Home Elements for a Diagnosis of the Spanish Educational System
3 - Syllabus and teaching methods (continued)


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Objectives, contents, resources


INTENTIONS, CONTENTS AND OBJECTIVES OF ESO

The appraisal in the survey by the teachers of the objectives, areas and cross-curricular themes are very high, located between the appraisal "fairly important" and "very important" (graph 1).


Graph 1: Appraisal of the intentions of ESO

The appraisal made of the objectives of ESO, just as expressed in the LOGSE (art. 19) do not give rise to significant discrepancies in the data collected in the survey, nor in the Diagnosis Groups. The criticism made of the objectives refer mainly to the formal aspects, not to their sense: appraisals of the objectives as scarcely realistic and general, and the difficulty involved in their application to academic reality. In general terms, one must emphasise the level of the existing agreement.

The appraisal of the areas is also positive. There is critical analysis of the characteristics and peculiarities of the ESO syllabus, especially as to the high number of disciplines. The areas of the ESO obtain the Highest appraisal according to the importance granted by the teachers: they exceed 4 points on a scale ranging from 1 to 5 (graph 2).


Graph 2. Importance of the areas

A problem that is especially relevant is the time assigned to each one of the areas. Diverse interests are factors in this decision, from those attributable to the importance and appraisal of the contents of each area in the students' training to corporativist claims (graph 3).



Graph 3. Hours of class per week stated by the teaching staff

It is curious that there is hardly a relation between the importance granted to each area and the timetable they consider must be assigned to teaching the subject. Timetable and importance do not match.

The discrepancies between appraisal and timetable seem to be modulated by assignment of the teachers to the areas: the teachers in each area tend to demand a greater number of hours for their own subjects.

Greater attention to the time dedicated to the instrumental subjects is frequently claimed.

Activities considered as alternative teaching, such as Religion are closely related to timetabling problems. These activities that are playful at times, generally have a doubtful consistency and use up a considerable amount of the timetable. Inclusion of these activities on the timetable gives rise to disagreement. Emphasis is made on the lack of coherency of the time spent on these when so little time is dedicated to other disciplines considered essential.

The optional subjects also cause particular problems at schools, such as those related to teaching aspects (teaching quality, student performance, content of these disciplines, possibilities of diversification, teacher qualification). Administrative problems are also mentioned, such as scheduling, the conjunction of optional and obligatory status, or corporativist factors implicit in their optional nature at the schools. There is a very wide range of cases: from "obligatory optional subjects" at schools with a sole syllabus approach, to an offer of subjects that may be considered irrelevant. In any case, at the time the field study was carried out, the offer was considered excessive.

The solutions proposed for the problems detected as to their optional nature concentrated on the following basic groups:

  • Encouragement of the material resources to attend to the optional subjects.
  • Preparation of a sufficiently clear, explicit set of rules.
  • Determination of clearly oriented itineraries.
  • The formulas to select the optional subjects.

As to the last matter, selection of the optional subjects, there is a series of proposals of notable interest, that may be summarised as follows:

  • Pointing out the priorities in the different optional subjects according to their interest.
  • Delegation of selection - or priority setting - of the optional subjects by certain bodies at the School.
  • Performance of surveys among the students.
  • Simple functioning of the market laws.

The cross-curricular themes are evaluated and their contents considered important. However, in syllabus projects at schools and in putting them into practice, attention to these is scarce. These are not seen as a priority by teachers, who are more involved in implementation of their specific area. The great difficulty, or conditioning argued is for essential coordination by the diverse teachers so they may make a contribution from their area, that is coherent with the contributions by the others, in the cross-curricular theme concerned. This is recognised to be too complicated.

The work the centres perform as to the cross-curricular themes is carried out under several formulae: monographic day conferences, short period aimed at attempting treatment of a cross-curricular theme from different areas, interdisciplinary treatment of a cross-curricular theme during a year, and another the following year, inclusion among the tutorial plan themes, etc.




THE CURRICULUM PROJECT AND THE SUBJECT PLANNING

These objectives and contents must be set down in some planning instruments for the academic tasks. Notebooks to prepare lessons, cards, schedules and syllabus projects are some names given to these resources that have a lot in common, in a ceremony that to a great extent has a rhetorical dimension.

