﬁguration
in the Czech Republic has impelled the institution to redeﬁne its purposes so that it can
serve as an evaluating and advisory agency rather than a strictly controlling body
although such major transformation has been slow to come. Currently, the Czech School
Inspectorate has also been undergoing a transformation under new leadership and it is not
clear what role it will play in the curricular reform. If the Inspection is transforming itself
to function as an evaluating agency, one might expect a strong and active presence of the
Inspection in the pilot of the curricular reform as a way for the Czech School Inspection
to prepare itself for the new task.

Some interviewees reported that the Inspection was initially involved in the pilot
of the Frameworks but its engagement gradually faded because the institution did not
consider itself to be the evaluator of the policy, and school curricula were only in the
process of being written so the Inspection had little to evaluate. The Inspectorate is bound
by law to monitor schools' compliance with mandates and regulations. For the curricular
reform, this likely means that the Inspection will assess whether schools meet all formal
requirements imposed on local school curricula, i.e. whether the locally produced
curricula meet all the mandatory requirements including a self-evaluation report,
prescribed sections that need to be included in the curriculum such as school
characteristics, assessment plan etc. It is premature to speculate whether that will be the

case or whether the Inspection will devise criteria that will go beyond monitoring

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compliance to evaluating the quality of school's response to the reform. At the time of
writing, this remains to be open.
Teacher Autonomy and the National Curriculum

One of the reform's underlying assumptions in regard to augmented autonomy can
be spelled out in the following way: The existing prescriptive content outlines (national
curriculum) constrain teachers' work and prevent them from taking initiative, actively
engaging students, and exploring non-traditional instructional practices. If the state
relaxes the outlines and gives teachers and schools more latitude in their curricular
decisions, they will use their professional judgment and adjust instruction to their own
needs, to their students, and to the new educational goals. In short, by giving more
freedom to teachers in the realm of curricular decisions, the problem is being framed as
too little freedom and too constraining content outlines.

Although teachers generally agree that the traditional content outlines cover
excessive amounts of information, they do not necessarily perceive the outlines as such a
major constraint as they tend to be portrayed. Other mechanisms in the system besides
the content outlines appear to function as surrogate arms of content control, pushing
teachers to overload students with large quantities of information. Results from the
teacher survey (see Table 4) indicate that in comparison to content outlines which
bothered 14.1% of teachers, teachers felt more limited in their work by university
entrance examinations, lack of instructional materials, class-size and yet even more by

students who are uninterested to learn.

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Table 4 - Teachers' perceptions of their work constraints

 

T 0 what extend do the following constrain your work?

 

Not at Alittle Quitea Extremely

 

all bit lot
Content outlines 32.9 51.9 10.1 3.8
University entrance exams 36.7 26.6 27.8 6.3
Too many students in class 11.5 34.6 42.3 11.5
Students who are not interested 3.8 34.6 43.6 17.9
Lack of instructional materials 9.1 45.5 33.8 11.7

 

(%)

The content outlines themselves were not seen as a major constraint perhaps
because teachers exercised a degree of latitude in deciding how closely they followed
them. On paper, all teachers followed the content outlines in their "thematic plans" — their
own timelines and lists of speciﬁc content topics. Teachers were typically required to
produce their thematic plans at the start of a new academic year and turn them to the
school principals. The thematic plans had to be based on the national curriculum and they
provided concrete information on units and topics teachers planned to cover as well as a
time frame for the academic year. Principals wanted to see the thematic plans for several
reasons. For example, as some of the principals explained, if the Inspection pays a visit,
the Inspectors might ask to see the "thematic plans". Also, these documents allowed the
principals and other teachers to keep track of the content in case substitute teaching was
needed. Finally, the thematic plans helped principals and head of the departments to
monitor that teachers were covering the material as required by the national curriculum.

The plans presented some beneﬁts to teachers as well. As one language and
literature teacher described it:

I draft a thematic plan based on the national curriculum, just for myself although

the principal now also wants to see it. And I use it all the time to check if I am

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behind, what I should be doing etc. I mark authors who I consider the main ones -
those I have to cover, and then I also list others in case I have some time left.
Some teachers used the content outlines as an orientation guide or "a springboard" that
helped them to plan what to teach. But there were also teachers who altogether ignored
the content outlines. The following interview excerpt illustrates that point:
I: How do you make decisions about the content you will teach?
T: It depends. In the lower grades of the multi-year high school, I do not tolerate
much the content outlines that we have. In our school we have a considerably
large latitude in terms of what to teach or what books to use and I take advantage
of it. . .I purposefully decided to take on the ﬁrst year students of the multi-year
high school. . .Teachers generally want the freshmen of the upper level but I
wanted the early grades because I wanted to have the time [eight years of multi-
year high school] to work with them on things that you don’t have time for later,
e. g. fairy tales, fables, crime ﬁction. . .So I created my own program and I confess,
I don't have a clue what's in the content outlines. Only when we get to 9'h grade, I
teach according to the textbook because it provides an abbreviated version of the
literary history. I do it in case some of the students decided to continue in another
school [instead of the academic upper-secondary level] so that they have what is
expected of them, i.e. some knowledge of the literary history.
This excerpt exempliﬁes several things. First, it shows that this teacher was able
to exercise a signiﬁcant degree of autonomy because his school allowed it. The
autonomy or a lack of it was thus not necessarily a function of the national policy but of

the school where the teacher worked. There may be principals who require that their

144

teachers strictly adhere to the national content outlines but in all the schools that I visited,
this did not seem to be the case. The principals respected their teachers' professionalism
and did not try to interfere with the content teachers covered, trusting that they
appropriately responded to the national curriculum and the state requirements.

The second interesting thing to note about the quote is the sense of accountability
that the teacher expressed when talking about keeping students on a par with their peers
in other schools. This was not connected to the content outlines and state's control over
curriculum but to the students and their future prospects. Without strictly following the
prescribed content, the teacher had a sense of the content mastery expected of a ninth
grader in primary school or its equivalent in a multi-year high school to pass entrance
examinations for secondary education. It was the responsibility for students' success at
entrance examinations that made the teacher cover what is typically covered in the 9"1
grade, not his sense of obligation to follow the national curriculum. I observed the same
expression of accountability for students' preparedness for the next level of education
among other teachers whom I interviewed. As a history teacher in one of the non-pilot
schools said:

1 have to respect that I teach a particular subject and be accountable to that matter.

I personally would never choose a topic [within the subject] that I am very

interested in and forgot or skipped over other things because of that. If I wanted

to, I could though... a teacher should prepare students for the next level of

education. . .and that's a question of content. A teacher in primary school tries to .

prepare her students for entrance exams to secondary school; at secondary school

145

for entrance exams to the university and one has to reﬂect what the universities

require...

Despite the fact that there are no standardized entrance examinations, there is a
notion of what may be titled 'ofﬁcial knowledge', which implies knowledge encapsulated
in textbooks that often exceeds the national content outlines. Teachers do their best to
ensure that their students obtain this ofﬁcial knowledge to enhance their chances of
passing entrance examinations and successfully move from one level of education to the
next. Content selection is thus a continuous attempt to strike a balance. In the words of a
social science teacher:

I constantly move among three requirements — to make it [the instruction]

attractive, that is my personal requirement; then to prepare them for the entrance

examinations, and then to prepare them for life somehow. And these are often in
tension. . .F or example, Durkheim's sociology, [the deﬁnition of] mechanical and
organic solidarity — I teach them such notions. . .it's a classic [at university
entrance exams] in colleges where they teach some social sciences. . .but what it
really is, why they should know such things or why it would be beneﬁcial for
them to know these things, there is really no way to justify that to the students.

And I teach it because I tell them "if you encountered these expressions" [at the

university entrance examinations]

Entrance examinations are constraining because of their high stakes but also because
academic high schools informally compare themselves on the numbers of successful
university applicants even when such numbers are misleading. Universities differ greatly

in their openness — e. g. some technical universities accept most applicants, in some cases

146

even without entrance examinations, while other universities keep most applicants out.
Under these circumstances, 90% success rate from one high school where students
applied mainly for technical universities does not compare to 90% success rate of
applicants from another high school who were accepted to universities that have more
restricted access. Nevertheless, high schools continue to bypass the qualitative difference
and advertise themselves on the number of successful university applicants.

Czech teachers' personal sense of responsibility to provide students with the
'ofﬁcial knowledge' and their professional accountability exempliﬁed in the interview
excerpt may also be accountable to other circumstances. For example, it is fairly common
for teachers in Czech schools to stay with the same cohort of students from the freshman
until the senior year. Thus, a teacher is likely to be the only person who imparts subject-
speciﬁc knowledge to his/her students during the students' high school experience and
there is a chance that this teacher may be informally judged by colleagues and parents for
what his/her students know.

The previous paragraphs suggested that despite highly prescriptive national
content outlines, teachers exercise a degree of autonomy and personal judgment in
curricular decisions. The paragraphs also showed that teachers have a personal sense of
accountability to their students. Given that teachers' decisions about curriculum are not
simply a function of the national policy but other external and internal factors, it seems
overly optimistic to think that if the national policy further loosens up and teachers'
autonomy is officially augmented even more, it will produce fundamental changes when

other issues such as the undercurrent power of entrance examinations as yet another

147

control mechanisms have not been addressed. But that is not to suggest that the policy
will have no effect.
Ownership and empowerment: 13 change likely to ensue?

Analysis of interviews with teachers from both non-pilot and pilot schools reveals
three types of attitudes towards the curricular reform. Some teachers did not perceive
existing content outlines as problematic and so they did not see a strong need for a
fundamental change in curricular policy. Then there were teachers who felt that a change
was needed but did not think that their curriculum writing could initiate it, especially
when they considered the pressure of entrance examinations. And the third category
included teachers who wanted to take the opportunity they saw in the reform, and re-
conceptualize the traditional content and teaching methods. In the absence of strong
incentives, the desire for change seemed to derive primarily from teachers' internal
impulses. However, it is important to note that teachers from pilot schools who
participated in their school curriculum writing were also motivated by a modest monthly
remuneration from the Institute for Research in Education.

Teachers in pilot schools who were engaged in the curriculum writing reported a
sense of ownership they felt in shaping their school's instruction and organization of
content. The interviews contained expressions such as: "I certainly cannot say that we are
burning to do something new but I think that everybody has been realizing that it's not in
vain, that what we will create is what we will have." Another teacher commented: "In the
process, we were not sure we were really getting it. . .but the truth is that we were able to
adjust the content to us. . .and it will be good because we will be able to shufﬂe things

around..." Apparently, these teachers did not consider the task of developing their

148

school-based curriculum futile. The survey data further support this claim with nearly
86% of respondents indicating that the reform and the Frameworks made them think
about their teaching, and 69% agreeing with the statement that the reform is offering
them an opportunity to participate in shaping education in their school.

Table 5 - Teachers' perceptions of the new Frameworks and teaching

 

T he frameworks make me think more about how I teach

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree Jrobably not probably yes agree
1.3 6.4 6.4 17.9 53.8 14.1
(%)

Table 6 — T eachers' perceptions of the new Frameworks and school decision-making

 

T he frameworks give me an opportunig to co-create our school

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree probably not probablyI yes agree
2.6 20.8 7.8 19.5 35.1 14.3
(%)

While there was a sense of ownership among those who participated, it did not
necessarily mean that teachers felt empowered to institute signiﬁcant changes when
compared to the old curriculum. Teachers generally agreed that the old curriculum was
covering excessive amounts of information, which should be trirrrrned. Teacher survey
responses showed that 68% of teachers agreed that content should be reduced; 67% of
teachers agreed that they teach a lot of things that are disconnected from reality.

Table 7 - Teachers' perceptions of content's relevance

 

We teach a lot of things that are disconnected from reality

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree probably not probably yes agree
2.6 23.1 7.7 19.2 30.8 16.7
(%)

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Table 8 - Teachers' perceptions of the amount of content

 

It is necessary to reduce the content

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree probably not probably yes agree
2.6 20.5 9.0 17.9 30.8 19.2
(%)

Helena, a history teacher, commented on the old curriculum:

The content outlines are so overloaded with information that I can't stop and have

to cram it into the students. For example, I wish I could have them look up

information about a historical ﬁgure on their own and then connect it with other
things they know but I have absolutely no time to do that because it would hold us
back and we would slip off. So I simply come, give them a lecture, they write it

down because that's the fastest way. But the effect is that they only learn it for a

test and then forget about it. And I am really annoyed with how ineffective our

lessons are but I have no extra time.

Teachers clearly regarded the existing national curriculum overly demanding. In
contrast to the current highly prescriptive curriculum, the content in the Frameworks has
been formulated in more general terms -- e. g. Ancient Greece as opposed to a detailed list
of all topics that fall under Ancient Greece. Such organization promises reductions but to
some teachers, that did not represent a signiﬁcant change. Helena felt a bit disappointed
with the Frameworks:

I was excited when I heard that there would be a reform but when I saw the

Frameworks, the only new thing was how things were phrased. As for the content,

it was just as overloaded. . .whether I look at it ﬁom left or right. I was shocked. I

took the Frameworks and compared them to the content outlines and I thought to

myself: where is the change? I thought that they wanted to reduce the large

150

quantities and teach what they call competencies. . .Great thing. But because they

were not able to reduce the content, the effect will be the same. ..

Despite some skepticism, she worked hard to change things as much as she could.
Although she downplayed the change she tried to enact, she was making deliberate
choices that did not seem as arbitrary as she portrayed them:

I could only do marginal changes and shuffle things around. I tried to chop off as

much as I could. For example, we always had to cover Greece and Rome in great

detail. But now I will only focus on explaining republic, kingdom, ﬁrst
democracy etc. and I won't pay so much attention to the exact sequences of
emperors. These were the facts that I cutoff in order to emphasize some general

principles of how things work... I tried to choose the bigger things, for example, I

will focus on Enlightenment and Modern times it in greater depth e. g. on only one

country...
Similarly, Helena's colleague Katka felt that in writing the school curriculum, the content
for her subject remained more or less unchanged:

We did not really omit anything because we could not ﬁgure out what. We wrote

the school curriculum in general terms. For example romanticism. . .we were

considering whether to include in brackets some names of authors, the most
important representatives, which would mean that everybody would have to cover
them. . .And then it turned out... and it's probably my fault, that I was not able to
select which ones to put there so I did not list any. . ..It is perhaps all too open,

which sort of encourages to again cover everything in its entirety.

151

Teachers in the other two pilot schools also spoke of small content reductions, but
in some cases they also mentioned introducing new topics that had not been present in the
previous curriculum. They typically managed to reduce the content by shifting some of
its portions to other subjects where the content may have already been taught or that
represented a better ﬁt. Pavel, a social science teacher said: "We reduced one thing and I
am glad it worked out that way — we moved the unit of European Union to geography".

Teachers tried to reduce the excessive content and enact changes as their capacity
and common sense allowed. The main characteristics of their work with content as they
saw it was not necessarily a signiﬁcant reduction but shuffling things around and
redistributing units and topics across years and across different subjects. This was done to
release some pressure from teaching too much information and to gain time to work with
the existing content more effectively, i.e. work into more depth with content that the
teachers deemed key and spend less time on information they considered trivial.

The Frameworks prescribe minimum time allocations for each larger content area
but decisions on instructional time allocations for individual subjects rest with schools.
So besides moving things around and suppressing trivial information, teachers also had to
engage in negotiations across subjects about allocations of instructional time. For
example, the Frameworks introduced some changes in 'Czech language and literature' —
speciﬁcally they introduced text analysis and interpretation, and communication -- new
themes not addressed in the old curriculum. In two of the three pilot schools, Czech
language and literature teachers were able to gain an extra hour of instructional time per
week in two years on the grounds that they needed more time to address these new

themes. But increasing hours for some subjects meant losing them in others, and the three

152

pilot schools slightly differed in the organization of instructional time they settled on.
Still, in the end, the curricula of the three schools shared more similarities than
differences. The schools organized their subjects in the same fashion (not a signiﬁcant
change from the past) and the differences were for example in the number of electives
they offered, time allocations granted to individual subjects (e. g. one schools would have
4 hours of instructional time per week for Czech language and literature while the other
would have 3), and in ways they shifted parts of the content between the subjects.

Overall, the three pilot high schools included in this study appeared to be ﬁne-
tuning existing practices rather than re-inventing them and fundamentally altering them.
While this may not hold to the reform's rhetoric of radical change and overhaul of
instruction in Czech schools, it suggests an incremental change that may turn in
signiﬁcant in the future. The interviewed teachers were largely more skeptical though;
they felt that the reform was giving them some space to better adjust the curriculum to
their needs but they did not necessarily see that the reform was giving them many
opportunities to depart from the past and provide clues to how to do things differently.

Key competencies

The big idea in the Frameworks expected to stimulate change in teachers'
instructional practices is the Frameworks' orientation on new educational goals - the 'key
competencies'. This orientation assumes that a particular process will unfold in teachers'
thinking and curriculum writing, ultimately leading teachers to reconsider what they
teach and how, and where the content leads their students. The following lines quote a
hi gh-ranking ministerial administrator who described the type of thinking policy makers

hope the reform will spark in teachers:

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I tell teachers: "When you begin writing your school's content outline, ﬁrst ask
yourselves what you envision it means e. g. for a 9"1 grader to know history... So
the student needs to have some understanding of history -- does it mean that he or
she needs to learn about the King Pfemysl I, Pfemysl II, the Golden Bull Seal of

Sicily? Why?" The purpose of teachers' development of the school curriculum is

to ask these fundamental questions. So far, it has always been decided for them

when someone wrote in the prescribed curriculum that they needed to teach

Pfemysl I, Pfemysl II and the Golden Bull Seal of Sicily...

The envisioned shift is signiﬁcant and radical. Traditional content outlines
reinforced a content-driven educational model leading to students' mastery of knowledge
as a given truth. The reform assumes that key competencies will steer teachers to change
the traditional way of thinking — that they will notice the competencies and use them to
backward map towards content, which will be secondary and instrumental to a new kind
of knowledge rather than a goal in itself. Interviews with teachers suggest that the reform
has not necessarily worked that way, although admittedly the implementation at the time
of data collection was in early stages. As J aroslav, a curriculum coordinator who
oversaw teachers' curriculum writing in his school put it:

It is a long-term process and I am afraid that it can be completed without the

change of mindset. School curriculum can be produced but the moment that

comes — when I start thinking about things, considering if what I have been doing
so far makes sense, if it really leads towards students' being able to do what I want

them to be able to do, that moment can be completely missed.

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It is difﬁcult to gauge the extent to which teachers experienced the moment when
they would question their own practice or if they missed it. But from their descriptions of
how they approached the curriculum writing, it appears that the competencies were
sometimes pushed to the background and content continued to drive the curriculum.
Understandably, teachers did not discard their previous knowledge and practices, and
channeled their experience with the new policy through the lens of their existing practice.
Key competencies were noted but more as rhetoric than a guide to a different approach to
teaching. In conversations with the teachers, the term key competencies was mentioned
only when we spoke on the general level. When it came down to descriptions about how
they approached the task, key competencies disappeared from the conversations and were
replaced by 'attainment standards'. It was perhaps because key competencies were stated
in somewhat general, and to many, also 'foreign' terms. The level of generality did not
reach the individual content areas because key competencies were only mentioned at the
beginning of the Frameworks and they were not linked to concrete areas for which
individual teachers were writing the curriculum. The policy document failed to articulate
the links between key competencies and the content and used 'attainment standards'
instead as a proxy for the key competencies.

With the key competencies not being easy to grasp, teachers understandably
continued to structure their thinking about the new curriculum in terms of the old content.
In most teachers' accounts on how they approached the curriculum writing, they reported
that the process began with the content outlined in the Frameworks, not with the
competencies or the attainment standards. For example, Monika, a Czech language and

literature teacher described how she took scissors to cut the old content outlines and then

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matched the old content with the new attainment standards. Katka, another Czech
language and literature teacher from a different school also took content as the backbone
of the curriculum, adding the attainment standards to it. She described her work on the
curriculum in the following way:

The most challenging part was probably dividing the content into years. . .I don't

know if it's good but we were able to ground it in new textbooks. Then we had to

come up with attainment standards, what the student gets out of the content, what
h/she learns.

Although teachers largely worked their way from existing content to the new
attainment standards, there were also several teachers who reported adopting a reversed
approach, i.e. the approach that the high ranking ministerial administrator quoted earlier
saw as the goal. For instance David, a social science teacher, did not see the key
competencies and attainment standards as an additional layer to be attached to the
content, but as a guide towards a different concept of teaching that will use the content to
build new skills. In his words:

The difference is that so far, the content has been key — to teach them [the

students] something, so that they leave with some knowledge. Now, the most

important thing for us will be to ensure that they can use it, or let's say develop
some attitudes, or some abilities and skills. So that will be more important for us
than the content itself.

David continued to describe how he worked on the curriculum writing:
I started from the attainment standards deﬁned in the Frameworks and the task

was to come up with ideas how to reach each with concrete activities, what to put

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there, what I should require from the students to do, perform, show. So it was a lot

about thinking, coming up with ideas where I could draw on what I know is

typically taught.

Clearly, the new Frameworks deﬁned the content even though in less prescriptive
and speciﬁc terms than before, and teachers who had been used to a content-driven
curriculum found little in the new policy that would allow them to signiﬁcantly depart
from the content-driven model. The rhetoric of the new Frameworks emphasized key
competencies but with the key competencies being loosely deﬁned and the content being
set, it was understandable that teachers largely started building on familiar grounds and
the key competencies tended to trail behind as a supplement to the content.

Seeing the old in the new

When it came to deﬁning what key competencies actually mean, teachers were
not always voicing the same views as policy makers who saw key competencies as one of
the main novelties of the reform that will change instructional practices. A fairly frequent
opinion was that although the term ‘key competencies’ was a novelty, the concept itself
was not new. The term itself made many teachers uncomfortable but in construing its
meaning, they often concluded that the competencies were not signiﬁcantly different
from what was familiar to them from the past. A fairly common view was that the new
language was used to disguise the old and make it look fancy, i.e. that the reform was
"discovering the discovered". In the words of one school principal:

It's really important to explain the term kompetence, its history, so that people at

schools realize that it is no scarecrow, that it is de facto nothing new, that it is

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something that has always been done here and it has just been named in line with

European, perhaps world norms.

The 'key competencies' and 'attainment standards' were expected to lead teachers
to new instructional practices grounded in activities that would actively engage students
and allow them to learn by doing rather than only passively building knowledge.
However, teachers reported that the expectations of new teaching practices were not
embedded in the reform, only implied by it and therefore the idea can be easily missed. In
David's account:

Methods and teaching forms — that's really not part of it [the reform]. We can't put

it in the school curriculum because if we did, then we would be forcing everybody

to use the same practices and since we do not agree on such things, it cannot be
embedded in any document. So it's more or less just up to me.
Similarly, Helena, to her dismay, felt that instructional practices were marginally
addressed by the policy and as such stood at the periphery of her colleagues' attention. In
her own words:

So we reworked the school curriculum but no one really sees it connected to

teaching methods. . .The teaching methods part is not there at all, which is

completely wrong because then it will really be only formal. . .When I ask

colleagues about methods, they say 'Methods? What do you mean?'. . .When I

thought about how it is going to change, I think that without changing methods,

nothing will change. And the methods, that's solely up to me what I am going to

do and it will not be reﬂected anywhere, no one will ask me for it or evaluate if I

do this or that...

