Abstract

Student School Teaching in Dictates of Neoliberalism

Zuzanna Zbróg, The Jan Kochanowski University, Poland

The model of teacher education in Poland focuses on equipping teachers with formal qualifications, and a range of knowledge what schema/model to use in certain educational situations. Teaching technique-based professionalism, poor reflection on one’s own professional conduct or a lack of interpretation of the effects of own decisions, lead to a “production” of a professional group unified in terms of mentality, accustomed to a reduced mental and developmental effort, eager for operating with generalizations, lacking a broad horizontal view of the educational reality, and hence susceptible to an easement to the neo-liberal culture.

The author is a student trainer at The Jan Kochanowski University  and systematically monitors the effectiveness of student practice by means of making its constant evaluation.

The study presented in the paper shows that the method of preparation Polish students for their professional work as primary teachers does not result in their coping with the school realities. They try to hand down their own “limited” way of perceiving the world to pupils, “producing” then the next generation of people unprepared for life, unable to be critical and vigilant citizens of the world. A more comprehensive overview of the research results (student lesson observations and a survey) points to a number of phenomena, the most important of which can be defined as: inhibition on children exploratory tendencies, educational pessimism, rigid rules of communication in the classroom, unification of opinions, purism and linguistic formalism.
Basing on the research results, the author discusses the effectiveness of teacher education at Polish universities, and thereby identifies the areas in which the system changes are necessary. These conclusions may turn out to be even more interesting now as Poland is on the threshold of higher education reform, and therefore, intensive people consultation is being done on the Framework of Curriculum for pedagogy.