The analysis made shows the coexistence of four modules foreseen as for immediate implementation of the syllabus, identified as:

  • Conventional planning, which requires use of individual and departmental programming, syllabus adaptation, with priority consideration of the objectives the students aim to achieve, the teaching material and resources available. It supposes an acceptance of coherent, valid programming, although with a certain separation from the programming modes proposed by the educational reform.
  • Planning based on experience, characterised by use of the teacher's personal notes and material, taken from previous courses, the text book and didactic book normally taken as a guideline. it involves attention to teaching early foresight, although on the basis of more functional, more traditional methods, that perhaps may not have the technical dimension of those included in the conventional planning, nor the sense of up-to-dateness of the programming based on the Reform.
  • Planning based on the Reform, which involves use of the instruments designed on the basis of the educational reform: the school educational project, the syllabus project and the annual planning.
  • Adapted planning which reflects a rejection of the reform, which involves an attitude of lesser acceptance of the Decree on the ESO syllabus and a certain opposition to use of the School Educational Project and the Syllabus Project and the annual planning of the school.

The resources comprising these four types of planning have been evaluated on the basis of two matters. One requested expression of the teachers' opinion as to the importance of each of the planning methods. The other requested them to point out the frequency of their real use in teaching (graph 4).



Graph 4. Average appraisal of documents and instruments for programming

The School Educational Project and the Syllabus Project are valued in a discretely positive way. However, they declared that their use is very low. It is quite to the contrary with more conventional instruments, which are appraised at a much lower level than used. Personal notes and the text book above all have a low rating, but are used a lot. This discrepancy, along with the information collected from the Diagnosis Groups seems to emphasise that bureaucratic nature and disfunctionality affect the resources proposed as alternatives, just as happened with others in their time. The Syllabus Project nowadays - as were the Lesson Preparation Notebooks or the Long and Short Subject Plannings - have become an administrative requisite: they are prepared, sent to the relevant body, approved and then ignored. These instruments do not seem to respond to a heartfelt need.

However, the teaching staff recognises the need to prepare a forecast of activities to be carried out (4.6 average mark on a scale of 1 to 5).

Functional, efficient instrumentation for teaching planning is a problem that evidently has not been solved.

There is also the accusation of lack of coordination between the requisite levels of ESO and the Baccalaureate.




TEACHING MEANS AND RESOURCES

The appraisal the teachers make of the teaching materials and resources shows that materials prepared by themselves and the text books are the most used by the teachers, fairly far ahead of the remaining resources (graph 5).



Graph 5. Use of syllabus materials and teaching resources

If one bears in mind that in most cases the material the teachers prepare themselves is similar to the text book - photocopies, some slides obtained from books, notes, etc. - one must recognise the dominant role the verbal-iconic material has and, especially, the text book in ESO and teaching in general.

These results seem to point towards the fact that the controversy as to the text book has come to an end, at least at present, through massive adoption and use. After overcoming some criticism during the first phase of the Reform, its use has been recovered and has become general. Such generalisation gives rise to a series of problems detected by the Diagnosis Groups, specifically:

  • The Syllabus Decree, thanks to the flexible, open view with which ESO was conceived, facilitates the possibility of an approach to the areas through development, at the same level, of different contents, which each publishing project orients and modulates in a different way. This flexible orientation is appraised generically, but pointing out that it may become dysfunctional, for example in cases of student transfer.
  • The value attributed by teachers to the book as the planning guideline - already seen in the syllabus design - means closing the syllabus, that in theory is open and flexible, and it may only be understood as such until deciding on the book to be used.
  • An external aspect noted is the volume and weight - physical and economic - of the books and teaching material for each course.

As to the remaining resources, the press and computer media are the least used. In spite of one and the other having programmes aimed at their dissemination and use, it seems that the result is not what was expected.

Improvisation in the transfer of the first cycle of ESO from Primary Schools to High Schools has not brought about improvement in some case, but rather a reduction in resources.

There seems to be a certain relation between availability and use of materials. The use of media may be performed according to their availability. The fact that personal material is the most frequently used is perhaps due to the available resources not being sufficient to deal with the demands of the school.



Graph 6. Appraisal and use of teaching materials


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