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Key competencies thus fell largely short of impelling teachers to pay attention to
teaching methods. Although in the new school curricula, teachers had to produce brief
lists (perhaps a few bullet points) outlining practices -- so called 'educational strategies' --
they would utilize in instruction, they were not asked to go into details. These strategies
were the bridges between content and competencies but since the requirement was to list
them for the subject as a whole, not for individual themes or topics and not for individual
attainment standards, the descriptions were vague. It is premature to speculate about the
degree to which teachers may be led by the reform to learn about non-traditional teaching
methods that the reform is proclaimed to stimulate, and how they may be inclined to use
them because during the time of the interviews, teachers were only writing their school
curricula. In David’s words: "it is still in the stage of ideas." The interview data suggest
that teachers anticipated some change in their teaching methods but overall, they tended
to view the reform as reafﬁrmation of their existing practices. As Marek, a history teacher
put it:

When you work with the competencies, no one is trying to use competencies or

activities that have not already been used here. So usually, someone is responsible

for competencies in a particular subject, takes the competencies and says 'I

develop this competency this way. . .' It's always pulled from things that we have

been doing. So it's more about trying to ﬁnd out what we have been doing and
showing it to others. . .for me, the beneﬁt is then that I realize what I have been
doing or what I have not been doing but it's deﬁnitely not something completely

new.

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The survey data also showed that teachers were less inclined to perceive the
reform an effort to signiﬁcantly change things and instead view it as a way to explicitly
describe the work they had been accustomed to doing. 58% teachers agreed with the
statement that the reform was an effort to capture things that are commonly being done
and the same proportion of teachers did not view the reform as signiﬁcantly changing
existing conceptions of education and educational goals.

Table 9 - Teachers' perceptions of the novelty of the reform
The reform represents an eﬂort to capture what is commonly done

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree probably not probably yes agree
2.7 29.7 9.5 18.9 32.4 6.8
(%)

Table 10 - Teachers' perceptions about the concept of the reform

The reform is significantly changing the existing conception of education and educational
goals

 

 

 

Strongly Disagree Not sure, Not sure, Agree Strongly
disagree probably not probably yes agree
2.6 42.1 13.2 11.8 27.6 2.6
(%)

There are several ways to interpret teachers' tendency to view key competencies
as a familiar practice and the reform as a whole as a reinstatement of existing practices.
Implementation studies drawing on cognitive psychology (e. g. Spillane et a1, 2002;
Spillane, 2004) show that people tend to notice things that look familiar and ignore new
aspects of reforms as they reinterpret new ideas to ﬁt their existing cognitive frames. It is
likely that teachers' notion of the reform as "discovering the discovered" was a product of
such sense-making processes. There is also a possibility that some of the surveyed
teachers had already been engaged in instructional practices that the reform tried to
stimulate. The schools entered the pilot project voluntarily, motivated by various reasons

— some of the pilot schools (but not all) were non-traditional, already trying to do

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different things.

From the pilot schools included in this study, one counted among the more
progressive schools in the region with a reputation of a reform-minded school where
many innovative projects had been initiated. Teachers and principals in the other two
pilot schools described their schools as traditional. The other two schools entered the
pilot as a result of their principals' decision. One of the principals wished to see some
change taking place in his school and felt that an outside force may be more effective in
exerting that change. This view may appear puzzling to US. researchers who often see
effective change as coming from the inside. But in the context of Czech education where
for years, teachers and schools have been accustomed to follow state guidance and
discourage from exerting own initiative, this view makes sense. The second school's
principal explained that she did not like to see her teachers complain about the existing
content outlines so she decided that subscribing her school to the pilot would challenge
the teachers who would ﬁnd out by their own experience that curriculum design,
negotiations about time allocations, and selection of content is a difﬁcult but perhaps a
worthwhile task.

In the context of the three different schools, similar statements may then be
interpreted in different ways. Pavel, a social science teacher from the more progressive
high school, said:

We have already been doing things that are included in the reform. For example,

we have paid attention to working with texts, or at least I have personally been

doing it so for us it's more... that we ﬁrrther wrap around what we have been

doing 6. g. by adding an extra hour of instructional time here and there so that we

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can do it even better.

Given the reform-oriented nature of his school, it is quite possible that in this
school the reform implementation enabled teachers to institutionalize their existing
practices. On the other hand, when teachers in the other two more traditional schools
expressed the notion of the reform as a reafﬁrrnation of their existing practices, it could
be argued that they were not seeing the new aspects of the reform because they were
focused on the familiar that "breeds attention" (Spillane, 2004, p.76).

The rules of the reform

The conceptual shift in teachers' thinking about content and in developing new
instructional practices that the reform assumed would happen was further obscured by the
formal and structural requirements imposed on the development of school curriculum.
Teachers were maneuvering the curriculum writing within delineated boundaries. The
document they produced had to meet a number of requirements in terms of structure,
content, and form. Each school had to describe its characteristics, equipment, stafﬁng,
admission process, organization of high school exit examinations and other things,
including a self-evaluation report. The document also had to show how 'cross-cutting'
themes had been diffused across the curriculum, and list 'educational strategies' that
would lead to the development of the ﬁve key competencies. All of these components
constituted the more general, introductory part of the school curriculum, which typically
fell to the hands of school coordinators and the 4-5-member school leadership teams.

The main portion of individual teachers' work consisted in writing curricula for
their subjects. In each school, roughly 12-15 teachers were involved in the curriculum

writing, with each subject being represented by one teacher. The teachers had to provide

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general description of their subject and include 'educational strategies' that they will use
to teach the subject. The general descriptions were typically followed with a table
showing the organization of content, attainment standards, and cross-curricular themes in
three or four columns. Teachers reported spending countless hours on the job. They were
doing the work on top of their regular teaching loads, which meant that many of their
weekends and evenings were sacriﬁced for the school curriculum writing. The Institute
collected teachers' drafts of the curricula at various stages of work and the employees of
the Institute commented on them before sending them back to the schools. Teachers
understood that they had to follow a certain structure but at times, they were ﬁ'ustrated
because they did not feel the rules were clear ﬁom the onset and they changed on several
occasions. Katka's quote exempliﬁes views that other teachers also voiced:
Formal things that kept changing, that bothered me. . .We put the content into
tables, ﬁrst they told us what these tables would look like, then it changed and it
changed twice or three times so whoever was giving us the task did not have
things clear. And only when we ﬁnished something, they commented on it and
gave us instructions and we had to change it all. Had they given it to us
beforehand, we could have saved a lot of time.
Furthermore, teachers felt that some of the rules were too artiﬁcial and constraining.
For example, Monika, a Czech language and literature teacher commented:
The cross-cutting themes particularly bother me. It bothers me that something that
I think I do automatically, suddenly I have to emphasize that I do it. . .that I have
to write in the curriculum that I am covering this topic and next to it write that it

develops fundamental skills for cultural understanding...l feel more constrained

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than by the existing content outlines.

Similarly, Helena also viewed the requirement to identify a cross-cutting theme and
match it with a topic as somewhat arbitrary. She also further talked about other
requirements for the structure and form of the curriculum that bothered her:

For example when I cover the Hussites, I am supposed to mention something

about patriotism. . .but a teacher is usually an educated person. . .and knows to

mention such things without having them written down next to a speciﬁc

topic. . .It was almost funny, and it bothered us quite a bit, how they were insisting

on the form. The lady [at the Institute] who read through my piece on history,

well I assume she must have been a historian but she did not write a single
comment on the history content. . .she checked if I had the cross-cutting themes in
the right places and things like that, the formal aspect. Or they corrected my verbs

a lot.

In efforts to steer teachers towards writing procedural attainment standards, the
Institute gradually developed a list of verbs that teachers were asked to avoid. Several
teachers spoke about that. Katka's quote exempliﬁes that:

Often, it was about verbs used in the attainment standards, because they did not

want to see passive verbs. . .I felt that later they did not really look at what was

written but how things were written. For example, in one of the drafts that I sent
to Prague for evaluation, I completely skipped literature for the 3rd year students.

The entire content was missing but they saw that I used the verb "know" and "can

image" and were vehemently against these two verbs but no one noticed that the

literature content was missing.

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The Institute's insistence on form and its lenience about content were somewhat
understandable. As the Institute's representatives explained, they wanted to make sure
that the 16 pilot school curricula could serve as an example for other schools so every
word was considered. But at the same time, they did not want to limit teachers' creativity
in assembling the cunicula and outlining the content so they focused primarily on surface
characteristics of the documents the schools had submitted.

Capacity and support

In writing the school curricula, teachers relied primarily on their common sense,
their knowledge and experiences. In some of the pilot schools, teachers could count on
some support from their colleagues and leaders; in others they were on their own. In the
more progressive school, the interviewed teachers described their work on the school
cunicula as a collaborative, team effort and they expressed greater levels of satisfaction
with the ﬁnal product. In contrast to that, teachers in one of the more traditional schools
expressed largely disappointment, even disillusionment with their work, perhaps
connected to the fact that they felt unsupported and isolated in their work. But more
importantly, where there was little information and experience sharing, it was apparent
that the needed capacity to initiate changes was limited. Helena criticiZed herself for not
being able to signiﬁcantly change what she felt needed to change: "We spent an
enormous time with it and the effect, I would say, is not really there... It's content
outlines, just like they were before, only now they are in a table." She continued:
"Perhaps, I am not creative enough, I don't know but I could not come up with anything

new. Maybe it is because I have taught history for x years this way so it may have

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prevented me from looking at it ﬁom a new angle. Again, I could not think of anything
but chronological history. And I feel so disappointed with tha ".

Helena's quote illustrates how a desire to change things met with the reality of
limited capacity. Most of the interviewed teachers had limited exposure to alternative
education models that would allow them to conﬁ'ont their existing practices with different
ones. They were ﬁshing for ideas wherever they could and their access to information
was highly variable. The Institute for Research in Education worked closely with schools
to ensure that teachers understood the requirements of the mandate but deep conceptual,
subject speciﬁc conversations did not appear to be on the agenda. There was an implicit
expectation that the guidelines were in the Frameworks and teachers' job was to ﬁnd their
own way of executing them.

The Institute tried to help its pilot schools as much as it could but its capacities
were also limited. With a handful of employees, the Institute faced constraints in terms of
staff, but also funds, and to some degree also expertise. The reform concepts were novel
for everyone -— the Institute's employees were trying to learn the reform as much as the
teachers while simultaneously teaching it. The Institute organized a series of meetings to
help school coordinators and teachers construe meanings of the reform. According to
teachers' reports, these meetings were helpful and provided some space for discussions
but overall, there was little time to delve deep into key competencies, educational
strategies and concepts that were underlying traditional assumptions about teaching and
learning in terms of concrete subjects.

Pavel, a social science teacher, described his impression of the entire pilot and

school curriculum writing with the expression "sewn with a hot needle". In Czech, this

166

1 refers to instances where things are rushed. In a similar vein, other teachers commented
that the two or three subject speciﬁc one-day meetings that took place in Prague during
the year of the curriculum writing were helpful but insufﬁcient. They allowed them to
make sense of some of the terminology and develop a better understanding of the
requirements of the mandate of school curriculum production. But they only scratched
the surface of the possibilities that the reform could offer. In Helena's account of the
meeting in which she participated:

It was not a wasted day. They said what the goal of the meeting was, what they

wanted to show, distributed some materials and presented information on a data

projector -- that was all good. But there was little space for discussion or for
communication from us in their direction. It was more like they quickly needed to

explain something, what we needed to do, so we listened, then there would be 30

minutes for questions and that was it. So my overall feeling was a lack of time. It

was all rushed.

The Institute developed a closed web portal that facilitated dissemination of
information and information exchange among the pilot schools. Teachers praised the
portal as a good resource and a bank of materials that had been distributed in the
meetings. The Institute had hoped that the portal would also facilitate exchange of
experiences and information sharing between pilot schools' teachers but teachers reported
that this happened only to a limited degree. "The discussions weren't as lively as they
could have been", perhaps because teachers were overwhelmed with the many competing

demands they had to meet, and they had little time to do more.

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Professional development

Teachers generally expressed a sense of skepticism towards professional
development, and in several cases gave up on professional development altogether. For
example, Pavel did not try to participate in any professional development activities
because his past experiences had been disappointing and discouraging: "I have
experienced several such trainings and perhaps one out of ﬁve was worthwhile, the rest
was a waste of time". Similarly Monika commented: "Last year, I attended a series of
lectures on literature. . .I learned some 10% new things, the rest I had already known".
Professional development was rarely a source of ideas and inspiration for teachers. When
I asked David, Monika's colleague, where he was getting new ideas, he responded: "By
thinking". Teachers generally criticized professional development for being focused on
content knowledge, which tends to be the arena where Czech teachers need least help.
Professional development embedded in concrete curriculum that would offer practical
advice seemed to be less common. In the words of one of the teachers:

I feel that there is a great deﬁciency in that when there is a teacher training, it

tends to be in content. . .What is absolutely missing are some demonstration

lessons. It would be great if there were programs where they could present some

ideas in a demonstration lesson.
Similarly, another teacher from a different school said:

For example, if they sent us a videotape with a demonstration lesson, then we

could analyze it, talk about what we like, what one could do etc. That would be

useful. . .If they could give us some ideas. But that's absolutely missing here. At

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the trainings, it's pure theory. But at least in foreign languages there are

workshops. . .

Clearly, there is a need for professional development that would introduce
teachers to new ideas and alternative ways of teaching their speciﬁc subject matter. Some
non-proﬁt educational associations provide that kind of professional development but the
reform as a whole, and certainly the pilot, has not been supported with a systematic and
coherent set of learning opportunities embedded in concrete curricular areas and geared
towards providing teachers with conceptual help in instructional practices. In 2006-2007,
shortly before the school curriculum writing mandate came into effect for primary
schools, the state launched a national professional development project titled
"Coordinator". This project was intended for representatives of primary schools who
would assume the role of school coordinators, and guided them through the process of
forming a curriculum writing team and developing school curricula. Without sufﬁcient
knowledge about the project, one can only speculate from the title of the project that it
did not target subject-speciﬁc matters, and that teachers' need for practical content-based
seminars and workshops connected to the reform ideas has not been systematically
addressed.

Reﬂective feedback, learning the reform and learning from the reform

The Institute guided teachers' curriculum writing by providing them with
feedback on individual sections of the curriculum they had written. However, as
mentioned earlier, in teachers' accounts, the feedback pointed primarily to formal aspects
of the curriculum, giving them few ideas on the substantive elements of the curriculum.

Judging from a distance, both the Institute and the teachers were somewhat cautious and

169

uncertain about the degree of change that was expected. The Institute's approach was to
interfere as little as possible so that teachers' creative potential would not be bound. But
in the absence of alternative models of curriculum, teachers seemed at a 1033. Part of the
rationale of schools' curriculum writing was that teachers' engagement with curriculum
writing would lead to teachers' self-reﬂection, which would serve as a starting point for
change. While the overwhelming majority of teachers (85%) reported in the survey that
the reform made them think more about their existing practices, they were lacking
reference points that would allow them to confront their thoughts and compare their
existing practices with an alternative.

Scholarly literature on restructuring speaks of the importance of initial dissonance
as a trigger to change (Spillane et al., 2002). In order to change, people must ﬁrst
recognize their existing beliefs and practices as problematic through experiencing a sense
of positive dissonance that would inspire them to explore in more depth another practice
and learn from it. The implementation seemed to have fallen short on creating conditions
and learning opportunities that would foster this positive sense of dissonance. In the
absence of models and concrete examples of alternative approaches to curriculum and
teaching, there were few opportunities for teachers to encounter something different and
confront their practices with an alternative.

In cases where teachers did encounter a non-traditional practice, the opportunities
to explore the practice in greater depth were sometimes missed. For example, at the
conclusion of the curriculum writing in the end of the academic year, one of the pilot
schools organized an all-staff meeting that started with a brief overview of the work

teachers had done on the curriculum, and continued with a set of mini-workshops. The

170

whole staff was split into several groups that received a demonstration lesson where some
of the teachers shared their non-traditional instructional practices. These included various
kinds of activities such as word games or project-oriented lessons. However, the agenda
of the meeting did not set aside any time for a discussion on the methods that teachers
had witnessed in these mini-lessons. In the end of the last activity, everyone packed up
and left, without a closure and an opportunity to discuss the beneﬁts and potential use of
the demonstrated activities.

At the same time, the experience with the curriculum writing allowed teachers to
judge their existing learning opportunities and sparked their interest to learn more and in
new ways. For example, several teachers expressed a need for learning opportunities that
would include experience sharing and conversations with colleagues about teaching and
learning. Such things perhaps happen informally in teachers' home rooms and in the halls
but several interviewed teachers voiced a need for more structured opportunities to learn.
Helena said: "I had hoped, but I know this is quite impossible, that let's say once a month
we would get a day off and go to another school. . .I would go somewhere, sit down with
the history teacher there and spend the day with him/her". In a somewhat similar vein,

J aroslav, a school curriculum coordinator, spoke about the need to bring teachers together
and facilitate discussions about their practices:

It has become clear that we will need to have meetings and talk about how we

teach, what we do, and remove the taboo of examining colleagues' work. . .so that

we can say -- h/she makes some mistakes but it doesn't matter because I also
make mistakes. To see how one's colleagues deal with mistakes can be interesting

and people will shake off the fear of being uncovered for not being perfect. . .and

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open up, less afraid to say 'I am not teaching this very well but this other thing I

do well and I want to share it'.

Meetings of the kind that Helena and J aroslav were envisioning for the future are
not common in Czech schools. It does not mean that teachers do not talk about their
practices with one another, but such talks are informal, taking place in teachers'
homerooms or in the halls. What Helena and Jaroslav called for were more
institutionalized experiences of sharing practices. Schools typically have regular staff
meetings but these tend to be used to solve salient issues that arise and discuss upcoming
events. Teachers within a department usually meet when they need to solve a problem or
decide on textbooks. The culture of reﬂective practice and development of shared
meanings through discussions about conceptual matters is new but as the quotes
illustrate, people are beginning to discover it and recognize its value.

Aside from a growing awareness of a need to develop a reﬂective practice and
learning communities, some teachers also learned that the reform itself and the
Frameworks in particular need fundamental revisions. Martin, a history teacher, said:

I feel that the Frameworks need to be conceptually reworked. Not in the

dimension of the school curriculum but in the dimension of the Frameworks. I did

not realize this until I was fully absorbed in the curriculum writing. When I

compared the Frameworks for history in primary education with the academic

high schools, I realized that the attainment standards grow more demanding but
there is nothing else. It does not really develop the students. . .the history should
be completely redone so that it allows students to build on what they know from

primary schools, but build on it differently. For example, let's not teach

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emigration after the battle of the White Mountain but let's teach emigration as a
process that has taken place since ancient times until today. This would be a
fundamental and necessary change. . .and probably professional historians should
take charge in determining the themes.

School curriculum writing — a whole school affair?

In each pilot school, the curriculum writing was divided among a team of 12-17
teachers so that each subject would have a representation. There was an expectation that
each teacher would cooperate with colleagues from his/her department who would
contribute with ideas, advice, and feedback. Largely, this type of cooperation did not
occur. The curriculum development was a very time-consuming task and there was little
to motivate other teachers to become engaged. Leading teachers were receiving a modest
remuneration ﬁ'om funds that the Institute for Research in Education acquired from the
European structural funds but other teachers had no incentives to participate.

Additionally, teachers in pilot schools did not unanimously support the reform
efforts. The teaching staffs were somewhat divided on the issue of the curricular reform
with some teachers welcoming it and others resisting it or ignoring it. Some of the
teachers on the curriculum writing teams participated in the policy implementation
because their colleagues would not and no one else was willing to take on the task. The
one high school among the three that had a reputation of a progressive school was a
slightly different case. It was the largest of the three pilot schools with close to 60
teachers (compared to 30-40 in an average-sized Czech academic high school) and thus
had a large enough pool of candidates for the curriculum writing team. Curriculum

writing then was distributed among people who wanted to be a part of the process. In

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addition, the school principal was an avid supporter of the reform ideas and according to
teachers, an effective communicator who regularly disseminated information and kept
teachers in the know. Overall, there was a stronger sense of cooperation between the
curriculum writing team members in this school than in the other two pilot schools. But
teachers in this school pointed to another phenomenon — they saw a gulf opening between
the teachers who were engaged in the curriculum writing and those who were not. The
following quote illustrates the sense of division:
The curriculum writing team now knows a lot more than the rest of the
teachers. . .And at the moment, it is divided... "thanks to" the team members. But
I have to say that we are all really tired now at the end of the year because it was a
tremendous amount of work, extra work that one could only do on the weekends
or holidays. But it is also true that the other side did not show much interest to
learn about what we have done. When we start teaching from the curriculum next
year, things might change in that respect. . .people will have to be interested.
Teachers in the other two more traditional high schools differed in how they
viewed collaboration within their school. In both cases, they expressed views that the
reform at its existing stage was a matter of those who were directly engaged in it and the
rest of the teaching staff was largely not involved. But different levels of support were
apparent. In one of the two high schools, teachers felt isolated in their work and
unsupported by the leaders. They reported that the school curriculum coordinator was too
busy with other duties and did not communicate with the curriculum writing team
effectively. Teachers would learn what needed to get done in the last minute and this,

coupled with the lack of general support from the leadership annoyed them. There were

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no regularly scheduled meetings that would bring the teachers together and facilitate
information exchange between departments. Furthermore, the teachers who were in
charge of the curriculum writing for their subject could not ﬁnd much help from other
colleagues who were either busy writing curriculum for another subject or who did not
respond to calls for help and wished to stay uninvolved. One of the teachers in this school
described her unsuccessful efforts to generate feedback from colleagues:
I don't think that other teachers in our school carefully read through the
Frameworks and thought about them. I wanted them to help me with the verbs in
the curriculum so I distributed my draft but my colleagues seemed to have been
surprised at being asked to do something and did not respond so I had to do it on
my own. I don't know if it is because I failed to properly explain to them what I
needed or if it was simply easier for me not to bother and get it done by myself.
The situation in the other pilot school, which was comparable in size and
conditions, was more optimistic. The curriculum coordinator was enthusiastic about the
work and energized the team. Although this school was located in a small town, remote
from larger cities where professional development activities were easily accessible, the
school coordinator made the effort to participate in various workshops and seminars in
the capital and brought back information and ideas to share with his colleagues. Still, the
curriculum writing rested on individuals who were not receiving much help ﬁom their
colleagues for similar reasons as in the other pilot school.
Overall, teachers in all three schools reported that the reform generated more talk
and that it has pushed them to begin developing team-working skills. Efforts to reduce

content and diffuse cross-cutting themes throughout the curriculum pushed teachers to

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talk across subject boundaries to determine how they might divide the work. They were
able to identify points where the same content was covered in different subjects, and
subsequently determine how they might reduce duplication. For example, history, which
is traditionally taught chronologically, begins with the evolution of man. As Helena was
trying to ﬁnd content areas that she could trim, she talked to her colleague who was
writing curriculum for biology and they agreed to keep the topic primarily in biology:

We talked with my colleague who teaches biology and established that for

example for the prehistoric times, I don't need to cover the individual stages of

human evolution and culture associated with it because he can do that. I will
provide him with some background information and he will tell his students
where archeological sites can be found etc.

In addition to identifying overlaps and reshufﬂing content so that teachers would
reduce duplication but also strengthen inter-subject connections and incorporate cross-
cutting themes, teachers also negotiated about instructional time allocations. In all, the
reform sparked discussions and facilitated communication among teachers that hadn't
been previously present. Helena's comment echoes what other participants in this study
said:

There have been conﬂicts and arguments but at least something is happening.

People are talking. And it has also become clear who wants to do things

differently, who doesn't. . .it changed the relationships a little bit and with some

colleagues, it brought us more together. You realize that there are other people

who are interested in teaching differently...

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The reform as a whole was a positive experience for some and a mixed experience
for others. Teachers unanimously agreed that curriculum writing was a tremendous
amount of work and in spring 2006 many were relieved that it was ﬁnished but they also
communicated a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, they acknowledged that the
curriculum writing constituted only the ﬁrst phase of the reform implementation. Many
were wondering how their new school curriculum would work in practice the following
year when they would begin using it with the ﬁrst-year students. In the words of one of
the teachers:

The reform is only being created. We have completed our school curriculum,

which we will enact next year. And I think that it will take some time to achieve a

more complete curriculum because we will ﬁrst need to teach from it to learn

what we can or cannot do.

Despite all the difﬁculties of the curriculum writing process, small incentives and
scant opportunities to learn about alternative ways to approach content and instruction,
teachers took the task of curriculum writing seriously and did a remarkable job. As
Jaroslav, one of the school coordinators said:

When I looked at the school curriculum we wrote, I felt that many things could be

done better but at the same time I was very proud of my colleagues and the work

they did. The great amount of work is apparent in it. The overall impression is
positive, the people are really very capable.

Summary
The curricular reform is intended to improve quality of education in Czech

schools but it is not clear what that means. Policy makers did not articulate desired or

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intended outcomes and the reform's goals are thus implied by vague terms, leaving
interpretation and meaning-making to schools and individual teachers. The reform is
expected to spur change in three key areas: 1) increased school and teacher autonomy in
curricular matters is expected to bring about change in content, allowing schools to adjust
their curriculum to their local needs; 2) key competencies are expected to alter the
existing content-driven educational model, change the way teachers think about their
teaching and stimulate new teaching practices; 3) cross-curricular themes and emphasis
on connections between subjects are expected to encourage teachers to cooperate more
closely with one another.

By devolving a degree of cunicular decision-making authority to schools, the
state is sending a message that the problem of Czech education lies in school governance
and the old highly prescriptive national curriculum with its detailed content outlines.
Many teachers certainly consider the existing (old) curriculum problematic because it is
overloaded with factual information and long lists of topics that realistically can hardly
be covered in a given time frame. But at the same time, they exercise a degree of
autonomy and determine how closely they will adhere to the national curriculum.
Although by default, teaching and learning is controlled by the national curriculum, there
are other control mechanisms in the system and they appear to exert even stronger
inﬂuence on what gets taught, namely high stakes entrance examinations. Without
addressing change in these surrogate mechanisms of control, the curricular reform is
limited in the possibility of change it can generate. Evidence from pilot schools suggests
that the new autonomy allowed teachers to ﬁne-tune their practices, reshuffle content and

adjust instructional time allocations for individual subjects but teachers largely reported

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that they did not feel they could institute signiﬁcant changes that would go beyond
trimming the existing content and marginal adjustments. Traditional organization of
subjects prevailed in all three pilot high schools and integrating content into new subjects
or disappearance of content feared by the Association of History Teachers (ASUD) did
not occur. In one of the three pilot schools, teachers created a new course integrating
history and geography and offered it as an elective. Aside form this experiment, subjects
stayed within their traditional boundaries.

Key competencies were expected to push teachers' thinking about teaching and
learning in new directions but there was little evidence that this was occurring. Teachers
tended to interpret key competencies as an old practice disguised in new words. Teachers'
curriculum writing was guided by existing content and new attainment standards, which
served as a proxy to the key competencies. But even as a proxy, there was not a clear
connection between the attainment standards and the key competencies, and key
competencies remained obfuscated in the reform. The expectation that focusing on key
competencies or attainment standards will stimulate change in how teachers teach
appears grossly overestimated — teachers reported that teaching practices and methods do
not constitute a part of the reform. It is however pre-mature to pass any judgment on
whether new curricula will have implications for teaching practices because at the time of
the data collection, the reform's enactment was in the phase of curriculum writing.

The Frameworks' assumption that teachers will collaborate as they work to diffuse
cross-curricular themes throughout the cunicula and strengthen inter-subject connections
seemed to hold. Teachers on the curriculum writing teams had to collaborate with one

another, at least to some extent. In some cases, they reported more collaboration with

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teachers across subjects than within subjects, where individuals wrote the cunicula with
little help from their colleagues except for the more progressive high school where
teachers within the same departments gave each other advice and reviewed each other's
work. The overall task did bring the members of the curriculum writing teams closer
together, allowing them to learn more about their colleagues' work.

The dynamics of the curriculum writing differed from one school to another but
according to teachers' reports, teachers who were not directly involved in the curriculum
writing largely stayed out of the entire process. However, in all schools, the reform
sparked discussions and teachers reported increased talk about the reform. This could be
viewed as a positive development signaling that professional communities might begin to
form. At the same time, increased teacher talk must be approached with caution and
analyzed in terms of its quality rather than the degree to which it occurs. As scholars have
pointed out (Fullan, 2001; Smylie & Evan, 2006), professional communities may be
effective and their members may collaborate to make breakthroughs in teaching and
learning but "when teachers collaborate to reinforce each others' bad or ineffective
practices, they end up making matters worse" (Fullan, 2001, p.133).

On the whole, it was remarkable how much work teachers managed to accomplish
under the given circumstances, with little capacity and limited support. The Institute for
Research in Education provided guidance, which teachers valued and praised. At the
same time, teachers' accounts suggested that the support was oriented towards the school
successfully meeting the formal requirements of the reform and there were few
opportunities for deeper conversations about concepts, actual practices and concrete

classroom applications. Teachers were expected to construe meanings of these matters on

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their own. According to a high ranking ministerial ofﬁcial, teachers should be able to
work independently and ﬁgure things out by themselves. In his words:

I think that part of the professionalism of the teaching profession is that one

continues to learn on an internal impulse, whether that means participating in

workshops. . .in today's world of information, there are countless sources for self-
improvement. . .and each of us does it in a way. A person who has a cabin and
needs to build a wall, although not a laymen. . .well, many of us do it by searching
for information and learning to do it somehow [on our own].

This quote exempliﬁes a cultural attitude that places high expectations on teachers
as individuals who should pursue professional development for their own sake. Although
one can perhaps learn to build a wall on his/her own, it is difficult to see a parallel
between building a wall and developing a new teaching practice through curriculum
writing. One could do the latter if there was a checklist of instructions and sequences to
follow, but change in instructional practices is much more complex, particularly when
there is a blurred vision of the end product. In an environment where expectations of
outcomes have not been articulated beyond the requirement that schools produce their
curricula according to given rules, no one quite knows what teachers need to learn. As the
last quote suggested, the state ofﬁcial did not feel that the state should assume a
responsibility to teach teachers how to do the reform. If that quote is taken as a cultural
representation of the state's attitude towards implementation, then it is understandable
why so far the reform has not been accompanied by any systematic teacher training that
would touch upon conceptual rather than organizational issues.

On the more positive note, the pilot teachers involved in curriculum writing

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largely viewed their experience as learning and personal growth. They felt that the reform
had pushed them to think about content and their existing practices but in the absence of
reference points that would allow them to confront their experiences with an alternative,
their self-reﬂection did not necessarily lead to breakthrough realizations. As the quotes
illustrated, some teachers may have realized that they wanted to do things differently but
they did not necessarily know how.

The evidence of the enactment of the Frameworks in the three pilot schools
presented here suggests that when teachers got engaged in the reform, they felt
responsible to do the most they could with the limited capacities they had available, and
they worked hard to accomplish the task. The reform carries with it the possibility to tap
into teachers' potential but unless there is a coherent and focused guidance embedded in
actual practices, teachers' energy and initial enthusiasm may be wasted on producing a

document that may have weak links to practice.

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CHAPTER 7: INTERPRETIN G THE REFORM

Localized perspective of the reform

This study has chronicled the evolution of a curricular reform in the Czech
Republic, spanning the broader policy circles to classroom teachers who are trying to
enact the policy in practice. The narrative demonstrates difﬁculties that a country
transitioning ﬁ'om socialism to democracy encounters on its journey to move its
education system from a state-controlled model to one where schools and individual
teachers have signiﬁcant decision making authority, and where authority-oriented
teaching styles are gradually converted into more student-centered approaches. Through
the account of events as they progressed, the narrative offers answers to one of the two
overarching questions that this study began with: How has the reform evolved and
unfolded the way it has? In connection to a conceptual framework introduced in Chapter
One, individual chapters then addressed various aspects of the reform. The framework
guided the study through the entire landscape or reform starting with a broader overview
of the political, historical, and social context of Czech education (namely the context of
Political Era and Education State) and then moving into the arena of the policy process
(contexts of inﬂuence, text, and practice).

In capturing the trajectory of the curricular policy evolution and its early
implementation, a number of new questions emerged. The ideas to reform the curriculum
came shortly after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989 but they were ignored for the
most part of 19903. Why did it take so long for the reform to materialize? When the

reform ideas resurfaced in the White Paper in 2001, why were they so quickly written

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into a policy text that many consider a good starting point that still needs substantial
clariﬁcations and revisions? Why is the curriculum being decentralized when no one
really opposed the role of the state as the key curriculum developer? Why is the policy
text relying on the term "key competencies" when this term is foreign to Czech audiences
and difﬁcult to comprehend? To what extend does the reform represent a revolution in
Czech schooling as many newspapers proclaimed?

Drawing on the early chapters of this study and on the exploration of the various
contexts of policy, this chapter provides a partial explanation for these questions. It is
possible to suggest that the curriculum reform took a long time to develop because there
was no burning need in the Czech society to overhaul the education system in a manner
that the reform advocates. When the new political era replaced the communist regime and
the society began its transformation on all levels of socio-political life, education
represented a staple of stability that many desired to preserve in the midst of all other
changes that were sweeping over the society. The schooling system had been ﬁrmly in
place for centuries, and results from international and comparative education studies
suggested that as a whole it had worked relatively well. Naturally, in the aftermath of the
events of 1989, many signiﬁcant changes have occurred but they were primarily
structural and largely did not concern the underlying concepts and premises on which the
system was built. The culture of teaching and learning in Czech schools and the content-
driven education model remained remarkably robust and well preserved.

Czech history has taught the society to leave matters of education to the state. As
a result, Czechs do not tend to be very knowledgeable about education issues and

education is not a hot topic in political debates with the exception of partial issues such as

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the possibility of introducing tuition to public universities. Many Czechs are proud of the
education system and do not see a need to change it radically. Educators typically
acknowledge that Czech students are overloaded with unnecessary facts and knowledge
of trivia at the expense of developing skills that they can apply in everyday life, and in
that sense there is demand for change. The public may be willing to sacriﬁce some
content but only a minority of reform-minded individuals advocate teaching practices
different from the traditional algorithm of teaching that prevails in Czech schools and
constitutes what Tyack (1995) has called 'the grammar of schooling'. It is quite common
to hear Czechs say that school should continue to be an affair where students learn
discipline and drill, and where too much democracy and fun — terms commonly
associated with student-centered approaches to instruction -- might be threatening to the
perceived quality of education.

Under these circumstances, the minority of researchers, reform-minded
individuals, and associations who called for a radical change experienced great
challenges in moving their ideas on the policy agenda. The various alternative education
movements, groups, and individuals advocating for a change did not have sufﬁcient
political leverage to push reform proposals through, and the curricular reform had to wait
until the political environment was more favorable to it. Chapter Four shifted gears from
the broader contexts and in connection to the conceptual framework moved its attention
to the policy itself and the process of how it emerged. It traced evolution of the reform in
time, illustrating various political struggles that buried the idea of the curriculum reform
under the proposal to reform high school exit examinations that reached the policy

agenda in the mid 19905. Times became more favorable to the curriculum reform again in

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early 2000 when the proposal to reform curriculum re-emerged with the publication of
the White Paper in 2001, gradually making its way to the new Education Act. In the ﬁrst
bill of the Act, the curricular reform occupied a marginal position and the high school
exit examination reform took prominence. When the bill was not passed, a new window
of opportunity opened for the reformers to expand the conceptual ideas of the cunicular
reform and include the reform principles in the subsequent draft of the bill, which was
written into a law in 2004. As Kingdon wrote in his seminal work on agendas,
alternatives and public policies (1995), windows of opportunities open for a short time
and policy makers have to act fast. The window of opportunity for the cunicular reform
opened with the development of an overarching strategy for Czech education, and
subsequently, with the drafts of the new education bill that preceded Czech Republic's
integration into the EU. Reforrners took only a couple of years to develop the new
Frameworks that stand at the core of the reform, and perhaps that explains why the
curricular reform as a whole appears underdeveloped and underspeciﬁed.

The descriptions of contexts of Political Eras and Education State provided a way
into the study and clues that partially explain why different elements of the system have
evolved in ways that may appear puzzling to an outsider. For example, the history helps
to understand the peculiar situation of the current assessment system where there are at
least two different points of assessment at the end of secondary education that do not line
up to one another. The traditional high school exit examinations have over 150 years long
history and the exams continue to be developed on the local level of individual school
buildings. Universities, colleges, and even departments within them have also been

accustomed to devising their own assessment mechanisms that translate into entrance

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examinations. The virtually unrestricted academic freedom that universities gained after
1989 further reinforced the practice of developing tests and exams independently of what
happens in secondary schools. In addition, a third assessment mechanism is currently
being devised -— standardized state high school exit examinations, which at the time of
writing did not have a clear concept of what other mechanisms they would align to. The
system is holding on to its traditions and at the same time it attempts to modernize.
However, the new does not replace the old; instead they coexist.

The story of the curricular reform also illustrates the Czech struggle to break
away from the past. This yearning is exempliﬁed in the continuous efforts to decentralize
education. The curricular reform follows administrative decentralization with a
substantial devolution of powers in curriculum development to the lower levels. If Czech
policy makers had been impelled to preserve historical continuity and work with existing
institutional structures, they could have utilized established channels of inﬂuence, and
taken advantage of the state's historical power to set the rules and teachers' traditional
compliance to follow the regulations within the latitude of their personal autonomy. With
such an approach, the solution to the problem of overloaded and content-driven education
could have looked different. For example, it is possible to envision that the state would
have devised a new national curriculum, which would reduce the unnecessary content
and introduce competency / outcome standards. Teachers, who have been accustomed to
following the national curriculum would likely adjust and would not feel threatened or
burdened by the additional requirement to design their own school curriculum, which, to
many, is a foreign idea for which they have been historically unprepared.

However, the alternative to continue with the traditional way of determining the

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curriculum centrally but signiﬁcantly changing its conception has not been sought as a
solution. Why was that the case? There are some obvious answers to this question. Much
of what followed after 1989 was a reaction to what had preceded it. The proposed
practice, although still in place for the most of 19903 when the curriculum matters
continued to be decided centrally, resembled too closely the solutions of the communist
regime. In the light of the development of the new political era that began with the
regime change in 1989, a more radical change was needed -- such that would dismantle
the previous structures. Hence decentralization came naturally as the only conceivable
answer. It stood for an effort to effectively restructure the governance in pursuit of
greater effectiveness but more importantly, it also functioned as a political instrument and
a means to democratizing a regime that for 40 years fell under the rule of a single Party
system. Decentralization represented a natural pendulum swing across the post-
communist world although it is somewhat ironic because in many other parts of the
world, decentralization began to be viewed as a signiﬁcant contributor to growing
disparities and greater inequalities (Watson, 2000). Additionally, as Chapters Four and
Five showed, decentralization as the key mechanism of the reform is also closely
connected to the international political context where "it is a central plank of major
international efforts at restructuring education in transitional, transformation, and
restructuring societies" (Watson, 2000, p.48).

Decentralization of curriculum is a new element in Czech education, but the
concept of 'key competencies' — a term not previously used in Czech education -- is an
even greater novelty. It implies a radical revision of the existing content-driven education

model that sharply diverges from the historical paradigm on which Czech education

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rested. At the same time, as Chapter Five illustrated in its analysis of the policy as text
that the reform (the Frameworks) combines these novelties with old notions of
curriculum, namely in its approach to content, although it reduces and revises it in
comparison to the old national curriculum. The language of the reform with 'key
competencies' at the forefront carries strong traces of international inﬂuences while the
content sections evoke an air of old familiarity. Localized, historically embedded
interpretation falls short here and an additional perspective that transcends the local
context and adopts a more holistic, global View is needed. Hence, in interpreting the
meaning of the reform, issues of globalization, policy borrowing, and the Czech
Republic's accession into the EU become pertinent.
A word on globalization

Globalization is a concept that current international and comparative research
features prominently. Researchers speak of globalization as a "buzzword" (Hargreaves,
2005; Mebrahtu, Crossley, & Johnson, 2000) or even an epidemic (Steiner-Khamsi,
2004). Globalization encompasses economic and cultural pressures but it can be much
larger than that. In Popkewitz's words, globalization is "an empty signiﬁer whose spaces
are ﬁlled continually with multiple and differentiated meanings" (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004).
Whether one thinks of globalization as an economic, political, social or other
phenomenon that permeates boundaries of nation states, the idea is irresistible. It implies
major change forces that have altered the role of nation states and affected national policy
making (Olssen et al., 2004). But globalization also stands for readily available
knowledge, information, and sources of inspiration that nations can turn to in search of

new directions for their development. Some researchers see globalization as an extension

189

of world-system theory and continuation of old trends (Clayton, 2004; Olssen et al.,
2004); others argue that globalization signals a new era that is breaking away ﬁom the
past (Stromquist & Monkman, 2000). Above all, it is becoming clear that national entities
are increasingly under pressure to look for educational models outside of their national
boundaries. Consequently, policy ideas travel and get borrowed with more ease (Steiner-
Khamsi, 2004), and imitation becomes an inherent part of the policy game, as neo-
institutionalists have predicted.

Numerous studies in comparative education document the worldwide spread of
similar ideas. The world culture theory makes an argument that schools around the world
are converging towards a universal, global model of schooling (Boli & Ramirez, 1992;
Kamens, Meyer, & Benavot, 1996; Ramirez & Boli, 1987). In the view of this theory,
nation states strive to change their education systems according to a common set of ideals
and principles driven by neo-liberal ideologies (Camoy, 2000; Daun, 2002) which
promote state withdrawal, privatization, and localization (Astiz, Wiseman, & Baker,
2002). There are observable trends in reforms that different countries adopt and these
trends call for decentralization, school-based management, accountability, efﬁciency, and
effectiveness among others (Daun, 2002). On the classroom level, there is evidence of
increased interest in active learning and learner-centered pedagogy (McEneaney &
Meyer, 2000; Meyer & Ramirez, 2000).

In the view of the world culture theory, nation states follow the trends as part of
state-building processes and organic adjustments to new economic, social and political
circumstances in a globalized world. The world culture theory is concerned primarily

with the prominence of ideas that are exchanged, borrowed, and emulated. In contrast,

190

conﬂict theory focuses on the participants in the lending and borrowing of policies, and
power issues that channel the ﬂow of ideas. Conﬂict theory emphasizes that distribution
of powers and political inﬂuence in the world is unequal and national appropriation of
globally promoted ideas is less voluntary than the world culture theorists seem to suggest.
Conﬂict theorists view the world polity as divided between the "wre" that sets the
standards and the "periphery" that follows. Nations that ﬁnd themselves in the "core"
entertain a position of power that allows them to determine the trends and steer
educational policies in the weaker "peripheries" via aid agencies, international and
transnational organizations, and donors such as the World Bank or the International
Monetary Fund (Sarnoff, 1999; Torres, 2002).

The conﬂict theory and the world theory views are often regarded as dichotomies
but they really complement one another. Each focuses on a different element of global
spread of ideas and thus supplies an alternative read and theoretical conceptualization of
the evolution of reform movements. Also, in practice, the two perspectives are difﬁcult to
separate from one another. Anderson-Levitt and Alimasi (2001) illustrated this in their
study of reading instruction in Guinea that set out to explore the role that external
(Western) and internal (non-Western) change forces played in the development of the
new policy. The study concluded that policy and practice represented a complex blend of
various forces and pressures with no clear boundaries between Western and non-Westem
ideas, and "inside" and "outside" perspectives and change agents.

Undeniably, international and transnational forces have become more prevalent in
national policy making, even when the strength and nature of these forces is unclear.

Education reforms largely seem to be moving in a common direction, although there are

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some alternatives to the global model of schooling (e. g. Paulo Freire's model) and
evidence that speaks against the notion of a single world model of schooling (Anderson-
Levitt, 2003). Things that may look alike are dissimilar beneath the surface. National
governments may adopt similar policies freely or via coercive pressures, but the way they
conduct their education is likely to differ in important if subtle respects. Researchers
note that despite the strong pressure of global forces and converging national policies,
classrooms seem to remain untouched (Carnoy, 2000; McGinn, 1997), ofﬁcial policies
differ from enacted policies, and the meanings of global schooling are localized

(Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Hargreaves, 2005; Mebrahtu et al., 2000).

The Czech reform interpreted in global terms

World culture theory view

Applying the theories of globalization to the Czech case draws attention to
currently popular trends. More speciﬁcally, it provides additional insights about the
prominence of decentralization and the concept of 'key competencies' in the Czech
curricular reform. Researchers have shown that the world “slouches” towards
decentralization (Astiz et al., 2002; Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Daun, 2004) although
previously highly decentralized countries such as the US. have been adopting measures
that move them closer to the middle with a mix of centralized oversight and decentralized
governance (Astiz, 2002). Decentralization in the Czech case has been an expression of
democratization but also an example of the power of global trends. The rhetoric of Czech
reforms operates with globalization as a strong argument for change. Important policy

documents stated that if the Czech Republic intends to become a competitive member of

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the globalized world, it must keep abreast with global trends and not fall behind (Czech
Ministry of Education, 2001; Education Policy Association, 1999). From the perspective
of world culture theorists, decentralization as the backbone of the Czech curricular
reform echoes the argument that national policies around the globe converge towards a
single model of education or at least apply similar principles of schooling and school
governance.

Conﬂict theory view

The perspective of conﬂict theory adds an additional layer of interpretation to the
concept of key competencies embodied in the Czech curricular reform as it begs for
exploration from the view of distribution of political powers and incentives that might
have driven Czech policy makers' intentions with the reform. Chapters Four and Five
delved into the context of the policy process sketched out in the conceptual framework,
and analyzed change forces and inﬂuences that helped to shape the policy ideas and their
articulation in the policy text -- the new curricular Frameworks. Global forces and
transnational policy actors, namely the EU, appear to have exerted strong inﬂuence in the
reform's gestation. As illustrated by teachers' reactions to the policy and their readings of
the text, the key competencies represent a foreign element in Czech education that can be
clearly linked to transnational trends.

The economic and social transition that unfolded after the defeat of communism
in 1989 has categorized the Czech Republic among so called 'transitologies' (Cowen,
2000). The term refers to places of "more or less simultaneous collapse and
reconstruction of (i) state apparatuses (ii) economic and social stratiﬁcation systems and

(iii) the central value system, especially the political value system to offer a new

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deﬁnition of the future" (Cowen, 2000, p.84). Arguably, in the ﬁrst half of 2000 when the
curricular reform was formulated and written into a law, the Czech Republic still counted
as a nation in transition although one could make a case that the process has evolved from
transition into transformation, i.e. controlled and voluntary actions with some clarity of
where the state is going with them (Mitter, 2003; Watson, 2000). Transitologies around
the world have been involved in new state building, identity formation, and establishing
of legitimacy. From their position of power and inﬂuence, the Czech Republic fell into
the category of trend-followers rather than trendsetters. Under those circumstances,
global and international inﬂuences were more irresistible in transitional democracies than
they might have been elsewhere.

Additionally, the Czech Republic has historically held strong affinities towards
Western European culture. Forty years of communist dictatorship politically moved
Czechs from the Western democratic world to Eastern Europe. Since 19903, Czechs have
tried to "return to Europe" and become an integral part of the larger political economy of
the European Union. The experience with the communist dictatorship left the nation
humbled, with perceptions of backwardness in relation to the economically advanced
West. Czech policy makers understandably turned to the West for inspiration and
selectively ushered in principles recommended by the West.

Key competencies undoubtedly represent the new and foreign element of the
reform. They were introduced in UNESCO and OECD documents, and later became a
prominent characteristic of EU recommendations for the development of member states'
education policies. Toward the end of 19905, the EU had already begun to emerge as a

powerful transnational actor that was increasingly putting emphasis on creating a

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cormnon European culture of education, with the aim to create Europe as the strongest
knowledge-based economy. At the time of the formulation of the new curricular policy,
the Czech Republic was a candidate for membership in the EU and so had strong
incentives to show to the EU that it was abreast EU educational policies and
progressively pursuing the most recent education trends, namely the key competencies.
The Czechs translated the term literally even though for Czech audiences, as evidence in
this study suggested, the term was difﬁcult to grasp and comprehend. In connection to the
conceptual framework, Chapter Six zeroed in on the arena of practice and examined
teachers' interpretations of the policy and attitudes to it. While teachers and principals
were largely bothered by the term 'key competencies', they were able to get accustomed
to the new terminology but it was much less clear to them what practices it implied. In
that sense, it is possible to speak of the key competencies as a language in search of a
practice or what has become known as the "nominal" implementation of reform.

One might suggest that with the literal translation of the term but fuzzy notions of
its meaning, Czech policy makers somewhat hastily appropriated the EU policy
recommendations without taking time to properly deﬁne them. Brief review of the
translation of key competencies in other EU states showed that some countries adopted
the EU term 'competencies' but many adapted the terminology to their own languages.
Perhaps, this was because in democracies that had more time to evolve and mature, the
concept was not as foreign and had some set of ready-made referents. But it is also
possible to speculate that the EU recommendations might have become more pronounced
in the Czech Republic than in other European countries. In other words, while some other

European countries might have adjusted the EU terms to their existing vocabulary and

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systems, the Czech Republic appears to be trying to adjust its system, at least on the level
of the political rhetoric, to the EU recommendations. The result is a rather curious mix of
domestic and foreign, the old and the new.

Global forces, local meanings

Finally, focus on global forces and local meanings illuminates the gap that has
emerged between the policy intentions and teachers' and principals' interpretation of the
reform which was the focal point of exploration of the context of practice presented in
Chapter Six. The policy appeased the reformers who had been calling for change since
early 19905; it has also showed international constituents that the Czech Republic was
ready to be a member of the EU and to compete in the globalized world. The reform is an
ambitious project combining various demands and creating an air of expectations of a
large-scale, radical change. Admittedly still in early stages, the reform's implementation
has however raised many eyebrows and suggested that things on the ground are likely to
differ from the policy's promises. On the policy level, the reform appears modern and
gratiﬁes all calls for progress but on the ground level, it allows for non-refonn and
preservation of old practices.

From early on, critics have pointed to numerous inconsistencies that the curricular
reform manifested. For example, Simonové and Strakova (2005) analyzed the
Frameworks for primary schools and identiﬁed several key issues, cautioning against
risks that they present. They critiqued the conception and content of the Frameworks,
which they saw as a good starting point in need of greater clarity of concepts that the
document introduced. In particular they noted that the key competencies and attainment

standards have not been sufﬁciently linked. They predicted that teachers are likely to

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focus on attainment standards and content because the Frameworks do not provide any
guidance on what teachers should do to develop key competencies in students. Among a
number of other things, the researchers also criticized the state ofﬁcials for
underestimating the demands that the reform places on schools and teachers, and for
failure to provide sufﬁcient support (i.e. information campaign, professional
development, funding, etc). The story of the reform narrated in this study afﬁrmed that
these concerns are justiﬁed and valid also for the curricular reform at the high school
level.

Review of the experience of teachers interviewed in three pilot high schools
showed that the language of the reform was problematic, and more than a search for a
new practice, it stimulated slight modiﬁcations in existing content. One plausible
explanation is that teachers did not see the reform as asking them to overturn their
existing practices. Rather, they tended to perceive it as a mandate to engage in an
additional practice of curriculum writing, which can be interpreted as an extension of
their current work. At the time of the study, teachers were only in the phase of writing
their school curriculum, not yet teaching it so one may only speculate what impact their
new school curriculum might have on their instruction. Nevertheless, interpretation of
teachers' initial reactions suggested that instructional practices (i.e. assessment practices,
choice of textbooks, teaching methods, activities they devise for teaching speciﬁc
content, etc.) were outside the scope of the reform requirements and therefore were not
receiving much attention.

The reform embodied an underlying assumption that curriculum writing focused

on key competencies will lead teachers to re-think their existing practices. But the notion

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of key competencies was deﬁned vaguely and it was too fuzzy to guide teachers'
planning. Thus, teachers appeared to stay close to their current understandings of
education as traditionally content-driven and focused on content requirements, which
were also outlined in the new Frameworks. In most cases, teachers reported that while
they addressed key competencies in the curriculum they produced, their thinking about
instruction continued to be based primarily on the content they had previously taught. In
that sense, they were molding the content to ﬁt the key competencies rather than using
the key competencies as a starting point and selecting content accordingly.

Teachers who saw the reform as an opportunity for change struggled to identify
the kind of change they should strive for. With the reform being severely underspeciﬁed
in terms of desired outcomes, they were left to discern its meaning on their own. The
ministerial Institute for Research in Education, which teachers greatly appreciated,
focused on instructions for writing the school curricula and fell short of beyond that.
From teachers' and policy actors' reports, the reform architects were learning the reform
as much as the teachers who were trying to implement it. That helps explain why pilot-
school teachers felt that the directions they received from the Institute for Research in
Education, although largely praised, were sometimes unclear, conﬂicting, and ever-
changing. Through trial and error, the Institute and the pilot schools were construing the
meaning of the reform on the go. This caused some level of frustration in teachers, who
expressed a sense of things being rushed and underdeveloped.

Still, it was remarkable how hard the teachers who were engaged in the
curriculum writing tried to fulﬁll the requirements of the reform under the existing

conditions, especially when available resources and capacities were constrained. They

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were struggling to juggle the competing demands of their teaching loads and the extra
task of curriculum writing with limited opportunities to compare their existing notions
and beliefs about teaching and learning with alternative models. On the whole, teachers
reported very limited exposure to alternative ways of doing things. In the midst of the
many demands the reform placed on them, they were expected to be innovative and
creative but also follow speciﬁc rules in regard to content and form of the school
curriculum they were developing. Teachers' efforts to follow the rules of the reform
drained a great deal of their energy and time, leaving them narrow boundaries for
innovation. In that light, it is understandable why some teachers described the results of
their hard work as a mere conversion of the old curriculum into a new table.

While there is great room for skepticism, there is also space for optimism. Next to
those who saw the reform as repetition of old history that has little new to offer, there
were teachers who felt the reform was giving them an opportunity to explore new
practices and search for new ways to conduct their teaching. The reform undoubtedly
sparked new conversations in schools that had not previously existed. In some cases,
teachers spoke of conﬂicts but also of ﬁnding alliances and like-minded colleagues. The
collective nature of the school curriculum writing brought some teachers closer together,
allowing them to develop personal connections and collaborate more closely with others.
This can be seen as a step forward although it concerned only a minority of teachers in
each school who were willing to participate in the process of cruriculum development.
Still, these teachers may have the potential to become change agents and spread their

enthusiasm to others.

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Prospects for a large-scale change

On the policy level, the reform was proclaimed as a fundamental, sweeping
change of Czech education. However, facts on the ground showed that the reform
functioned as an invitation directed at a handful of reform-minded teachers who might be
interested in doing something different on their own impetus, with few incentives for
change. One can assume that if a signiﬁcant change were to take place, it will likely
happen in pilot schools, which were receiving guidance from the ministerial Institute for
Research in Education and which were more inclined to change because their leaders
wanted to see change or because they employed reform-minded teachers. But in the three
pilot schools in this study, there was little evidence that would suggest that the reform
would turn into a whole-school affair. Teachers were divided among those who, for
various reasons, wanted to participate and those who wished to stay away. Those who did
participate were mostly alone in writing the curriculum for their subjects but since their
subject was only one part of the whole, they still had to communicate with other teachers
to reduce duplication and address cross-curricular themes.

If we think in terms of scaling up the reform to other schools, expectations for
change are even lower. The Institute does not have the capacity to provide the same kind
of personal guidance to schools that it had provided to the pilot schools. Also, teachers in
pilot schools were receiving modest ﬁnancial rewards channeled through the Institute and
to some that made a difference and motivated their involvement. The ﬁmds functioned as
a minimal ﬁnancial incentive but pilot-school teachers also knew that their school was
modeling something new for other schools, and that also raised the stakes for them and

pushed them to do the best they could. However, this will not be the case for other

200

teachers, who will not receive any ﬁnancial or other beneﬁts to respond to the demands
of the reform.

On the whole, the narrative raises questions about the curricular reform as a
solution to the problem of transmission teaching overloaded in content and relying on
memorization of factual knowledge. If policy makers intend to initiate change in
instructional practices, the curricular reform in its current form may not be the answer to
the problem. It brings focus on curriculum development but instructional practices and
teaching methods are barely scratched. Although content and instructional practices are
or should be married concepts, the traditional emphasis on content over pedagogy in

Czech schools allows instructional practices to be lost amid the process.

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CHAPTER 8: RESEARCH-BASED INTERPRETATION OF THE REFORM

Research perspectives on reform

The previous chapter summarized the key points from the narrative and
interpreted them in the light of history and globalization theories; this chapter will
examine the evidence presented in the narrative through the lens of policy research
studies. Implementation research has been primarily the domain of English speaking
countries, and European scholars who are interested in policy implementation continue to
rely on research articles that feature mainly in North American research journals although
some work also originated in Europe and particularly in the UK (Schoﬁeld, 2008). As for
the Czech Republic, education policy research has been a largely unexplored ﬁeld. In the
absence of a policy research tradition, Czech architects of the curricular reform designed
implementation steps that primarily rest on local wisdom and experience, although the
latter is limited as this sort of reform has not been tried out before. The goal of this
chapter is to provide a brief overview of policy research relevant to the arenas addressed
in this study and highlight ﬁndings from Western policy research that might provide
additional insights into the story of the Czech curricular reform.
Brief history of policy implementation research

Over the past half a century, sCholars reporting predominantly in the English-
speaking world have produced a body of research that has generated many useful lessons
on policy and policy implementation. Research on reforms was initially fueled by the
puzzle of repeatedly failing reform efforts and schools' seeming immunity to change

regardless how well crafted and well resourced reform policies may have been. The US.

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in particular has witnessed numerous reforms that were carefully designed and backed by
generous funding, and yet they failed to produce desired change. In the view of the early
research, the process of policy design and implementation was linear, with policies
delineating actions to be taken and subsequently implementers carrying those actions out
(or not). In that vein, early policy studies approached policy analysis rationally, viewing
it as an independent step separate from implementation, which was generally seen as the
next stage that had little to do with the policy design. Respectively, policy analysts
searched for ﬂaws either in the policy itself or in the implementation, and they attributed
policy failures to issues of poor policy design and management or to resistant
implementers who were not willing to execute changes that they were asked to do.
Nevertheless it was rather rare to see researchers make any attempts to merge the two
arenas.

Sincel9605, and according to some accounts even earlier (Saetren, 2005), North
American researchers began to challenge the rational notions that reforms failed due to
ill-conceived administration of policy tasks, faulty design, or resistant implementers, and
new theories of reform began to emerge. In 1973, Pressman and Wildavsky published
"Implementation" - an inﬂuential study that stirred up the policy research scene when it
laid down the concept of 'implementation' as a new way to conceptualize policy planning
(Majone & Wildavsky, 1984). Mainly, it introduced the notion that policy
implementation is not a discrete stage of the policy process that can be divorced from
policy formulation, but a concept that is deeply intertwined with it. The study deﬁed the
linear notion of policy and implementation, and described it as a circular process that

begins with policy but as the policy undergoes implementation, the implementation

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process affects the original policy and reshapes it. Implementation alters outcomes and
leads to re-designing of the original policy. Hence, implementation matters. If policies
are to succeed in forging desired goals, policy makers need to consider implementation
during the early planning stages as they begin to formulate policy. "To say that
implementation should be part of design is to suggest that policy theory be formulated
with a view toward its execution" (Majone & Wildavsky, 1984, p.148). This was a key
idea and according to McLaughlin, it came as a surprise to policy makers and analysts
who at the time had largely overlooked implementation issues (Milbrey Wallin
McLaughlin, 1987).

Since Pressman and Wildavsky's study, many other studies have contributed to
the advancement of policy research (Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992; D. K. Cohen & Hill,
2001; Elmore, 1982; Fullan, 2001; Honig, 2006; Lipsky, 1980; James G. March, 1981;
McDonnell, 2004; McDonnell & Elmore, 1987; Spillane et al., 2002), and the ﬁeld has
signiﬁcantly grown. The discovery of the 'implementation problem' has had various
implications for policy makers. It suggested that policy makers think and plan
beforehand, and engage in "reasoning through implementation problems before policy
decisions are ﬁrmly made" (Elmore, 1983, p.343). Forward planning of educational
change includes a policy design approach with an eye turned to what policy makers want
to happen as much as "what cannot happen", i.e. identifying policy constraints that may
prevent implementers' from doing what the policy is asking them to do (Majone, 1989;
Majone & Wildavsky, 1984). In sum, researchers highlighted the need for policy makers
to carefully map the practice ﬁeld and consider what they learned about the delivery level

at the onset of policy formulation.

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Today we know considerably more about what works under given circumstances,
what does not, and how we can enhance reform's chances to bring about desired change.
We also know more about the various factors that affect change, and the complexities and
nuances of change processes. Early implementation studies originated primarily in North
America but over the years, their regional focus and authorship has broadened, mostly in
favor of Europe (Saetren, 2005), although seminal studies in policy implementation are
still few in Europe when compared to North America (Schoﬁeld, 2008). What follows is
a review of key research ﬁndings organized into six so called 'propositions' derived from
review of major and frequently cited studies. Other ways of "glossing" this literature
undoubtedly exist, but the views listed here generally fall within mainstream
conventional thinking and bear on the Czech story of reform.

Proposition one: Clarity, specificity, and policy language matter in implementation

How reform implementation unfolds depends on many conditions, one of which is
the policy itself. Policies that precisely state their goals, purposes, and implementation
strategies create less confusion than policies that are vague and ambiguous. However, in
reality most policies do not meet such criteria and show ambiguities. Early policy
research suggested that perhaps policy makers were not aware of producing vague policy
messages and if they worked to increase clarity and consistency of policies they were
designing, implementation would likely be more successful. The view was that if policies
had "clear, salient, and realistic goals" (Rein, 1983, p.135; Sabatier & Mazmanian, 1980),
their chances of achieving desired effects would be enhanced. While in some instances

this may be possible, further research has shown that policies are often vague and

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ambiguous not by mistake but by design (Baier, March, & Saetren, 1986) and several
theories explain why.

Not all policies come into existence with the objective to generate change and for
such policies, ambiguity is more important than clarity because it addresses broader
audiences. History shows examples of policies with grand goals but few intentions to
enact them in practice. Many such policies function symbolically. They are important in
inﬂuencing people's perceptions and interpretations of current circumstances, and they
create expectations of future welfare (Edelman, 1971). In that sense, they act as
legitimizing strategies, justifying the workings of the government or the state and
showing that these institutions have a purpose (Weiler, 1990b; Weiler & Miyake, 1989).
Symbolic policies may also serve to reassure certain constituency groups that their
interests are being taken into account and that they are protected, while signaling to
others that their interests may be ignored or suppressed (Rein, 1983).

But even policies that target change and are not intended to serve primarily as
political symbols often fail to meet the requirement of clarity and speciﬁcity. According
to Baier et a1. (1986), policies are ambiguous by design otherwise they would likely fail
to be passed. They emerge out of a political process where many diverse stakeholders
negotiate and bargain to reach a compromise (Bardach, 1977). Policies thus reﬂect work
of multiple authors who represent a wide spectrum of views, beliefs and diverse, at time
even contradictory, interests (Olssen et al., 2004; Taylor et al., 1997).

Policies matter not only in what they say but also in how they say it. Clarity and
speciﬁcity are inextricably linked to language that serves as a medium in communicating

policy ideas to their audiences. Researchers increasingly point out that policies need to be

206

viewed as discourses where text and language play an important role in ﬁ'aming policy
interpretation (Ball, 1994; Fairclough, 2005; Hill, 2006; Olssen et al., 2004; Taylor et al.,
1997). Different linguistic means determine how policies are going to be interpreted and
received — for example a policy that draws on professional language that is distant from
the language implementers commonly use increases "the opportunity for reinterpretations
of policy" (Hill, 2006, p.81).

With ambiguity on many fronts, the complexity of policy implementation further
increases. Policy makers may not be able to achieve greater clarity and speciﬁcity in the
policy itself, but they can reduce ambiguity of policies in supporting documents and
materials that form the basis of implementation strategy. As Elmore proposed (1983),
policy makers can engage in "backwards mapping" (Elmore, 1983) — a process that leads
them to think in terms of concrete actions that they would like to see at the delivery level
and envision the problem from the point of view of the people at "the bottom" of the
policy system who will implement the policy. Subsequently, they should design
appropriate capacity building strategies that will help the implementers make sense of
policy messages.

If we accept that ambiguity is part of policy, opportunity for policy clariﬁcation
then lies in guidelines and guiding strategies that accompany policies. More recent
research ﬁndings reafﬁrrn that "innovations that are clear and speciﬁc in the guidance
they provide for implementation and those that also provide technical assistance to
support implementation, are the ones that end up being well implemented" (Rowan,
Cambum, & Barnes, 2004, p.17). Supporting documents and guidelines should identify

targets of change, describe what change would look like after successful implementation,

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and also outline speciﬁc ideas about the people and the process that should bring about
the change (Rowan et al., 2004). Policy language can be clariﬁed if written words are
accompanied with concrete, "real-world" examples with substantial explanations (Hill,
2006). Additional examples of clear and speciﬁc guidelines that can strengthen policy
messages include vignettes, videotapes of model instructional practices, curriculum
guides, and model lesson plans among many others. In addition, policy implementation
strategies may also incorporate evaluation and ongoing monitoring of the reform efforts
(Rowan et al., 2004, p.17).

The Czech cunicular reform has been proclaimed as a radical change of the
existing system. Schools are expected to change internally and adopt new ways of
teaching that will activate students and equip them with dispositions and skills for life-
long learning and application of knowledge in real life situations. These goals are grand
and many would agree that they present a new vision for the direction of Czech education
for the 21St century. However, there are also some problems with them. Namely, they lack
the speciﬁcity and articulation of desired outcomes that help policies succeed. For
reasons addressed in the theory, the desirable speciﬁcity of goals was perhaps not feasible
— how could have policy makers otherwise reached consensus when both supporters and
opponents of the existing system were involved in the decision? And so the solution was
subtly political in that goals and purposes were sketched out without any concrete
formulation of the expected outcomes. Consequently, pilot schools found themselves in
the position of looking for their own deﬁnitions of outcomes in school curricula that they
had to produce. The directions from the Institute for Research in Education primarily

ensured that teachers knew what components needed to be included in the locally

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produced curricula but conceptual issues were left largely unaddressed.

Another complication that became evident through mapping the case and that was
discussed in Chapter Five was the policy language. Teachers found it highly
administrative and to an extent, alienating. Particularly the term 'key competencies' was
troubling. Although it was gradually ﬁnding its way into the common vocabulary of
educators, the term was not domesticated enough and annoyed a number of the teachers
interviewed in this study. There may have been good intentions behind the choice of
terms -- as one teacher suggested, the new language was perhaps used to evoke the idea
that teachers should be looking for new practices. But the reactions of teachers in this
study showed that it did not quite work that way. Even when teachers gradually began to
embrace the term, key competencies tended to be marginalized in the process of
curriculum writing and did not drive the process as policy makers anticipated they would.

The narrative suggests that the ﬁndings that led North American researchers
highlight the importance of clarity, speciﬁcity and policy language in policy
implementation are applicable to the Czech case. They may impel Czech policy makers
to pay attention to these areas and re-examine them. Elmor's proposal to backward map
and ﬁrst analyze what happens on the delivery level is particularly useful. This study
offers a summary of responses from practice, and Czech policy makers might utilize the
information presented here to tighten the policy and provide a better guidance to the
teachers and principals who are trying to act on it. More speciﬁcally, it is evident from
the case that teachers would appreciate concrete examples and supporting materials that
would allow them to see what focus on key competencies would mean and how it might

alter their practice. But perhaps even before creating such guiding and supporting

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materials, policy makers might outline the reform's desired outcomes and examples of
areas and practices the reform is trying to change. This could be done in cooperation with
Czech School Inspection that currently develops criteria to monitor schools' compliance
with the new mandate. In sum, the research proposition implies to take a step further and
outline criteria that would indicate what might count as the reform's success.

Proposition two: Choice of policy instruments helps determine policy eﬂects

Aside ﬁom content, goals, and language, policy also frames implementation
through choice of implementing agencies (Clune, 1987) and policy instruments
(McDonnell & Elmore, 1987). Policy by default selects implementing agencies (Clune,
1987). For instance, the Czech curricular reform is a mandate requesting schools to
produce their curricula locally. As such, it designates schools as the key implementing
agencies and the state, which initiated the mandate, as the leading force of the
implementation. Automatically, that means that the Czech School Inspection will be
involved as the body that has traditionally been in charge of schools’ compliance with
state regulations.

Policy literature describes mandates as one of several policy instruments used to
achieve change. Other instruments include inducements, capacity building, system-
change, and hortatory appeals (McDonnell, 2004; McDonnell & Elmore, 1987). Each
policy instrument operates on different assumptions, and consequently produces different
effects. For example, mandates assume that policy targets have the capacity to comply,
and that compliance with a new rule will produce targeted change. Mandates thus have a
comparative advantage to other instruments if "there is a clear standard and capacity to

comply" (Clune, 1987, p.126). A frequent example of a mandate is a speed limit. To

210

comply with a speed limit, implementers do not need to develop any speciﬁc knowledge
or skills; everyone understands what a speed limit means, thus there is no room for
construing alternative meanings of the mandate.

Policies that target change in people's beliefs and attitudes are much more
complex and unlikely to be achieved solely through mandates. As McLaughlin (1987)
wrote, "policy at best can enable outcomes but it cannot mandate what matters"
(McLaughlin, 1987, p.173). Relatively recently, scholars have begun paying more
attention to policies as rhetorical practices that involve various tools of persuasion.
"Policy, practice and research are not simply neutral statements of facts but are attempts
to persuade in some shape or form" (Edwards et al., 2004, p.3). Some policies may
immediately have the potential to strike a chord with implementers because they connect
to implementers' values and beliefs. McDonnell (2004) refers to these policies as
hortatory. Hortatory policies have a persuasive appeal that can be strong enough to carry
an idea of change to the practice level. That is, if policies are advocating a change
congruent with implementers' values and beliefs, implementers are more apt to respond to
the policy demands. For policies that do not resonate with implementers' needs, beliefs,
and values, the policies may need to employ stronger rhetorical tools. Mandates use the
power of coercion to mobilize implementers into required actions but with policies that
do not have a strong hortatory appeal, pressure is typically not sufﬁcient to stimulate
desired change and it needs to be balanced with sufﬁcient support that would allow
implementers to recognize the potential beneﬁts of a new policy (McLaughlin, 1987).

In the Czech case, the policy implementation heavily rests on the mandate and

offers only limited support for implementers' efforts to act on the policy. This is perhaps

211

because mandates have been a common instrument of control and the notion that a central
power prescribes what should happen on the practice level has been deeply embedded in
the nation's history. The system has institutionalized mechanisms of control, namely the
Czech School Inspectorate that has traditionally monitored compliance. However,
looking at the reform from a conceptual point of view, compliance with the policy
appears to be a weak instrument of change as it does not secure any promise that change
will ensue. Schools can write their local cunicula without implementing any signiﬁcant
changes in instructional practices and without subjecting themselves to an 'intemal school
transforrnation'. The state has devised tools to help schools respond to the mandate as
they produce their local curriculum, but building capacity to develop a school curriculum
is not necessarily synonymous with building capacity to alter an existing practice.
Although curriculum and instruction practices are married concepts, they do not imply
that one is automatically going to be connected to the other. Schools may produce
curricula that respond to all the requirements of the new Frameworks but it does not
mean that teachers will re-conceptualize their instructional practices and teach towards
the key competencies.

The deep change implied in the policy has limited hortatory appeal, which speaks
to a small audience of school practitioners. As various surveys showed, the Czech society
is largely satisﬁed with the education system and only a relatively small portion of the
population sees a need for a fundamental change (Strakova et al., 2006). In a survey
conducted for this study, a slight majority of pilot-school teachers expressed a desire for

change. However, teachers largely did not view the reform as a manifestation of a

212

fundamental change and tended to interpret the reform as a reafﬁrmation of existing
practices.

In situations where hortatory appeals are not particularly strong, change is
especially contingent upon a combination of other policy instruments including
inducements (money), capacity building (enhancement of skill and competence), and
system-change (re-distribution of authority) (McDonnell & Elmore, 1987). An element of
system-change is present in the Czech case — schools have gained more authority to
adjust the curriculum to their needs. But capacity to carry out the policy is lacking at all
levels of the system. Teachers have been historically unprepared for the task of school
curriculum development; funds for education are permanently constrained, teacher
salaries remain low, and there are virtually no incentives that would motivate schools and
individuals to effect change. The burdens, on the other hand, are quite apparent—
curriculum development consumes extra time but there is no promise of a corresponding
increase in teachers' low salaries or other beneﬁts. Pilot—school teachers worked on their
school curriculum on top of their regular teaching loads and they received a modest
remuneration for their efforts that came from a grant. Nevertheless, that is not going to be
the case for other schools when the mandate comes into effect and the reform is launched
on full scale. An unsupported mandate that emphasizes local production cf school
curricula in response to new Frameworks thus gives few reasons for optimism that deep
and ﬁindamental change inside classrooms will ensue.

The research proposition brings attention to implementing agencies and
alternative policy instruments that haven't been much explored in the Czech context,

traditionally dominated by mandates. Thus the utility of this proposition lies in its

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possibility to inspire policy makers with more alternatives for policy driven change and
expand the scope of policy instruments that are currently being deployed.

Proposition three: Changes in governance may not be sufficient to spur changes in
instructional practices

Nation states have attempted to ﬁx and reform their education through changes in
governance. Countries such as the US. where schooling has historically been a matter of
local control are strengthening the inﬂuence of central powers as is evident in the
adoption of the federal legislation No Child Left Behind. The movement towards stronger
role of the federal government in US. education has occurred in response to a high level
of decentralization, which is believed to be part of the problem (Cohen & Spillane, 1993).
Scholars have argued that high levels of decentralization in decision-making authorities
have led to fragmentation, duplication, and inefﬁciency of the system as a whole. But
countries with historically strong central governance such as the Czech Republic are
seeking solutions to their problems through decentralization. The traditionally strong
central governance in the Czech Republic has been associated with bureaucratic
administrative machinery, rigidity, and inefﬁciency. Change is expected to come with
devolution of powers to the local units.

However, decentralization is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it safeguards
democracy through distribution of powers among many stakeholders; on the other hand,
the dispersed powers are difﬁcult if not impossible to mobilize. The US. as an example
of an extreme decentralization has demonstrated that in the absence of any central
authority to guide and coordinate reform efforts, the system inclines to fragmentation and

yields incoherent decisions (Cohen & Spillane, 1993). Decision-making happens on

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many levels, which collide with one another and cause original reform intentions to
gradually dissipate before they have a chance of reaching any target. Autonomous parts
of the system do not know about one another; there is a high level of duplication; policies
proliferate, and bureaucracy grows. In this sense, researchers have associated democracy
with bureaucracy (Chubb & Moe, 1990), which is rather ironic considering that in the
Czech case bureaucracy stands for the powerful central governance and its strong
administrative tendencies. Apparently, both centralization and decentralization arguments
have parallel justiﬁcations and similar rationales for moving in the opposite direction to
where they stand.

Research is inconclusive as to whether centralized or decentralized governance is
more effective in helping systems change. Decentralization has many faces and each may
yield different outcomes but in general, a line of evidence suggests that decentralization
falls short of forging fundamental changes in practice (Hannaway & Carnoy, 1993;
Tyack & Cuban, 1995; Weiler, 1990a). Additionally, it carries with it an inherent risk of
increasing disparities that can lead to greater social inequalities (Watson, 2000). In his
study of decentralization, Weiler (1990) drew on comparisons of decentralization cases
among different countries, and concluded that decentralization is primarily an exercise of
political power (Weiler, 1990a). Through decentralization, states diffuse conﬂict and
reinforce legitimacy of their institutions, showing that they address the criticisms of
strong central governance. States can decentralize without losing their control — they may
relax curriculum on one hand but by establishing evaluation systems, they re- gain their

lost control. "Decentralization can and does contain and isolate the sources of conﬂict,

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but it also tends to fragment reform movements and deprives the system as a whole of the
full innovative thrust of proposals for reform and change" (Weiler, 1990a, p.69).

However, decentralization can be promising if it is supported by elements in the
system that can awaken its potential. For example, school and teacher autonomy alone is
unlikely to foster instructional improvement unless the school educators have a clear
vision of the improvement they strive for and skills to achieve it (Hannaway & Carnoy,
1993). According to McGinn, decentralization reforms may have a chance to produce
powerful effects if they meet at least two conditions: 1) there must be political support for
the proposed changes; and 2) those involved in the reform must be capable of carrying
them out (McGinn & Welsh, 1999, p.76).

In the Czech case, decentralization constitutes one of the main pillars of the
curricular reform. The early chapters in this study explained why decentralization became
a prominent mechanism of change. Clearly, in a system that had been too closely
controlled by the central power, the turn to decentralization as a solution to perceived
problems was an understandable pendulum swing. But it is questionable whether the
'mandated autonomy', which is what is essentially at the core of the reform, can initiate
the deep and fundamental change and internal transformation of schools that has been
proclaimed as a goal. When speaking about a fundamental, internal transformation of
schools, media and policy makers tend to use attributes that include new teaching styles,
different kind of relationship between teachers and students, less rigid teaching
environments and more active engagement of students in instruction. This kind of change
will require modiﬁcations in people's knowledge, beliefs, and values that lie at the core of

teachers' instructional practices. Hence, the envisioned change can be seen as a matter of

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"re-culturing" of the society that goes far beyond "restructuring", to use Michael Fullan's
terms in connection to educational change (Fullan, 2001). However, the Czech curricular
reform appears to be set on the assumption that restructuring will lead to re-culturing, and
as scholarly literature suggests, that is unlikely.

The decentralization in the Czech case is somewhat paradoxical. With
decentralization, policy makers are simultaneously trying to steer and control change but
at the same time, they are hesitant to interfere much, leaving the change to teachers and
their newly expanded autonomy. Policy makers practically handed down the reform to
pilot-school teachers who were asked to devise their own answers to the problem of
addressing key competencies while adhering to the formalistic rules that the production
of local curricula demands. Involving teachers in the solution has some merit to it. After
all who could better address the problem of content coverage and teaching than teachers?
But the vagueness of the policy and the restraint of the policy architects to suggest where
the change should be going in the name of respecting teachers' and schools' newly
expanded autonomy complicated the job of the pilot schools. As a result, for some
teachers, the mandated autonomy that the reform provided was highly problematic and
rather than unleashing their creative potential, it presented an additional burden and
unwarranted responsibility.

The research proposition in regard to decentralization builds an argument for
sustained support. Decentralization was important in how Czech education unfolded over
the past two decades since the country became a democracy but alone, it is not the answer
to existing problems. However, if combined with capacity building and other support

mechanisms and instruments of change, it may promise some yields.

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Proposition four: Reforms require attention to policy alignment and coherence

Alongside the debate of the downsides of decentralization, US. researchers have
been increasingly interested in systemic reform and policy coherence, which address
some of the problems that decentralization presents. Systemic reform assumes that
several policies in the system work together to enhance the likelihood that a reform
generates desirable change. In other words, if there are more policies pointed toward the
same goal, and if they are aligned, there is a better chance of achieving the goal (Clune,
1993). Indeed, empirical evidence from the systemic reform movement showed that
centrally coordinated policies guided with a clear vision of change and supported with
other instruments aligned to them can have powerful effects (Fuhrman, 1993; Newrnann,
Smith, Allenworth, & Bryk, 2001; Rowan et al., 2004).

Systemic reform emphasizes policy alignment with other practices, standards, and
reforms that circulate in the system. It calls for coherence within the system as a whole,
and within instructional practices inside of schools. In Clune's description (1993),
systemic reform offers working models and speciﬁc guidance to implementers based on
research ﬁndings of effective practices. Systemic reform demands that goals are
established centrally and carried out through decentralized networks. It is coherent and
sustainable over time and it is designed with built-in evaluation mechanisms that ensure
on-going monitoring of inputs, outcomes, and process. At the school level, systemic
reform displays characteristics of instructional coherence, i.e. curriculum, instruction,
assessment and learning climate are all coordinated and aligned (N ewmann et al., 2001,

p.299).

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In some ways, the systemic approach resonates with an ecological view of
education that some researchers advocate (Sarason, 1996; Sirotnik, 1998; Zhao & F rank,
2003). Educational systems have been likened to eco-systems where different species
interact and function together as a unit. Zhao et al. (2003) applied the ecological
metaphor to examining implementation of technology in schools and took the view of
technology innovations in education as invading species that enter an existing ecosystem.
To survive, the invading species have to compete with existing species for resources and
space. If they ﬁnd their niche in the ecosystem, if the conditions of the existing
ecosystem are favorable to them, if they don't have predators, and if they survive their
competitors, they are likely to stay. In the same vein, if new reforms are addressing
salient issues that beg for solutions, if they are not threatened by other reforms, and if
their potential for survival is increased through other policies and instruments aligned to
the same goal, their chances for implementation and sustainability are improved. The
ecological approach suggests that there must be external and internal conditions that will
favor a new reform; in addition to that, speaking metaphorically, the systemic view
brings attention to the equally important intensity with which policies as invading species
unify to attack the system.

Viewing the reform efforts in the Czech Republic from the perspective of
systemic reform and coherence brings attention to the institutional and organizational
environment in the Czech education system. It is easy to forget that policies co-exist with
other policies, and that they mutually inﬂuence one another (Ball, 1994). In the Czech
Republic, education is under the control of the Ministry of Education but the Ministry

itself is a relatively large bureaucracy with a number of semi-independent institutes that

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fall under its umbrella. Over the past decade, the institutes have grown and developed
reforms and policies independently of one another. The result is that the Center for
Reform of High School Exit Examinations (now called Center for Evaluation of Results
in Education) began to re-conceptualize high school exit examinations and design new
tests before the curricular reform got on the policy agenda. Early pilot tests conceptually
followed the old content-based curriculum, thus reinforcing the already deeply engrained
notion of content-driven educational model. In contrast to that, the curricular reform was
devised as a challenge to the traditional model and its focus on knowledge as the ultimate
goal of education. Clearly, the high school exit examination reform and the cunicular
reform were not aligned to one another and although the high school exit examination
reform has been postponed until 2010, it is still not clear to what degree these two reform
efforts will be coordinated as two sides of the same issue.

The curricular reform would undoubtedly be strengthened if the high school exit
examination reform were clearly linked to it but interviewees in this study nearly
unanimously expressed the view that the development of both reform ideas has been
running separately from one another. Understandably, there are concerns that the
anticipated state high school exit tests may contradict and undermine the curricular
reform. If the high school exit tests are linked primarily to the content-driven education
model, they may act as a competitor to the curricular reform rather than a mechanism that
strengthens it and supports it. The ministerial Institutes in charge of the two reforms
allegedly communicate with one another about the reforms, but the link between the two
reforms has not been explicitly formed. Respectively, media treated the reforms as two

independent and disconnected issues. It is also interesting to note that when the high

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school exit examination reform was again postponed in summer 2007, the arguments for
the postponement were built around the quality of the tests; concerns about alignment
have not surfaced in any discussions reported in the media.

Beside the potential threat that the state high school exit tests pose to the
curricular reform if they are not aligned to it, the curricular reform faces other predators
in the system. Namely, the practices of secondary school and university entrance
examinations. Traditionally placing value on factual knowledge, many of these entrance
examinations have been reported to directly contradict the ideas in the curricular reform.
At the same time, a shift in the previously unpredictable entrance examinations must be
noted. More and more secondary and tertiary schools now turn to the professional testing
organization Scio, which can be likened to the American ETS, to purchase tests ﬁ'om
them. When the write up of this study was nearing an end, reports surfaced with the news
that Scio has developed National Comparative Examinations, which are now earning
some recognition among Czech universities. These examinations are general scholastic
aptitude tests modeled on ETS tests and their purpose is to aid universities in their
admission processes. In 2007, allegedly nine colleges decided to start taking the results of
these tests into account and this year, the number increased to nearly ﬁfty (Numerato,
2008; Scio, 1999). With almost ﬁfty colleges in the country subscribing to the idea of
utilizing the National Comparative Exarninations' results in their 2008 admission
procedures, a signiﬁcant change in the current entrance examinations practices may occur
in the foreseeable future. This shift suggests the possibility that the negative effects of
entrance examination mechanisms on secondary school curricula might diminish in the

future as the extreme demands on factual knowledge will be somewhat controlled

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(assuming that the focus of the National Comparative Examinations is on verbal and
analytical thinking skills).

Proposition five: Reforms call for attention to teaching and learning up and down the
system

The research lessons presented so far discussed issues related to policy design,
policy instruments, decentralization and systemic reform. But essentially,
implementation rests with the delivery level -- with principals, teachers and parents who
will translate it into practice and thus determine its meaning. "Their will to implement a
policy, as well as their capacity to do 50, determines the success of implementation"
(McLaughlin, 2006, p.169). Early implementation research paid only marginal attention
to the bottom of organizational hierarchies. It was assumed that policies were not
working because implementers did not want to implement them or implemented them
incorrectly. But over the years, researchers have shown that there is more at stake than
implementers' will and compliance.

Lipsky's classic study (1980) illustrated how street-level bureaucrats --the people
at the delivery level (e. g. teachers, principals, school administrators)-- do not always act
on policy intentions because the constraints of their work conditions lead them to look for
ways to minimize conﬂicts that new policies may present. Street-level bureaucrats
chronically face insufﬁcient resources, high demands, and unclear expectations. They
exercise a level of discretion that allows them to shape policy and determine its outcomes
in practice. To reconcile the various demands of their jobs, they tend to defend and
preserve their established behavior patterns, and tweak new policy demands to ﬁt them.

Lipsky suggested that organizations might direct implementers to make decisions in line

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with intended policy goals if they focus on enhancing implementers' capacity and if they
create motivational systems based on incentives, rewards, and staff development which
draws on constructive feedback and peer support.

Lipsky touched upon the concept of capacity at the delivery level, namely in
terms of motivation and creation of work conditions that favor policy demands, and other
researchers further developed it. Scholarly literature spans from economic and
sociological studies that examine the importance of incentives, rewards, and external
motivation, to studies that investigate the internal impulses and processes, which help
practitioners to make sense of new policy demands. In 1983 Lipsky examined the
challenges implementers face from the perspective of their organizational settings and job
conditions; researchers in the 19905 focused on organizational structures, policy
implementation support systems, and ways of teaching and learning policy (Barnes,
2002; Cohen, 1990; Cohen & Hill, 2001; Cohen & Spillane, 1993; Elmore, 1998; Evans,
1996; Fullan, 1994; Spillane & Jennings, 1997). Gradually, interest also increased in
investigating how individuals cognitively process new information and make sense of
policy demands (Coburn, 2006; Spillane, 2004; Spillane & Jennings, 1997; Spillane et
aL,2002)

Cohen's case study of Mrs. Oublier (Cohen, 1990) showed that learning new
policies requires attention to how policy makers teach new policies and what support
mechanisms are in place. Cohen's Mrs. Oublier thought she had done all she could to
learn about a new reform practice to teach mathematics. She careﬁrlly studied new
mathematics frameworks, read books about new instructional practices implied by the

frameworks, and participated in workshops. She proudly demonstrated her lessons to the

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researcher as an example of her profound transformation. However, what the researcher
saw was a policy enactment that had superﬁcially resembled the practice advocated by
the reform but at core was still traditional. The case exempliﬁed how difﬁcult it may be
for an individual teacher to build capacity and knowledge in the absence of coherent
support mechanisms.

In a later study, Cohen and Hill (2001) set out to examine learning opportunities
that were offered to California teachers to help them change their instructional practices
in line with reform aiming to change mathematics teaching. Their study showed that not
all opportunities to learn were equal; some forms of teaching reform ideas were more
successful than others in helping teachers build capacity and change. The researcher
stressed the importance of coherence in reform implementation and stated: "Only
teachers who learned from concrete, content-speciﬁc, and instructionally usable
instruments of policy, and who spent at least a modest amount of time at it, reported the
sorts of practice that we associated with signiﬁcant departures from conventional math
teaching" (Cohen & Hill, 2001, p.185). These ﬁndings are further supported by results
from Rowan's empirical study (2004), which showed that teachers learn best when they
receive instructional guidance that includes model lessons, curriculum guides, and lesson
plans among other things.

Taking a cognitive psychology approach, other researchers wanted to know why
implementers often seem to misunderstand, misinterpret, and misconceive policy ideas.
Cognitive psychology mapped how human brain ﬁlters new information through existing
knowledge, values, beliefs, and experiences. New meanings are construed in the light of

old knowledge and existing frames of reference. This often means that when individuals

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encounter new knowledge, they gravitate towards familiar ideas and information in the
new knowledge that can be assimilated with old knowledge. This explains why
implementers at times completely overlook new information, and see and adopt only
superﬁcial elements of new policies that appear familiar. In cases where the new
knowledge signiﬁcantly differs from an individual's existing knowledge and worldview,
and nothing familiar grabs one's attention, new ideas may be completely ignored or
rejected. New reform ideas may also be missed because implementers may lack the
expertise that would allow them to notice and ﬁrlly understand important underlying
concepts of new ideas (Spillane, 2004; Spillane et al., 2002).

Undeniably, policies calling for a fundamental change place signiﬁcant demands
on implementers' learning, which also challenges the ways policies are taught. The
necessary learning is unlikely to occur if teachers are left to study new practices from
books and lectures only. "Policy messages are not inert, static ideas that are transmitted
unaltered into local actors' minds to be accepted, rejected, or modiﬁed to ﬁt local needs
and conditions. Rather, the agents must ﬁrst notice, then frame, interpret, and construct
meaning for policy messages" (Spillane et al., 2002, p.392). For implementers to see a
need for change and notice new ideas, they must ﬁrst recognize that their existing
practices may be problematic. This experience of dissonance will trigger a process of re-
interpreting existing beliefs and subsequent learning of new ideas. Dissonance, or
questioning of own practice is crucial if fundamental change is to ensue but conditions
fostering such learning must be in place. Reformers cannot expect that these conditions

will occur organically; successﬁil reform implementation demands that reformers create

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the necessary learning opportunities, and enable teachers to critically analyze their
practices while exposing them to examples of new ones.

From a teaching and learning perspective, the Czech curricular reform came with
minimal opportunities for teachers to learn it. Metaphorically speaking, the new reform is
a new curriculum but because the architects of the reform were not quite proﬁcient in it
themselves and as they reported, they were also learning on the go, the reform lacked
leaders who could model the process of change and teach it to others. Under those
circumstances, the reform was handed down to pilot-school teachers to ﬁgure out.
Additionally, the pilot-school teachers faced the task of re-interpreting the reform for
others through experience sharing and contributions to a Handbook on school curriculum
development. But handing down the responsibility for learning to the learners is quite
problematic, especially when considering that the reform emerged in a system where
decisions had traditionally been made at the top and where teachers had been trained to
execute the will of the state, thus being historically unprepared to assume responsibilities
of the sort that the reform demands.

Looking at the level of an individual, the cognitive view suggests that a ﬁrst step
to change is recognizing ﬂaws with one's existing practice and developing a growing
awareness of advantages that a new practice might bring. But the Czech curricular reform
does not have any mechanisms in place that would show teachers what aspects of their
practice may be viewed as problematic and where to focus change. Pilot-school teachers
who were expected to model the reform for other schools received special guidance and
attention from the Institute for Research in Education that will not be available to other

schools. At the same time, those teachers' reports in regard to their opportunities to learn

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suggested that teaching occurred in regard to the rules of the reform but instructional
practices per se were not addressed. The change architects appeared to assume that
teachers who were willing to participate in the curriculum writing were those who knew
what they wanted to change and they would pursue their own professional development.
Formally, the state did not endorse any instructional practices as exemplary and it did not
embrace any particular professional development, aside from seminars the Institute
organized to explain to pilot-school coordinators the fundamentals of the reform, the
reform's requirements, and the steps to writing the school curricula.

The proposition emphasizing the teaching and learning aspects of new reforms
suggests to policy makers that they consider developing a 'curriculum' of how the reform
should be taught to the school practitioners. Such a curriculum would impel policy
makers and implementing agencies to consider the learning goals, content, and practices
through which the content could be effectively taught. At the time of the data collection,
the reform was taught as if the primary goal for schools was to produce their curriculum,
not to reconsider their practices and transform instruction. In line with that, the content of
the teaching, according to teachers' reports, consisted of familiarizing teachers with the
formal requirements and rules placed on the locally produced cunicula. And as for
practices, teachers had opportunities to attend several training sessions. As teachers
reported, these sessions were intense and packed with information but there was little
time to reﬂect and discuss concepts into depth. The depictions of these sessions echoed
the traditional teaching practices in schools that focus on transmitting large amounts of

information.

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Proposition six: Successful implementation utilizes the potential of social networks

Teaching and leaming has important cognitive aspects to it but it is essentially a
social practice. As such, it has attracted attention of analysts who focused on examining
communities of practice and social networks as new units of analysis and revealed strong
inﬂuence of these various associations on implementers' work (Honi g, 2006).
Communities and networks function as sites where learning unfolds through formal and
informal social interactions. These interactions may lead to formation of shared meanings
and repertoires of practice, and they can have a profound inﬂuence on individuals'
beliefs, worldviews and interpretations of policy messages (Coburn & Stein, 2006;
Coburn, 2006; Frank, Zhao, & Bonnan, 2004; Honig, 2006). Communities of practice
and social networks strive on social capital (trust, communication channels among
individuals within a social group, common norms, local expertise) (Smylie, 2006, p.192)
which itself has become a focal point of investigation for some researchers (Frank et al.,
2004; Smylie & Evan, 2006).

For example, Frank et al. (2004) studied the role of social capital in diffusing
implementation of computer technology in schools. The results of their study showed
that teachers' informal access to expertise (those in school who knew how to handle
technology) and perceived social pressure as manifestation of social capital were
statistically signiﬁcant. Access to expertise and perceived social pressure were thus
important forces in implementation of technology that helped teachers adopt a practice
they were initially reluctant to use. The research pointed to the inﬂuence of talk, help and

social pressure in policy implementation, and formulated an argument for creating

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conditions in schools that would foster teachers' interactions with one another in regard to
policy demands.

Social capital can play a very powerful role in implementation but the concept
must be approached with some caution. Strong social capital can help implementation but
it can also impede it if the social capital is negative — e. g. teachers may develop a shared
misunderstanding of a new innovation that can go counter the reform ideas (Smylie,
2006). The knowledge of the importance of social capital in implementation should lead
policy makers and educational leaders to work towards building an infrastructure that will
facilitate learning and diffusion of innovative practices. For example, policy makers
should "recognize the existence and importance of networks of informal local
communities" (Coburn & Stein, 2006, p.42) and build on these communities and social
networks rather than work parallel to them or even in opposition to them. School leaders
could strategically diffuse knowledge and information through teachers who have
expertise and are likely to receive attention of others; they could also allocate a time for
teachers to interact and share experience with one another around policy goals (Frank,
2004)

In the Czech Republic, there are several communities of practice and social
networks operating on the national level that have become known as powerful change
agents. After the fall of the communist regime, some schools adopted alternative
approaches to the content-driven education, typically promoted by grassroots movements
and various non-proﬁt groups and educational associations. Over the years, these
movements have built social networks and helped individual teachers effect change in

their classrooms. For example, in the case of the early childhood program Step-by-Step

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initiated by the Soros Foundation, change has occurred nation-wide and Step-by-Step
schools that offer a non-traditional curriculum can be found in every corner of the
country. The state institutions have tolerated the various grassroots organizations that
help to promote new ideas in Czech education but have utilized them minimally. The
state had had a long monopoly in education and, according to reports of some of the
people interviewed in this study, the administration has acted ambivalently towards the
independent associations and organizations that exist.

Policy makers reported that they occasionally consulted with individuals from the
different networks but in the view of representatives of these networks, they have not
tapped into the full potential of these networks, largely leaving them out of the formal
channel of implementation strategies. The various organizations and networks have found
their own means to contribute to the reform implementation, for example by organizing
round table discussions, workshops, and seminars on salient issues in education, and
various other events. However, operating in their own circles of inﬂuence, activities of
these networks tend to reach only a limited number of people who already constitute a
part of the established networks and the leverage to reach broader audiences is limited.

The concept of communities of practice is known in the academic community in
the Czech Republic but it is relatively new and school leaders have only begun to
discover it. In two of the pilot schools involved in this study, school leaders made
attempts to create some basic opportunities for social interactions and information
sharing among teachers who participated in the curriculum development, or at least for
those who were part of the small curriculum coordination team. Teachers in the third

pilot school complained that information sharing was largely not happening and when it

230

did occur, it was restricted to e-mail communication. Formal opportunities to share
experience and interact with other teachers involved in curriculum writing were not in
place.

The research proposition suggests that mobilizing social networks pays off. In
light of this proposition, policy makers and implementers might be impelled to set up
basic institutional structures that would facilitate formation of social networks. Such
structures might include regular meetings, workshops and information sharing. Among
the three pilot schools in this study, one already had such activities in place, another one
completely lacked them, and the third one was somewhere in the middle, with the small
team meeting regularly and planning to the take the meetings to the next level where
teachers would be sharing and demonstrating their best practices with one another.

Implementation and local wisdom

Clearly, the propositions presented in this chapter did not originate in the Czech
context and one should not expect that Czech policy makers would discard cultural
experiences and common approaches to policy for Western theories that have not been
rooted in the Czech culture and that many Czech policy makers have not even heard
about. At the same time, it may still be useful to bring these propositions to the attention
to Czech policy makers and implementers as a fresh view that may validate some of the
things that have been done as well as point to problem areas that may otherwise stay
unnoticed and obscured in the process. While some of the points that were highlighted
here may have been apparent from the narrative itself, others were not. The research
propositions helped to explain aspects of the reform (e. g. the seeming vagueness of the

reform and its goals or teachers' tendency to view the reform as something that they have

231

already seen) as well as to suggest possible directions for future, which will be discussed

in more detail in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 9: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

This study mapped the emergence of a new curricular policy in the Czech
Republic and its early implementation. Chapter One outlined the conceptual framework
that helped to determine which areas needed to be examined to capture the reform
process in its complexity and organize the writing so that the reader can easily follow the
progression of events. The framework outlined four key contexts in the policy analysis:
Political Space, Political Era, Education State, and the Policy Process. The ﬁrst three
provided avenue into the macro-level structures of historical and political inﬂuences on
policy making. Focus on the Policy Process then led to the details of how the curricular
reform emerged, how it was translated into policy documents and how practitioners in
schools read these documents and made sense of the reform. With its overarching focus,
the conceptual framework enabled to overstep the divide between the macro and the
micro levels, and unify all the contexts as part of one whole.

This dissertation was conceived as a narrative of the unfolding story of the
curricular reform. Individual chapters focused on different aspects of the story, starting
with the broadest view of the context in which the reform emerged and ending with
school practitioners' responses to the reform in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven highlighted
the key ﬁndings from the narrative and explained the case from the point of view of its
macro—level characteristics, noticing how on the macro-level, large—scale, historical, and
local forces and trends shaped the reform. Chapter Eight then presented six propositions
from research studies on the policy process and implementation, and added insights that

provided further explanations for some of the events that occurred in the case. The

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theories introduced in Chapter Eight primarily originated in the English-speaking world
and some might take issues about their utility in the Czech context. But given that the
Czech Republic does not have a tradition of policy and implementation research and does
not offer its own policy research studies through which the case may be viewed and
interpreted, the propositions offer themselves as a useful alternative that might beneﬁt the
case. While it may validate some of the processes that occur, it also points to issues that
tend to be overlooked in the midst of the many layers on which the curricular reform
operates. As such, the propositions help to outline areas that may be worthwhile to
examine more closely in future studies on Czech education.

This chapter sets out to bring the two perspectives from Chapter Seven and
Chapter Eight together and present a set of policy recommendations that bear on the case
and that may guide policy makers in their continued efforts to steer the reform's
implementation.

Combining the narrative and policy research perspectives

The current situation in Czech education and some of the steps in the reform
process may appear perplexing to foreign audiences but the history and politics, as
discussed in Chapter Seven, provides a partial explanation of the situation. The education
system has deep roots and traditions and does not easily let go of institutionalized
practices, which explains why parts of the system, regardless of their low utility today,
continue to survive. For example, when OECD experts reviewed Czech education in
1996, they described the practice of high school exit examinations as a waste of time, and
energy for school principals and teachers who are responsible for developing these exams

in their schools (OECD, 1996). Because these exams are developed locally, they have no

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comparative value. Furthermore, they are not linked to post-secondary education in any
way so they are burdensome to high school seniors who still need to take a different set
of examinations for entry into higher education. In sum, the exams are neither formative
nor diagnostic but they continue to survive in the system. However, it is important to note
that these exams have more than 150-year-old history. They represent "the grammar" of
upper-secondary schooling and are believed to safeguard a certain standard of schools
that are subject to them. An outsider might be puzzled by the continuing practice but an
insider cannot imagine the education system without these exams. No reform that would
propose to abolish them would have a chance of being passed and so alternatives have
been sought and materialized in the proposed reform to add a standardized national test to
the locally developed high school exit examinations. In this way, the culture of the exams
will be preserved but new trends also introduced and incorporated in the system. The
result will be a hybrid model that both, keeps the traditions while answering to new
demands. Such co-existence of the old and the new is not uncommon in transition system.
Other examples that are likely to puzzle an outsider and that can be justiﬁed
within the cultural context of Czech education include implementation steps taken in the
enactment of the curricular reform. The entire concept of 'mandated autonomy' may raise
some eyebrows. Schools and teachers are being told to develop their local curricula when
they had been historically unprepared for such a role. The mandate is being introduced
through what research might qualify as a rational-structural approach (Evans, 1996). This
approach assumes that change is linear and can be achieved via a succession of tOp-down
steps that are well managed. In the rational-structural implementation strategy, Czech

policy leaders focused on disseminating the reform ideas through the top-down

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hierarchical lineage of the school structure. The pilot in high schools was orchestrated
and managed by the Institute for Research in Education, which developed the new
Frameworks, recruited pilot schools, facilitated meetings for pilot-school curriculum
coordinators, and collected schools' drafts of the cunicula according to set time-lines.
The Institute instructed pilot schools to designate a school curriculum coordinator,
typically the principal or the assistant principal, who managed and oversaw curriculum
writing within the school. The general expectation was that change would trickle down
from the Institute, to the school coordinators, to teachers, who, driven by the new
curricular Frameworks, would produce curricula that would challenge the traditional
content-driven model of education and create space for innovation and new instructional
practices. The rational strategy assumed that learning would happen along the way,
almost organically, as part of teachers' curriculum writing process. The pilot was used to
test the Frameworks prior to approving their ﬁnal version and generate tips for a
Handbook on school curriculum writing. Now, as the reform is being launched in all
primary schools in the country, the state continues to provide training to school
coordinators who together with the Handbook were the main resources for local

' curriculum development.

The research propositions presented in Chapter Eight suggested that although the
rational approach has some merit, it is shortsighted in overlooking many realities of how
change occurs as inﬂuenced by politics, human behavior, and features of local
environment(s). Knowledge about reforms generated ﬁ'om research studies and scholarly
literature has profound implications for policy and policy implementation, and it

broadens the perspective of implementation from a top-down approach to one that also

236

increasingly focuses on the people at the delivery level including support mechanisms,
and capacity building. Attempts to apply linear rationality to policy planning lead "an
organization to concentrate on ﬁrst-order changes, on means rather than ends, on how to
do things rather than on why to do things" (Evans, 1996, p.14). The narrative of the
curricular reform showed that this statement also applies to the Czech context.

The implementation of the curricular reform focused on the development of
school curricula as the end product. Taken together with the top-down instructions to
schools on how to write the school curricula, the goal to fundamentally change what
happens inside classrooms became obscured and lost in the process. The facts on the
ground, although admittedly still rather premature, suggested that under the nascent
implementation strategy, the anticipated 'intemal transforrnation' of schools is unlikely to
happen. Teachers tended to view the reform as a reafﬁrmation of existing practices, with
only a minority of individuals in proportion to all pilot school teachers trying to ﬁnd
ways to effect deep change. These teachers were practically left alone to ﬁgure out what
change might look like, and without the needed support, capacity, and resources to
initiate desired change. In some cases, they were overwhelmed with the task and in the
absence of alternative models, they were unable to create a different version of education.
Although it is widely recognized that implementers' capacity is a crucial condition of
successful implementation, in the Czech case, it was apparent that capacity was lacking at
all levels of the system and the state at the time of the study did not have any clear
strategy to build it at the ground level.

Taken together, the narrative documented the trials and errors committed along

the way of the policy formulation and early implementation, situating them in the

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historical and political context of Czech education. The propositions from research
showed that some of the errors were predictable from prior studies, while other steps (e. g.
the gradual realization that reﬂection, demonstration lessons and information sharing will
be necessary within schools) were validated. Some of the issues that were observable in
the reform and its early implementation could have been settled by conceptual analysis,
even without viewing the case through the lens of existing empirical research. Several
Czech critics of the reform implementation carried out such analyses and pointed to some
of the reform's weak points. For example, Simonova and Strakova (2005) argued that the
concept of key competencies was underdeveloped and insufﬁciently connected to
attainment standards outlined in the Frameworks. Hence, the expectation that teachers'
actions would be guided by key competencies was unrealistic. Interviews with pilot-
school teachers afﬁrrned that this concern was justiﬁed. Critics of the reform
implementation called for an extensive teacher training and information campaign that
would explain the concepts and persuade the audiences about the desirability of change.
The need for these implementation strategies stemmed directly from the process and did
not need to be validated through research studies. However, the scholarly literature
reviewed in Chapter Eight offered a more comprehensive and nuanced view of system
mechanisms that can lead to the design of a more concrete and fruitful implementation
strategy.

In sum, bringing together the narrative and the research perspective leads to
several areas that Czech policy leaders might want to address. The narrative documented
how the Czech leaders placed emphasis on the hierarchical lines of school management

and expected that policy ideas will trickle down to school practice. The review of

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research on reforms afﬁrmed that it matters how implementation is conceived and that
alternatives to the strictly rational-linear model exist, offering a better chance of realizing
policy ideas in practice. The research propositions that are most pertinent to this case
suggest that policy leaders focus particularly on systemic reform and capacity building,
and combine the top-down approach to teaching the reform with lateral dissemination of
information and mobilization of teachers' capacity at the bottom of the policy hierarchy.

The thrust of contemporary research on instructional policy implementation
places great emphasis on practices implied by the policy, coherence, and how
implementers learn new policy (Coburn & Stein, 2006; Cohen & Hill, 2001; Honig,
2006; Rowan et al., 2004; Spillane, 2002). The reform's success is conditioned by
teachers' will to enact changes, their knowledge and capacity to implement changes, and
their sense-making of the policy demands. Teacher training and professional
development stressed by Czech researchers are undoubtedly crucial to the policy success
but they constitute only two examples of capacity building that should occur on a broader
level to form the backbone of the implementation strategy. Also, it is imperative for the
policy leaders to carefully think through the types of learning that teachers need to
experience to enact desirable changes. Research ﬁndings showed that it matters what
kind of teacher training and professional development is provided because different types
of training have different effects, with only some professional learning opportunities
likely to stimulate change (Cohen & Hill, 2001).

Furthermore, the research propositions also suggest that policy makers adopt a
peripheral vision and not lose track of the system as a whole. Again, this idea applies to

the Czech context, which is scattered and torn between several poorly coordinated reform

239

efforts that have a potential of undermining one another. A coherent and systemic
implementation strategy, tightening the conceptual ideas for change and aligning them to
the same goals could be the answer, if done correctly. In all, the mapping of the current
situation in the progression of the curricular reform in the Czech Republic and the
research propositions as additional insights to implementation yield the following
recommendations.
0 Describe desired policy outcomes, present a vision of change, and devise
an implementation strategy

When asked about intended policy change and outcomes, interviewees frequently
responded that the grand goal of the reform is increased school and teacher autonomy.
But this response was short of a description of what the autonomy should do as if the
autonomy was the ultimate goal. This exempliﬁes how underspeciﬁed and blurry the
vision of change is. Hand in hand with the vague notion of the outcomes of the curricular
reform goes the lack of a coherent implementation strategy. Policies intending to promote
change must address the kind of change that is desirable and policy makers must share
their vision of change with implementers, who will otherwise not know where they need
to focus their attention. The recommendation to specify policy outcomes is also
connected to the policy language. As was evident from the case, teachers struggled with
the concept of key competencies and the policy text did not offer many clues that would ‘
help them decipher the meaning of key competencies and the application of the concept
in practice. Part of presenting a vision of change would then also mean specifying what

is meant by key competencies and providing concrete examples of how key competencies

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can be realized in practice. These would include supporting materials such as lesson
plans, vignettes, and concrete model practices that would help teachers enact the reform.

The speciﬁcation of desired outcomes and targets of change would provide the
foundations for the development of a coherent implementation strategy. At the moment,
there are some elements of a strategy in place but they are fragmented and unfocused. It
is evident from scholarly literature that implementation matters and hence, it deserves
concentrated attention of policy leaders, who should understand the constraints and
opportunities that the reform presents and build on the resources that might enable
positive outcomes (Elmore, 1983; Majone & Wildavsky, 1984). For the Czech curricular
reform, the ﬁrst step would involve identifying the constraints (e.g. ﬁnding out where
teachers lack capacity and what barriers to change they face) and opportunities. Then,
appropriate strategies could be devised, drawing on available resources. As part of the
overall strategy, it would also be imperative to develop monitoring and evaluating
systems that would provide information about the ongoing implementation and create
feedback loops up and down the system.

0 Provide incentives and mobilize teachers' will to meaningfully fulfill the
mandate

In the current situation, it is hard to understand why any teacher might want to
invest a signiﬁcant amount of time and energy into changing his/her existing practices
when there are virtually no rewards and overt beneﬁts for doing so. Incentives were
neglected when they are now widely recognized to be crucial. Teacher salaries are not
going to increase, there is no career ladder policy that would promise a promotion or

other advantages, and there are no mechanisms that would lower teachers' typical

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workload to balance out the time a teacher spends on developing a plan for change and
writing the school curriculum. Change is thus in the hands of a small minority teachers
who feel frustrated by the existing system and have a personal, intrinsic interest to
overhaul their instructional practices and effect change in their schools. Debates about an
establishment of a career ladder policy for teachers are ongoing but so far ﬁ'uitless,
although the current Education Minister has proposed to address the issue and develop a
system of differential teacher salaries that would allow principals to reward their best
teachers in more meaningful ways than the current system enables. The curricular reform
can serve as a strong argument to design a promotional system for teachers and it opens a
window of opportunity for such a system to be introduced. With an incentive system in
place, the state's mandate would gain a new meaning and teachers would have the
motivation to fulﬁll the mandate substantially rather than only formally. Although career
ladders represent only one example of incentives that could mobilize teachers for change,
this perspective underscores that there are ways to enable change rather than assume that
it will happen along the way.
0 Build teachers' capacity to enact desired change

When teachers are ready and willing to meaningfully participate in the reform,
they need to develop an understanding of the scope of the change they are asked to enact
and construct the knowledge that will help them alter their practices. The Czech Ministry
of Education has placed elements of capacity building in the system but there is a great
need for more. For example, the Ministry has set up a web portal with a help and
information center, and space for practitioners to share ideas and experiences with school

curriculum writing and new practices. The National Institute for Further Education as one

242

of the organizations under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education has launched
professional development courses for school coordinators and teachers to help them learn
about the reform and devise strategies for their school curriculum development.
However, what seemed to be lacking was a coordinated effort to explain to practitioners
why the reform is needed, and help them make sense of their existing practices and
understand how these are or are not linked to the demands of the reform. Research
studies have shown that effective professional development is rooted in concrete
examples, subject-speciﬁc school curricula, and sufﬁcient time that practitioners spend in
training (Cohen & Ball, 2001; Rowan et al., 2004). Research has also stressed the
importance of constructive feedback and ongoing monitoring of the change processes
(Lipsky, 1980; Rowan et al., 2004). These elements have been neglected in the reform
and policy leaders should look for ways to include them in the implementation strategy.
Furthermore, capacity building should not only concern school practitioners but it
should also extend to universities and teacher preparation programs. Again, pieces of
such capacity building have developed — some universities have taken an initiative and
begun addressing curriculum development and the reform in their teacher preparation
programs. But largely, they acted upon their own impulse. The universities have not been
incorporated in the formal channels of reform implementation. Instead, they appeared to
be bypassed under the guise that they have unrestricted autonomy and the state cannot
interfere with it. In many advanced countries, universities have been the centers of
innovation and advancement. Czech universities, which are fully dependent on the state
budget, constantly wrestle with a lack of funds and resources, and many do not quite

ﬁrnction as centers of progress. But there is a level of expertise and potential capacity that

243

might be captured and systematically used in the reform process. For example, education
professors, many of whom have been exposed to various models and theories of
education could help formulate the vision of instructional practices that the reform
implicitly advocates. Bringing universities in would also ensure that teacher education
programs are redesigned in concert with the ideals of the reform.
0 Work towards systemic reform

Throughout the narrative and the lessons from previous research, it became more
apparent how scattered and fragmented the reform efforts are. Research ﬁndings
highlighted the potential of systemic reform approaches that recognize the holistic nature
of systems where individual parts are interconnected and affect one another. Piecemeal
efforts are likely to disappoint but elements of reform that are aligned to one another and
accompanied by supporting guidelines promise strength that has a great potential to usher
in desired change. Previous recommendations already alluded to the need to decrease the
fragmentation of the reform and develop a coherent implementation strategy. Such a
strategy would not only bring together all the pieces of the reform that are currently
scattered, it would also ensure that these pieces are linked to one another and aligned. For
example, the standards outlined in the Frameworks, professional development, proposals
for change in teacher preparation programs and evaluation criteria developed by the
Czech School Inspectorate would all focus on the same target of change in instructional
practices and behavior that would be speciﬁed as desirable outcomes of the reform.
Aligning the elements of the cunicular reform implies that the Ministry of Education
steps above its administrative role and continues moving in the direction of becoming a

truly coordinating and capacity building body, ensuring that information channels are

244

open in all directions and that all Institutes of the Ministry are working towards the same
goal

A coherent and aligned implementation strategy constitutes only one part of the
systemic approach. Systemic approach highlights the workings of all elements and
mechanisms of a system as a whole and in that view, the reform architects would need to
look beyond the curricular reform and pay attention to other reforms and mechanisms in
the system that compete with the curricular reform or might affect it in some ways. In the
Czech case, speciﬁcally the assessment system should receive attention when the
curricular reform is concerned. For example, in completing academic high school and
moving to post-secondary education, students currently face two assessment systems that
are not linked to one another in any way. Students must ﬁrst pass locally developed high
school exit examinations to prove that they deserve a high school diploma. Entrance to a
university is conditioned by a different set of examinations that have been typically
developed by individual universities and even departments within universities. As
discussed at length in Chapters Three and Eight, the university entrance examinations are
highly variable and do not adhere to any speciﬁc standards. The reform of high school
exit examinations that has been under development since late 19905 assumes a national
high school exit examination that will be added to the current school-based exit
examinations. Thus, there will be three assessment systems in place that will not
necessarily be connected. In addition, the new national high school exit examination is
being developed separately from the cunicular reform. The new model of the planned

national high school exit examinations that will be launched in 2010 does not mention the

245

curricular reform and it is not clear if key competencies and standards from the new
Frameworks are in any ways reﬂected in the tests that are being developed.

