Teachers' and Student Teachers' Opinions of the Reforms in the Education System

The paper contains a report on the empirical inquiry which reveals how teachers and future teachers regard the educational transformations in Poland resulting from the implemented reform and what implications this may have in the field of education. In the context of attitudes towards the implementation of reforms in the education system, the author has raised a basic question of fundamental importance, whether teachers' professional preparation and degree of reflection, their attitude towards the reality of the situation and the motivation they show allow them to safely observe the course of events in the contemporary educational process. The author presents such issues and he outlines a fundamental question: how do teachers perceive their own professional role and can they identify at all the tasks they should fulfill within the changing social, political and economic reality? The text also contains a reference to a peculiar educational myth, according to which the educational reforms were somehow forced on Poland by the European Union. The author presents the attitude towards the education reforms being introduced, as observed from the perspective of the professional environment, which fundamentally polarises teaching circles. He concludes that - still for some time - the emotions accompanying these transformations will be the greater, the more changes are noted by teachers in the current state of educational materials.

REFERENCES:

• Kolarska-Bobińska, L, 1999: Nauczyciele wobec reformy edukacji. Warszawa, p. 5.
• The OECD report of 1995 on education in Poland. Quoted after J. Szempruch: Pedagogiczne kształcenie nauczycieli wobec reformy edukacji w Polsce. Rzeszów 2000, p. 5.