Approaches to Czech Education Policy since 1989: The deprofessionalisation of the teaching profession and teacher training?
Abstract
The article is devoted to critical reflection on the development of the approaches of Czech education policy to the teaching profession and teacher training after 1989. It offers an analysis of relevant documents of education policy, draft laws and actual interventions in this sector by decision-makers in the last 25 years.
We foreground milestones in the trends and key problems - the professionalisation of the teaching profession and support for this from the side of education policy vs. deprofessionalisation, the professional standard as a set of key professional competences that are the prerequisite for teachers to be able to carry out their vocation with excellence in a situation of changing demands on school education, the career system as a means to support the professional growth of teachers, approaches to the quality of teacher training, the degree of liberalism of education policy in the field of teacher training in the context of major curricular reforms (academic freedom on the one hand and the state's responsibility for the quality of education and hence also the quality of teachers on the other hand), the definition of framework requirements for teacher training from the side of the state, the realistic possibilities and limits of the Accreditation Commission of the CR to influence the quality of education at faculties training future teachers.