Primary School Class Teachers’ Attitudes towards Teaching Contents of Cultural Heritage

Polona Jančič Hegediš,Vlasta Hus

doi:10.4236/ce.2021.1212205

Abstract

Teacher plays an important role in shaping and internalizing students’ cultural values and consequently promotes conservation of cultural heritage, especially through teaching specific areas of social sciences. The article presents the empirical research that was conducted among 395 Slovenian primary school class teachers. The purpose of the research was to evaluate teachers’ attitudes towards teaching cultural heritage. The results indicate that the surveyed teachers believe it is necessary to promote students’ awareness of cultural heritage, since this encourages students to care for and protect cultural heritage. In addition, the surveyed teachers believe that students’ care for and protection of cultural heritage would increase, if they could create their own mini museum or exhibit historic objects at school. The results also indicate that throughout the school year and when dealing with the contents of cultural heritage, teachers most often focus on knowledge, such as learning about old objects, monuments, values, beliefs, experience and feeling.

Highlights

Education has evolved immensely with the world’s global development
After reviewing the curricula of primary education in Slovenia, we find that teachers can teach the contents of cultural heritage in most subjects of the compulsory program, as these contents are integrated in the syllabi of most subjects
It depends on each teacher individually which teaching methods or didactic strategies they will use when teaching the contents of cultural heritage

Summary

Introduction

Education has evolved immensely with the world’s global development. In the age of industrialization and the rise of capitalism, tangible and measurable results were of great importance as they tried to measure knowledge. As stated by Rutar Ilc 14), “this was the result of behaviourist conception of knowledge as unambiguous and explicable”. Knowledge could be transferred independently from context and could be objectively measured. The school and other educational institutions represented a place where the role of teachers as transmitters of knowledge and students as passive recipients was formed.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion