SOCIETY. INTEGRATION. EDUCATION. Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference

Ireta Čekse
https://www.ipi.lu.lv/

Institute of Educational Research Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art University of Latvia
Latvia

The recent reforms in the Latvian general education curriculum along with a school network reorganization have brought new attention to the issues related to a teacher education and the level of professionalism in everyday teaching work. The findings of the latest Teaching and Learning International Survey - TALIS 2013 suggests that the average age of the teachers in Latvia is 47 years and a typical teacher has an average of 22 years of teaching experience  (OECD, 2014). The findings of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study - IEA ICCS 2016 also confirms that a large number of teachers are close to retirement age – the majority of the respondents are in the age group between 40 and 59 years  (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Bruno, Gabriella, & Tim, 2017). Soviet-era education and work experience in diverse political and education systems (under the Soviet rule and after the restoration of independence) are factors that should be taken into account when analyzing the teacher in the citizenship education learning process (Blūma, 2016). For the needs of this Paper, the authors used the data of the IEA ICCS 2016 teachers who teach citizenship education-related school subjects (n=249) and their students (N=3224). The authors analyzed the data obtained from teacher surveys on the learning process and goals of citizenship education. As to the student data segment, the authors useed the test part whose results represents the citizenship education achievements of all Latvian eighth-grade students. To process the data, the authors usedclusters, correlations, regression analysis and descriptive statistics. The findings of this Paper reveals that higher achievements in citizenship education pertain to those students whose teachers rarely use different teaching sources in the class but cooperate with other teachers and local communities. The desire to cooperate with parents thus avoiding taking full responsibility for producing good results, in turn, is assessed as a contributing factor to lower achievements. These findings allow making two conclusions: First, the teacher’s personality, experience and networking skills plays an important role; Second, the popular assumption among both professionals and nonprofessionals  that cooperation between an eighth-grade teachers and parents leads to a better student achievements is false. The Paper’s findings could contribute to building a more comprehensive social and civic domain of the new competence-based education curriculum. The aim of this Paper is to study what the teacher is like in the process of citizenship education.

Andrejs Geske
https://www.ipi.lu.lv/

Institute of Educational Research Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art University of Latvia
Latvia

Olga Pole
https://www.ipi.lu.lv/

Institute of Educational Research Faculty of Education, Psychology and Art University of Latvia
Latvia