Interviewees expressed concerns that state high school exit examinations, at least
as they had been developed until the time of the data collection, may undermine the
curricular reform. Taking a systemic view and recognizing the potential threat of high
school exit examinations if they are not linked to the curricular reform is crucial to secure
conditions that might stimulate change. Moreover, exit examinations conceptualized to
assess key competencies will reinforce the message of change that the curricular reform
attempts to convey. High school exit examinations have high stakes and thus could
function as an important leverage in the educational transformation, if used as a
supporting mechanism of the curricular reform and not as a competing factor.

Additionally, it is also imperative that policy leaders pay attention to the
university entrance examinations. These examinations have a gate-keeping function and
as they determine individuals' fate, there are high stakes attached to them. The narrative
discussed the seeming irrationality of the university entrance examinations as an
assessment mechanism that is not part of any coherent system, yet it profoundly affects
what teachers teach at secondary schools and what type of knowledge becomes valued. If
universities continue to stress factual knowledge, it will be difﬁcult for the curricular
reform with its focus on key competencies to resolve an emerging ambiguity over what
knowledge is important. As discussed in Chapter Eight, universities are beginning to use
professionally developed tests similar to the American SAT, which signals an important
change in the system that could result in more objective and perhaps fairer admission

practices. But policy leaders could help to shape the change and start a conversation with

246

universities and the testing agency to help steer the admission processes so that the
assessments are linked to what happens in secondary schools.
0 Draw on existing social networks and information channels

Finally, policy leaders should also reach out to existing social networks and
information channels and draw on the capacity and resources that they offer. They might
combine a top-down approach to policy implementation with lateral distribution of
knowledge and expertise among schools and facilitate such exchange. Clearly, the state's
capacities to effect and enact change are short-circuited and constrained, and the breadth
and scope of the entire transformation needs to draw on all expertise that is available. A
great deal of expertise and capacity is concentrated in non-proﬁt organizations and
educational associations in the Czech Republic that have extensive networks and capacity
to introduce innovation and change to schools. The state has largely by-passed them in
the reform efforts although many found their own way to engage in the reform
implementation because the reform represents the ideals congruent with their own.
Research highlighted the tremendous potential that such networks have in promoting,
stimulating, and sustaining change (Coburn & Stein, 2006; Frank et al., 2004; Smylie &
Evan, 2006). Incorporating these networks into ofﬁcial implementation strategy and the
formal delivery system would allow the state to reach out to important organizational
connections that have been typically marginalized. The Ministry could endorse some of
the programs and practices that existing social networks promote and support lateral
distribution of knowledge and information from school to school. EU structural funds
that will be available to the Czech Republic could fund and support the work of endorsed

networks and organizations. In the US, so called “non system actors” have received

247

renewed attention, and these could be better mobilized in the Czech case (e. g. Coburn,
2006)
Concluding remarks

This study has mapped and chronicled a process of policy formulation and
implementation in a country that has undergone extraordinary change since 1990.
Perhaps it asks too much that a nation ruled for years by a totalitarian regime that praised
uniformity, discipline, and obedience should burst into immediate bloom with the
removal of the constraints. Learning to use freedom takes time, not least the time it takes
to recover from a smothering bureaucracy that drains autonomy, creativity, and forward
thinking. Developments described here may be perfectly understandable in this light,
even as they may provoke certain frustrations among critics who would like to see the
reform directed in ways that would offer more room for optimism for real change. The
spirit of this study, in any case, was to capture the reform in its complexity and gauge
ﬁrst reactions to the reform among the people at the delivery level so that policy makers
can make more informed decisions as they continue to steer the reform. The ﬁndings of
this study also highlighted the need to systematically monitor and evaluate the
implementation process and start building a theoretical base of policy research studies
that might be tailored speciﬁcally to the Czech context.

The case as a whole lends itself to an easy criticism. Outsiders may be inclined to
view the Czech reform as an act of political symbolism rather than an effort to
fundamentally change what happens inside of schools in the Czech Republic. The reform
has conformed to expectations about democracy and reality in European education at the

threshold of 215t century, and satisﬁed political expectations that the Czech Republic

248

takes steps in par with its Western European counterparts and that it follows EU trends, to
which it had subscribed. The reform itself has been designed to offer an opportunity for
change to those who may feel intrinsically motivated to strive at an alternative model of
education but for most schools and teachers who do not have the energy, motivation, and
resources to aspire for change, it allows for non-change. It has all the attributes of a real
change even if it is not intended to overhaul the existing system. In that sense it can be
interpreted as political theatre and symbolism.

However, when considering the administrative governance history of the Czech
state with its roots in the bureaucratic machinery of the Habsburg empire, the progression
of events and the actions of the state make sense, and the doubts about the authenticity of
the reform recede. In the light of the history where the steering of large-scale reforms has
traditionally rested with state mandates and the state could rely on compliance, the
reforrners' efforts to engage the bottom, however inconsistent, ﬁagmented and
unsupported they may be, represent a step forward. Moreover, examining the individual
parts of the system, including the Institute for Research in Education, one ﬁnds
excitement about the work that has been done and even when the pieces do not ﬁt
together quite yet, there are many individuals who work hard and truly believe that the
reform will begin making a positive difference in students' and teachers' school
experience. Hence, classifying the reform as a mere act of political symbolism would be
unfair to those who have contributed to the reform and to those school practitioners who
have been trying to mobilize their colleagues to action as a result of the space that the

reform has opened up. Inexperience and a degree of naiveté rather than spin-doctoring

249

and political symbolism are more likely at the root of what appears as heedless and
uncoordinated transformation of Czech education.

In the broader view of international research, this study contributed to studies on
educational change in post-communist nations. Most of the extant studies remain on the
macro-level only and describe overall trends and processes of educational transformation
in post-communist regions in their attempts to better respond to new societal and political
arrangements that came in the aftermath of the revolutionary upheavals of 1989-1991.
Many of these studies generated frameworks to analyze educational change (McLeish &
Phillips, 1998) and models of change as those documented in Mitter's paper on
transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (Mitter, 2003). However, there has been
little written on what these policies mean for people inside schools and classrooms. This
study attempted to bridge the gap and connect the macro-level perspective of change with
the micro-level view, and match the global perspective of the reform with its local
realities.

The present study also serves as an early attempt to document educational policy
development in a country where such research is scarce. Critiques of the reform efforts
that originated under authorship of Czech researchers exist but they are theoretical and
largely fail to provide empirical evidence for analyses they present. The ﬁndings offered
here can thus provide avenue to ﬁrrther development of the policy studies ﬁeld that is
only beginning to emerge in the Czech Republic, and serve as a basis for future research.
Admittedly, the curricular reform was still in its early stages at the time of the data
collection and it would be premature to pass conclusive judgments. But this study can

serve as a springboard for other studies that should follow. The investigation here was

250

broad and as such offers numerous directions for future research. Within the realm of
studying educational change, it would certainly be worthwhile to continue following the
sample of high schools that participated in this study and examine what happened with
teachers' instructional practices when they started teaching from their new curriculum.
This study spanned across subjects but future studies could focus more narrowly on
individual subject areas and investigate into greater depth the challenges and
opportunities that the reform presents to teachers teaching these subjects. The terrain of
educational reform and change in the Czech Republic is unexplored and new research
questions can be generated for virtually each area that is pertinent to educational change,
ﬁom individual teachers' sense-making to school leaderships' affect on change, effects of
social networks, policy and organizational change at the state institutions, the role of
language in implementation and countless others. This study has drawn on research
produced largely in the English-speaking world and while the assumption was made here
that the research can be applied to the Czech case, future studies should test this
assumption and develop alternative theoretical models that would stem directly from the

Czech experience.

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APPENDICES

Appendix A: Study approach

The research question seeks an explanation to the puzzle of why the reform and
its implementation have evolved in ways that appear somewhat irrational and illogical.
The answer has been sought in processes of how the policy came to be and how the
policy ideas have been circulated and appropriated by those who are implementing them.
The study thus utilized primarily qualitative, interpretive inquiry. This approach is
particularly ﬁt because it provides ﬂexibility in exploring the process as it has unfolded in
a given context. It also assumes that individuals will have multiple interpretations of the
phenomenon, depending on their experiences, values, beliefs, knowledge, and other
factors. As a whole, the study falls into the category of trajectory studies, which follow a
policy through its gestation and evolution, capturing the political processes that prepare
the conditions for policy inception to text production, and following implementation of
the policy into practice (Maguire & Ball, 1994; Taylor et al., 1997).

This dissertation is primarily about the policy - it scrutinizes ideas embedded in it
and assumptions that underlie it. But it is also a study about the responses that the policy
generated from school practitioners. Understanding how the policy evolved and why it
came to look the way it does demanded examining a variety of data sources and talking to
people across different levels. Besides the policy text and other relevant documents, the
study also needed to include some measures of people’s perceptions and understandings
of the reform. Altogether, I collected three kinds of data: interviews, documents including

newspaper articles written about the cunicular reform, and teacher surveys.

252

Interviews

Fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted in three points in time between

2004 and spring 2006 (see Table Al). The interviews were structured loosely, following

an interview protocol with open-ended questions that were inviting interviewees to talk

about what they deemed important. Interviews were conducted in Czech, my native

language, and their length varied from about 30 to 90 minutes. Interviewees included

educational stakeholders at multiple levels of the system, with the ﬁrst round of

interviews focusing primarily on the macro level while in the second and third round,

most interviewees were school practitioners.

Table A.1. Interviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer October June Total
2004 2005 2006 interviews
Interviews with:

Policy actors (ofﬁcials from the
Ministry, university professors,
representatives from educational 15 2 l 18
associations, educational
entrepreneurs)
Principals (non—pilot schools) 3 2 5
Teachers (non-pilot schools) 1 7 8
Principals (pilot schools) 2 3 5
Teachers (pilot schools) 7 8 15

19 20 12 51

 

253

 

T he first round of interviews

The ﬁrst round of interviews took place during summer 2004 when the new
education bill (and the curricular reform) was awaiting approval from the Senate after it
was passed by the Parliament. Altogether, during this phase of data collection I
interviewed 19 people, including ofﬁcials from the Ministry of Education and its
affiliated Institutes, university professors, representatives from educational associations,
educational researchers and entrepreneurs, and a small sample of school principals and
teachers. Interviewees were selected purposefully — I was interested in talking to people
who participated in the policy development or were part of the networks that inﬂuenced
the emergence of the policy. I also wanted to talk to educators who publicly voiced their
opinions about the proposed reform in newspaper articles and other public texts. In
addition, I wanted to gauge initial reactions of practitioners so I interviewed three school
principals and one teacher. The purpose of the ﬁrst round of interviews was to understand
how interviewees perceived the conditions of Czech (education, where they saw
possibilities and constraints of the reform, how they interpreted the proposed policy, and
where they thought the policy ideas had originated. A great deal of information from this
round of interviews served as a basis for chapters 3, 4, and 5 about Czech education and
policy gestation.

Second round of interviews

The second round of interviews was conducted in fall 2005 — a year after the
reform was instituted and at a point in time when a sample of high schools began piloting

it. I was interested in exploring how school practitioners were making sense of the reform

254

and what changes the reform impelled them to do. The pilot of the Frameworks in
academic high schools thus offered a unique opportunity to monitor how the
implementation was beginning to unfold. In theory, primary schools and multi-year
secondary schools should have been in the process of developing their school curricula at
the time but that largely did not seem to be the case in 2005-2006 academic year. Pilot
academic high schools were thus the only sites where the process could have been
examined. The Ministry of Education, and more speciﬁcally the Institute for Research in
Education that assumed a coordinating role of the pilot, invited academic high schools
around the country to apply for participation in the pilot project. In the end, the Institute
was able to locate one school to represent each of the fourteen regions in the country. In
addition, the cities of Prague and Brno (the second largest city in the country and the
capital of Moravia) each had two pilot schools.

My goal for the second round of data collection was to select two pilot high
schools and two non-pilot high schools where I could interview teachers about their
initial experiences with the curriculum writing. I wanted to select schools that would
resemble most other academic high schools, i.e. I wanted to exclude schools that are
known for their efforts to be non-traditional and different. However, there was little
information about the individual pilot schools to help me make a purposeful choice so my
ﬁnal selection was partially random. Out of the total number of 16 pilot high schools in
the country I excluded half, which appeared clearly different from the typical small town
academic high schools because of their proﬁle (e. g. academic high schools focused on
sports, parochial schools) or because of their location (schools in the regional capitals).

Then, I threw a dice and from the remaining schools on my list, I randomly picked four.

255

To further narrow down the selection, out of these four schools I chose two that were
located in geographical locations promising easier access than the other two.

After identifying the two pilot schools, I then located two non-pilot schools, each
in geographical proximity to the pilot schools. The purpose of choosing both pilot and
non-pilot schools was to get a greater variety of standpoints and to record reactions of
people who were immersed in the reform because they were implementing it as well as
people who had not yet received much direct exposure to the reform. I also wanted to
have an idea of how different or similar the pilot schools might have been in comparison
to ordinary academic high schools, and that way get a sense of the bias of my sample of
pilot schools.

In each school, I contacted the principal via e-mail and explained the purpose of
the study while asking for permission to gain access to the school and to contact a
handful of teachers who would represent diverse voices in regard to the reform. In efforts
to keep the study somewhat focused on the same subject matter so that I could carry
similar conversations across schools, I initially tried to contact Czech language and
literature teachers because Czech language and literature is a core course and the reform
implies signiﬁcant changes in the traditional content of this subject -- namely it places
emphasis on communication, and text analysis and interpretation — areas not explicitly
addressed in the old curriculum. But in each pilot school, typically only one teacher was
responsible for curriculum writing per subject and because I wanted to have more than
one view of the curriculum writing, in the end I talked to teachers of other subjects,

mostly history and social studies (many of whom also teach Czech language and

256

literature but were engaged in curriculum writing only for one of their subjects). In sum,
in each school I interviewed the principal and 3-4 teachers.

Third round of interviews

The ﬁnal round of interviews took place in June 2006 and focused on teachers’
work with the school curriculum writing. Non-pilot schools were dropped from the study
because they did not have any experiences with the reform, and one more pilot school
was recruited in addition to the two from the previous round of data collection. The third
school was selected because of geographical location — it was located between the two
pilot schools from the previous round of data collection so it was accessible. It also
turned out to be a slightly non-traditional school, which made the sample more diverse.
At this point in time, I talked only to people who were directly involved in their school
curriculum writing. In each school, I interviewed the teacher/ principal who was charged
with leading the curriculum writing and 2-3 teachers, mostly the same interviewees from
the previous round of interviews. I asked questions about the process of curriculum
development, problems they encountered, changes in the new curriculum they wrote, and
overall sense of satisfaction with the process and the reform. I also asked about their
collaboration with others and their learning of the reform.
Interview questions

Development of interview questions was connected to each phase of data
collection. Analyzing the ﬁrst round of interviews suggested topics for the next round and
so on. The ﬁrst phase of interviews was most open, with questions asking for general
perceptions of Czech education and the ﬁt of the newly proposed reform(s). With each

round, the questions were becoming more focused. The third round of interviews

257

focused exclusively on pilot-school teachers and their experiences with the curriculum
writing process. At the same time, some themes that surfaced in the early phases were
explored throughout all phases of data collection. For example, the ﬁrst round of
interviews pointed to the lack of teacher professional development as an important
constraint to change and the theme or teacher professional development and learning the
reform was incorporated in all phases of the interviews to develop a better understanding
of how teachers felt about their opportunities to learn new practices, new knowledge, and
the reform. Questions were open-ended to give teachers an opportunity to talk about what
was important to them. Samples of interview protocols follow in chronological order.

Summer 2004
Interview questions: Policy makers and macro-level players
What do you see as advantages and disadvantages of the Czech education system?
Where do you see a need for change?
How do you think the curricular reform addresses the change?
What in your opinion is the purpose of the curricular reform?
Where did it come from?
The new Education Act also introduces the high school exit examination reform.
What is your opinion about that reform? (Probe: why is the reform being
introduced; what problem is it intended to solve; what do you know about the
reform)
0 Where did that reform come from? (Probe: when you ﬁrst heard about it, how it
evolved over time)
To what degree do you see the two reforms connected?
0 How are the reforms coordinated? (Probe: who is in charge; who does what; how
do the different institutes cooperate)
o How is information about the reforms disseminated?
What potential problems do you foresee with the reforms’ implementation?
0 What will the reform’s success look like?

Fall 2005
Interviews: School principals and teachers in pilot schools (interview topics and leading
questions)

1. Background information

o How long have you been teaching? How long have you been teaching at this
school? Which subjects do you teach?

258

o What do you see as your main job as a teacher?

0 Can you describe your typical day? (Probe: Among what tasks do you divide your
day? What takes most of your time?

2. Content

0 How do you choose what you are going to teach? (E. g. what was the last thing
you have just taught and why?)

0 To what degree do you rely on existing content outlines? Do you have a copy
available?

0 What textbooks do you use? Who selects them?

How much freedom do you feel you have in content selection?
0 To what degree do you expect that the content you currently teach will change?
3. Typical lesson

0 Can you describe your typical lesson? What types of activities do you do with
your students?

0 During the past year, did you do something that you had not done before in your
instruction? What made you do that?

4. High school exit exams and assessment
0 Have you seen the pilot exit tests? How have they affected your work?
0 Is there anything that you learned from these tests? (Probe: things about students,
content)
0 How do you typically assess your students?
5. Curricular reform and frameworks

o How have you learned about the curricular reform? (Probe: from the principal?
Seminars? Newspaper?)
How do you feel about your school participating in the pilot project?
What do you think the reform is trying to do? What is your opinion about that?
What kind of change do you think the reform encourages?
What is expected of you to do in response to the reform? How did you learn that?
Have you had a chance to read the new frameworks and speciﬁcally the section
for your subject matter?

0 Which things stand out the most for you?

0 How are the Frameworks different from the existing curriculum? What is new in
them?

6. Key competencies

o The frameworks focus on competencies. Have you heard about that? Why is that
important?

0 What does this mean to you?

0 The frameworks emphasize 5 competencies. One of them is a competency to
communicate. For example, students are expected to master the basic principles
of rhetoric and be able to deliver presentations in a self-conﬁdent manner. What
does this speciﬁc example mean for your teaching? (15 it new? 15 it something you
have been doing?)

0 (If you have been doing it) can you give me an example of how you teach towards
this competency?

259

o (If you have not been doing it) what do you think is expected of you to do? Do
you have a concrete idea/ example of how you could apply this idea in your
classroom? What activities do you see yourself doing with your students in
teaching towards this competency?

7. Policy alignment

0 What kind of relationship do you see between the state exit exam reform and the

curriculum reform? How do you think these two reforms may work together?
8. Teacher collaboration

0 How do other teachers in your school respond to the reform?

0 To what extend to teachers work together on the curriculum writing?

0 Have you ever collaborated on something with another teacher? What was it?
How did it work? What did you learn from that?

0 Have you ever had a chance to observe other teachers’ teaching? When? What did
you think?

9. Curriculum writing

0 How do you go about writing the curriculum according to the Frameworks? Can

you walk me through what you have done so far?
10. Opportunities to learn/ Professional development

0 Over the past two years, have you had a change to participate in any seminars or
professional development activities? If so, which ones? What was the topic? What
did you learn / did you ﬁnd it helpful — if so, helpful for what?

0 Does your principal encourage you to participate in professional development?
What motivates you to participate? Are there any other incentives besides your
personal interest?

0 How do you learn about professional development opportunities? How hard/ easy
is it to participate (e. g. 15 it easily accessible? Is it in a different town? 15 it on the
weekend? Does your principal pay for these or do you have to pay?)

11. School leadership

0 Has your principal or the assistant principal commented on the new frameworks?
What did they say?

0 Have there been any meetings or seminars devoted to the reforms? (if so, what
were they? Who organized them? Who spoke there/ was giving the information
etc.)

o How well do you feel informed in terms of what needs to be done and what
speciﬁc tasks are expected of you?

Spring 2006
Interviews: Curriculum coordinators
1. Evaluation the year of curriculum writing
0 What would you say you are proud of in your school's curriculum writing?
0 Where did you encounter problems?
0 What is next? (Probe: What's going to happen with the curriculum now? How will
you continue working with the Institute for Research in Education?)
2. Pilot

0 How has the project worked in your school?

260

o What speciﬁc things in connection to the pilot and curriculum writing have you
done in the past two months?

0 When was the work on the curriculum most intensive? What happened during that
time?

o I have meeting minutes from the last meeting of school curriculum coordinators.
Could you walk me through the notes and tell me what happened?
Did you have any comments during the meeting? What were they?

0 Have you been in touch with the coordinators from other schools outside of these

meetings?

0 When you have questions about what you need to do, who do you contact/call/talk
to?

o How do you disseminate information from the coordinators' meetings among your
staff?

3. Collaboration in school
0 What meetings in connection to the curriculum have taken place in this school
during this year? (Formal? Informal?)
How do you feel about the work of the curriculum leadership team?
How often did the team meet?
Did anyone take notes during these meetings?
If you were to form the team again, would you have done anything differently?
What things worked very well?
What things disappointed you?
What have you learned ﬁom the whole experience?
4. Other teachers in school
0 Who was responsible for distributing information to other teachers (i.e. teachers
who were not on the curriculum writing team)?
0 How have other teachers in this school learned about the work of the curriculum
writing team?
0 How has the curriculum writing affected relationships in this school?
5. School curriculum
0 Can you walk me through the new curriculum that your team has written?
How is it different from what has been done in this school until now?
What has stayed the same? Why?
What changes do you introduce in your subject matter?
What do teachers in your school need to prepare for now?

Document review

In addition to interviews, Policy documents and reports related to the curricular
reform were collected (Table A2.) and analyzed. The data also included newspaper
articles that were searched online in three mainstream Czech daily newspapers: Lidové

noviny (Lidovky.cz), Mlada Fronta DNES (idne5.cz), and Hospodaiské noviny

261

(ihned.cz). Newspaper articles were searched because practitioners often mentioned daily
newspapers as their key sources of information. I was interested to learn what messages
the popular media has been sending to the public about the reform and how they have
represented the reform. I searched all the three online versions of the newspapers
published between January 2003 and June 2007. However, only a portion of all articles
written on the topic was accessible -- one of the newspapers (Lidové noviny) did not
allow a search prior to October 2005. I chose to begin in 2003, which was a year before
the new Education Act was passed, to gauge how much the curriculum reform was
discussed before it was written into the law. June 2007 was the time when I began writing
up the document analysis.

Altogether, I identiﬁed 34 articles that directly pertained to the curricular reform.
I ﬁrst read the articles for the general tone about the reform — i.e. to see if they were
negative, positive or neutral (informative) about the reform. On the second read, I paid
closer attention to how they described the reform and its purposes, and the language they
used. I also looked for what they said or what they failed to say about the three key points
that the reform addresses: teacher autonomy, key competencies, and cross-curricular
themes. For example, nearly all of the articles failed to mention the key competencies.
Some have described various aspects of key competencies, for example that students
should learn to search for information, but the term "kompetence" was largely ignored.

Table A2. Key policy documents in chronological order

 

Czech Ministry of Education. (1994). Quality and Accountability. Prague.

Education Policy Association. (1999). Czech Education and Europe: Pre-Accession
Strategy for Human Resource Development. (N 0. Programme Phare, project No.
CZ 9405-01-03-01). Prague: Education Policy Association.

Czech Ministry of Education. (2001). The National Program of Development of
Education in the Czech Republic (White Paper). Prague, Czech Republic:
Institute for Information on Education.

 

 

 

262

 

Eurydice. (2002). Key competencies: A developing concept in general compulsory
education. Brussels, Belgium: Eurydice European Unit

Ceska Republika [Czech Republic]. (2004). deon o pfeds'kolnim, zdkladnim, stfednim a
vys'5'z'm odborném ajiném vzdéldni - s'kolsky za'kon (561/2004Sb.) [Act on
preschool, basic, secondary, tertiary professional and other education - the
Education Act].

VUP [Institute for Research in Education]. (2004). Rdmcovy vzde'lcivaci program pro
gymndzia: pilotni verze [Curricular frameworks for academic high schools: pilot
version]. Praha: vyzkumny ustav pedagogicky [Institute for Research in
Education],.

 

 

 

Surveys

The ﬁnal round of data collection focused on pilot schools and included a survey
in addition to the interviews. Interviewed teachers often reported that their colleagues
knew little about the reform and that many were not interested in change. The purpose of
the survey was to probe into attitudes and understandings of the reform among teachers
beyond those who were interviewed, and triangulate the various sources of data. I also
wanted to obtain more information about the conditions in pilot schools, teacher
collaboration, and information ﬂow.

The survey was distributed in ﬁve pilot schools, including the three that served as
interview sites. The increased sample size was intended to generate sufﬁcient number of
responses to provide informative value and to validate the instrument. In total, I sent 198
surveys to ﬁve pilot schools. I received 89 surveys back, which amounted to 53%
response rate (see Table A3). Out of these (89 responses, I excluded 10 from Pilot school
5 because they represented only 10% teachers from that school. The response rate in the
remaining four schools was above 47% in each school. The overall return rate of 53%

was rather low but the total number of 79 usable surveys was sufﬁcient to pilot the

263

instrument, and to obtain information about the variability of views and teachers' attitudes
to the reform.

Table A3. Teacher surveys in pilot schools

 

 

 

Surveys sent Survey returned Return rate
Pilot school 1 37 18 49%
Pilot school 2 35 25 71%
Pilot school 3 34 16 47%
Pilot school 4 42 20 47%
Pilot school 5 50 10 10%
Total 198 89 53%

 

The survey asked questions in ﬁve main domains: 1) context of teachers' work; 2)
instruction; 3) reforms; 4) communication in school and information ﬂow; and 4)
demographic data. Most items asked respondents to express their degree of
agreement/disagreement with given statements on 6-point Likert scale but the survey also
included several open-ended questions. The survey contained a number of items (mostly
concentrated in the "instruction" domain) that formed teacher efﬁcacy scales and teaching
philosophy scales but in the end, these scales were not used in the analysis of this study.
Instead, they served to pilot the instrument for future use in case the study continues.
These scales were adopted from other existing studies as shown in the survey sample that
follows in Table A.4. Items concerning the reforms were speciﬁcally developed for this

study.

264

Table A.4. Teacher survey

CONTEXT OF TEACHERS' WORK

 

1. To what extent do you agree with the following statements? (Scale 1-6)
a. Czech society values teachers
b. I teach because I am not sure what else I could do
c. I am more or less content with the salary I have as a teacher
d. Perks such as long summer vacations balance out the relatively low teacher salaries

 

2. To what extent do you agree with the following claim? (Scale 1-6)
Education in Czech academic high schools is good and does not need any ﬁmdamental changes.

If you think that changes should be introduced, what kind of changes would you like to
see?

 

3. Which factors limit your work as a teacher? (Scale 14, adopted from 1998 TIMSS-R teacher
questionnaire and modiﬁed)

a. High number of students in class

b. Students who are not interested in learning

c. Students who are disruptive

d. Students with different abilities

e. University entrance examinations

f. School leadership

g. Textbooks

h. Lack of curricular materials

i. Administrative tasks

j. The established way how teachers teach in this school...

k. National curriculum (content outlines)

l. Expectations of parents

m. Inadequate school equipment

 

4. For an average week, how many hours do you work beyond the "contractual" teacher work
week in order to fulﬁll your teaching responsibilities? (adopted from Vannatta, R. A., &
Fordham, N. (2004). Teacher dispositions as predictors of classroom technology use. Journal of
Research on Technology in Education, 36(4), 253-271.)

a. 0

b. 1-3

c. 4-8

(1. 9-12

e. 12 or more

If you spend extra time, on what kind of activities do you spend that time?

INSTRUCTION

 

5. Teacher efﬁcacy scales (9 items, scale 1-6) (in Vannatta, adopted from Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990)

265

 

6. Teacher philosophy (constructivist vs. traditional teaching phi1050phy; 5 pairs of items, scale 1-
6) (in Vannatta, adopted from Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990)

 

7. To what extent do you agree with the following statements about instruction? (scale 1-6)
a. Instruction should be based on problems that have clear and correct answers and on
ideas that students can grasp quickly
b. I don't mind trying out new things even when I know that I will make mistakes
0. Students should respect the authority of the teacher
(1. Students are ready for meaningful learning only after they master some basic
knowledge
e. A quiet classroom is generally needed for effective instruction
f. Students should help establish criteria on which their work will be assessed.
g. I feel excited when I try new instructional methods
h. The instructional methods I currently implement need little revision
i. I don't mind making mistakes because I can learn from them.
j. Students are more active in instruction when they can move freely around the room
k. It's better when the teacher — not the students — decides what activities are to be done
1. I would participate in professional development even if I did not have any ﬁnancial or
other beneﬁts from it.
m. Project learning often results in students learning mistakes/ wrong knowledge
11. How much students learn depends on how much background knowledge they have —
that is why the teaching of facts is necessary
0. Homework assignments are good for having students answer questions from textbooks
p. When exploring new instructional methods, I try to ﬁnd ones that require little change.

REFORMS

8. What do you think about the content you currently teach and changes in content?
a. Changes should be determined on the level of school, in cooperation with the school
leaders and teachers.
b. Changes in content should be determined by individual teachers.
c. The content we currently cover needs to be revised because we teach many things
disconnected from reality.
d. The content we currently cover needs to be revised because students are overloaded
with unnecessary information
e. Changes in content should be determined on the national level, under the leadership of
experts
f. I teach a lot of things, which students do not necessarily need to know.

 

 

9. What goals guide you in planning your lessons?
I plan my lessons with the goal to...

 

l0.Which ﬁve words come to mind when you hear the phrase "curricular reform"?

 

11. To what extent do you agree with the following statements about the curricular reform and the
new Frameworks? (scale 1-6)
a. The curricular reform motivates teachers to come up with new ideas and innovate

266

b. The Frameworks contain many new ideas

c. The curricular reform has little to do with my current work

(1. The cunicular reform further constrains me in my work

e. The Frameworks push me to think about how I teach

f. The curricular reform is a political matter, which will have negligible effects on Czech
education

g. The curricular reform gives me the opportunity to co-create a school where I will enjoy
teaching

h. The curricular reform gives me more freedom in what I will teach

i. The curricular reform is not going to impact how I teach

j. The curricular reform will burden me with an extra load of work

k. I expect that I will look for new instructional methods

1. The curricular reform signiﬁcantly changes the current conception and goals of
education in secondary schools

m. The cunicular reform encourages close cooperation between teachers

11. The curricular reform is an effort to capture and describe what has been commonly
done

0. I understand what the reform is trying to do and I welcome the efforts

p. I have carefully read the Frameworks

 

12. What do you like about the new Frameworks and what bothers you about them?
I mainly appreciate. . ..

I feel bothered by. . ..

 

13. Are you a member of the curriculum writing team?
Yes/ no

 

14. What do you think about the anticipated state part of the exit examinations? Please, indicate
the level to which you agree with the following statements. (scale 1-6)
a. State examinations will help to improve the quality of Czech education
b. It will be an unnecessary additional examination
c. State exit examinations go against the curricular reform
d. State exit examinations are necessary because they will replace university entrance
exams
e. State exit examinations will dictate what we will teach
f. It's important that secondary school outputs could be compared across all schools in the
country
g. State exit exams do not make sense because they will compare things that are
incomparable

COMMUNICATION IN SCHOOL AND INFORMATION FLOW

 

15. Who do you talk to about methods and content of instruction?
a. colleague(s) from my homeroom
b. other colleagues in school, outside of my homeroom
c. colleagues from other schools
C]. no one

 

267

16. Please, list initials of colleagues from your school who you go to for advice on content and
methods of instruction. Check the box that reﬂects the ﬁequency of these discussions. (item
adopted from Ken Frank)

 

Almost every At least once At least once At least once At least once
day a week a month a semester a year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P'PP’E"?

 

 

 

17. How many teachers in your school. (none, a few, most, almost all, I don't know)
a. plan lessons together
b. learn from others by observing other teachers' lessons
c. give advice and helps colleagues with methods
(1. teach non-traditionally
e. agree on instructional practices
f. want to try something new
g. introduce new ideas and shares them with colleagues
h. participate in professional development and teacher workshops at least twice a year
i. actively seek new ideas
j. actively participate in the school curriculum writing
k. are against the curricular reform

 

18. Where do you primarily receive information about the Frameworks and the curricular reform?

 

19. To what extent do you agree with the following statements about your school leadership?
(scale 1-6)

a. Our school has a transparent system of rewards that motivates teachers to work harder

b. Our school leaders regularly keep us informed

c. Teachers participate in decision making in this school

(I. The school leaders create an environment for open communication

e. Our school principal understands the problems we deal with on daily basis

f. Communication in this school is very good

g. Our school leaders provide maximum support to us

h. I usually know where to ﬁnd our principal

i. Our principal is easily accessible and it is possible to talk to him/her any time

j. Our school leaders encourage us to try out new things

k. In this school, we work together to pursue common goals

1. There is a lot of rivalry among teachers in this school

m. Teachers in this school are not afraid to express their opinion

n. In this school, teachers work on their own

 

20. How often do you use the intemet?

Baily l l

 

268

 

every other day

at least once a week
at least once a month
several times a year
almost never

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21. Where do you get access to the intemet?
in our homeroom
in the hall

in the computer lab
in an intemet cafe
at home

nowhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22. How old are you?
Less than 25
25-29

30-39

4049

50-59

60 or more

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23. What is your gender?
[ Male I Female I

 

 

 

24. How of
0-5

5-10

will you have had by the end of this academic year?

      

10-15
more thanl 5

 

25. Which subjects do you teach? How many hours a week?

 

Subject Hours per week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

26. What is the highest level of education that you have attained?

 

High school with exit examination

 

 

 

Bachelor's degree

 

 

 

27. Where did you obtain your qualiﬁcations? Please, list the name of the institution, study
program and the year when you completed your studies.

 

Institution Majors Year of
completion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

269

Data analysis

All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed using TAMS analyzer software --
an open source software designed for Apple Macintosh computers for management and
analysis of qualitative data. TAMS analyzer allows to transcribe text and subsequently
assign codes to selected portions of the text, form code sets, recode existing codes, search
through the data, and retrieve coded information.

After each phase of interviews, I ﬁrst read and reread every interview to get a feel
of the whole. I brieﬂy summarized each interview and then began coding and
categorizing the data. I ﬁrst applied open coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and assigned
descriptive labels to segments of the texts, thus breaking down the information into
manageable units that could be contrasted with one another. The initial process of
categorizing data generated 40-50 codes per each round of interviews, which I
subsequently began reducing and collapsing into larger categories. Although the number
of codes was a bit overwhelming, the open coding approach allowed for new labels and
categories to emerge. For example, when asked about key competencies or policy
constraints, teachers and principals often commented on the language of the Frameworks,
which became an important theme in the study. .

After the initial codes were assigned, I continued re-reading the data and began
revising the codes. The nearly 50 codes that I started with were gradually reduced to 10-
15 categories, some of which corresponded with the larger themes that guided the
interview questions. Once I had established a way to organize the interview data, I moved
to integrating the analysis with the analyses of documents and surveys, looking for points

of convergence and divergence. In analyzing the survey data, I used SPSS to generate a

270

frequency table for each survey item and carefully read through responses on open-ended
items, looking for overlaps with the interview data and for information that could provide
additional insights to the interview data. For example, comments on language surfaced in
the open-ended item asking respondents to list ﬁve words that they associated with the
curricular reform, which reinforced the saliency of the language theme.

For the purposes of this study, the surveys were used mainly as a background for
the interview data. This meant that only items that could have been linked to the
interview data were used in the analysis, and items such as teacher efﬁcacy scales and
teaching philosophy were excluded. However, they served to validate the instrument for
future use. On the whole, the descriptive statistics obtained from the survey data helped
to paint a more complete picture of the attitudes of pilot-school teachers towards the
reform, and their perceptions of it.

Following multiple reads of all data, I identiﬁed central categories that cut
through all three data sets. Some of these categories appeared salient because they linked
the data sets together; and some were salient because they offered interesting insights into
the narrative of the gestation and implementation of the reform that were not immediately
apparent. The categories included: language of the reform; the relationship between
teacher autonomy and content; key competencies; crosscutting themes and teacher
collaboration; and the role of feedback in curriculum writing. I recognize that these
themes are broad and that each would likely deserve its own study but the purpose of this

dissertation was to map the reform as a whole and prepare the ground for future research.

271

Appendix B: Examples of high school exit examination topics in history in 19805 and in

2003

 

High school exit examination topics in history (19805)

 

1)

a. Class and economic foundations of Renaissance culture abroad and at home, new
perspective on life, new style of life.
b. Beginnings of the workers' movement in Austria before World War I.

 

2)

a. Origins and evolution of utopian and scientiﬁc socialism, inﬂuence on the international
workers' movement, contemporary signiﬁcance of Marxist-Leninist ideology.
b. The Internationals and the international workers' movement.

 

3)

a. World War I — causes, consequences, signiﬁcance of VRSR (Great October Socialist
Revolution), crisis of the capitalist system

b. The battle of Czechs and Slovaks for independence — the contradictory positions of the
bourgeois politicians and the workers' movement, the signiﬁcance of VRSR for the origin
of the Czechoslovak Republic.

 

4)

a. The ﬁrst and second industrial revolutions — new class-divided society
b. Main characteristics of imperialism — the highest stage of capitalism, territorial division
of the world before World War I, colonialism.

 

5)

a. From the beginning of the workers' movement in Russia to the bourgeois democratic
revolution of 1905/07, causes and consequences of its defeat.

b. V.I.Lenin — the man and the work, his inﬂuence on the workers' movement in Russia
and on the international workers' movement.

 

6)

a. Great October Socialist Revolution — historic watershed in the evolution of humanity,
establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia

b. Battle for the political character of the First Republic — the origin of the Communist
Party of Czechoslovakia

 

7)

a. Original, class basis, and character of fascism in Italy and Germany, aggressive plans of
the fascist states

b. Czechoslovak Republic between the wars—battle of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia for the rights of workers in a period of economic crisis

 

8)

a. Building of socialism in Russia after the defeat of intervention and domestic
counterrevolution

b. Paris commune—ﬁrst dictatorship of the proletariat, lessons for the international
workers' movement

 

9)

a. The second phase of World War II—the Soviet Union's major share in the defeat of
fascism, postwar arrangement of Europe, the origin of the worldwide socialist system
b. Czechoslovak resistance during World War II—two centers of foreign resistance,
domestic resistance under the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia,
Slovak national uprising and the May Uprising in relation to the liberation of the
Czechoslovak Republic.

 

10)

 

 

a. Betrayal by the Czechoslovak bourgeoisie and their allies—politics of the Western
states and the position of the USSR. Munich, the complete destruction of the
Czechoslovak Republic

b. Beginnings of World War II — causes of its origin, character, evaluation of its status at
the end of the ﬁrst phase

 

272

 

 

11)

a. Causes of the transition from the primitive communal order to the slave order,
signiﬁcance of work for the physical and mental evolution of man, production and social
relations, religious ideas, gradual and uneven evolution in the period of classless society
b. Prehistoric settlement of our tenitory—main developmental stages, most signiﬁcant
cultures and archeological ﬁnds, economic and social changes, arrival of the Slavs

 

12)

a. Origin and building of the worldwide socialist system, Warsaw Pact, alliance with the
Soviet Union

b. Prehistoric settlement of our territory —main developmental stages, most signiﬁcant
cultures and archeological ﬁnds, economic and social changes, arrival of the Slavs

 

13)

a. Main characteristics and beginnings of the feudal order in Europe—origins of feudal
diffusion, signiﬁcance of Christian ideology and Church organization in the life of early
feudal society

b. First state formations on our territory——evolution, causes, and consequences of their
downfall, relations with the Byzantine and East Frankish Empires

 

14)

a. Origins of the culture of antiquity—ancient methods of production, slaveholders'
democracy, the contribution of ancient culture

b. Historic evolution of Brno—center of the workers' movement in Moravia, oldest
settlement, origin of the city, ﬁrst manufactures, battles of the proletariat, Josef Hybes, the
newspaper Rovnost, liberation, the city under socialism

 

15)

a. Class character of the culture of early and developed feudalism in our country and
abroad, inﬂuence of the Church on the creation of a world view and mass opinion
b. The Czech state under the Luxembourgs

 

16)

a. Stabilization and expansion of feudal monarchies in the period of developed
feudalism—England, France, Spain, Germany in the period of developed feudalism
b. Origins and development of the Czech feudal state under the Premyslids

 

17)

a. Hussite revolutionary movement—program, supporters, signiﬁcant centers, individuals,
propagation abroad, causes of defeat
b. Reformation in Europe—goals, representatives, consernrences

 

18)

a. Growth of temporal powers of the Church, its ideological inﬂuence, battle over
investiture

b. Causes and aims of the Hussite revolutionary movement—social contradictions in the
Czech lands, criticism of the Church and the social order, activities and signiﬁcance of the
speeches of Master Jan Hus.

 

19)

a. Culmination of the opposition of Czech towns and non-Catholic nobility to the violent
Habsburg government and the consequences of the defeat for the Czech nation

b. Causes, course, character of the Thirty Years' War and its inﬂuence on conditions in
Europe

 

20)

a. Government of J iii 2 Podébrad—his peace project and its modern realization
b. Establishment of the Habsburgs on the Czech throne, their attempted Catholicization,
Germanization, and centralized, absolutist government

 

21)

a. Most signiﬁcant bourgeois revolutions in Europe and their inﬂuence on the
development of the capitalist order
b. Origins, evolution, and role of towns from feudalism to the modern day

 

 

22)

 

a. Transition from guild small-scale production to capitalist large-scale production, causes
of stagnation, transition periods, beginnings of factory production

b. Economic and social changes during the enlightened absolutism of Maria Theresa and
reform during the reign of Joseph H

 

273

 

 

23

v

a. Building of socialism in Czechoslovakia after Victorious February, main tasks of
socialist construction, 16th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia

b. Second period of the general crisis of capitalism—contradictions in the postwar world,
peace movements, military-political groupings, peaceful coexistence of the two world
systems, Helsinki, Stockholm, Belgrade, peace proposals of the 26th Congress of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union

 

24)

a. Territorial evolution of the Czech state—use of maps from the oldest settlements up to
the present day

b. Class and economic foundations of the baroque abroad and at home, the baroque and
the Catholic Counter-Reformation

 

25)

 

a. First bourgeois democratic revolution in France and its inﬂuence on political
developments in Italy and Germany
b. Constitutional battles of Czechs and Slovaks in the revolutionary year of 1848

 

High school exit examination topics in history (April 2003)

 

1)

Evolution of human society in primeval times

 

2)

Ancient Middle Eastern states

 

3)

Ancient Greece

 

4)

Ancient Rome

 

5)

Cultural legacy of antiquity

 

6)

Beginnings of the Middle Ages in Europe

 

7)

Slavic affairs in early medieval Europe

 

8)

Europe from the 12'h to the 15''1 century

 

9)

The Czech state during the reign of the last Premyslids and the Luxembourgs

 

10)

Position of the Church in the Middle Ages and the reform movement

 

11)

Europe and the world at the start of modern times

 

12)

Origin of the Habsburg confederation and its development to the middle of the 17''1
centurL

 

13)

Develomnent of Europe after the Thirty Years' War

 

14)

First great modern revolutions in Europe and America

 

15)

Survey of cultural development from the begimingﬂf the Middle Ages to the 15'h centugl

 

16)

Survey of cultural development from the 15'h centurLto contemporary times

 

17)

The French Revolution and Napoleonic wars

 

18)

Europe in the ﬁrst half of the 19" century

 

19)

The revolutionary year 1848 in Europe

 

20)

Main outlines of development in Europe and the world in the second half of the 19"3
century

 

21)

Developments in the Czech lands in the second half of the 19" century

 

22)

World War I

 

23)

1919-1929 in Europe and the world

 

24)

Origin and development of Czechoslovakia to 1929

 

25)

Russian revolution, origin and development of the USSR to World War II

 

26)

Global economic crisis and the ﬁght against fascism in the 19305

 

27)

World War II

 

28)

Situation in the Czech lands during World War II

 

29)

Main outlines of development in the world after 1945

 

 

30)

 

Main outlines of development in the Czech lands after 1945

 

274

 

Appendix C: Instructional time allocations for four-year academic high schools

Effective as of October 1, 2006

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subject Year Total
lst year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year

ﬁéﬁﬂfguage and 3 3 3 3 12
Foreign language 1 3 3 3 3 12
Foreign language 2 3 3 3 3 12
Latin P“ P P P P
Social sciences l l 2 2 6
History 2 2 2 P 6
Geography 2 2 P P 4
Mathematics 3 3 2 2 10
Descriptive geometry P P P P P
Physics 2 2 2 P 6
Chemistry 2 2 2 P 6
Biology/Geology 2 2 2 P 6
Information technologies 2 P P P 2
Art education 2 2 P P 4
Physical education 2 2 2 2 8
Elective 1 P P 2 2 4
Elective 2 - P 2 2 4
Elective 3 - - P 2 2
Elective 4 - - - p p
Total prescribed hours 29 27 27 21 104
Flexible hours 2 and 4 4 and 6 4 and 6 10 and 12 20 and 28
Total number of hours 31 and 33 31 and 33 31 and 33 31 and 33 124 and 132

 

 

 

 

 

 

*P = principal's decision

275

 

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