Abstract:

In 2008 a curricula reform was introduced to the primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. Currently, seven years after the curricula reform introduction, the State Educational Program has been innovative and its innovated version should be implemented to schools from September 2015. Following the changes after the curricula reform we are facing a challenge to find out linkages among the content of the particular school subjects curricula and to support them (i.e. to support utilization of the cross curricular relations in particular subject teaching). The paper is focused on possibilities to use the cross curricular relations in teaching technology, a subject compulsory taught at the second level of Slovak so-called basic (primary) schools, corresponding to the lower level of secondary education according the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 2). The authors analyse the State Educational Program and present possibilities which the program offers to the particular subject integration (i.e. possible integration of some learning topics included in the subject curricula). To support applying the cross curricular relations between technology and other subjects the authors propose a set of teaching resources to teaching technology focused on history of technology. At the same time they present results of a questionnaire survey done among the technology teachers with a goal to find out how the teachers put to use the cross curricular relations in practice directly in teaching. The survey was carried out in the period from October to December 2014. The research sample of the survey was created on the basis of the accessibility of teachers teaching technology at the fully-organized primary schools (i.e. the basic schools with both levels; grades 1 – 9) in Slovakia. The questionnaire was distributed to 54 teachers, the return was 65 %. The results proved previous findings about the ratio of technology teacher qualification, according which particular subjects related to technology or technology education at schools was taught app. 50 % by unqualified teachers. The high number of the unqualified teachers was consequently reflected at the scope of the subjects to teaching which these teachers were qualified. In the survey the teachers expressed their positive approach to the use of the cross curricular relations in teaching technology, which almost 94 % of the respondents consider to be important or even very important. Disregarding their majorities in teaching technology the teachers utilize mainly the other natural science subjects and very frequently also history. This common understanding of the cross curricular relations means to link the content (knowledge) mainly of the natural science subjects to each other. A very negative finding is that at the use of the cross curricular relations in teaching technology the technology teachers cooperate with their colleagues (teachers of the other concerned subjects) only occasionally (68 %) or rarely (23 %). Another conclusion resulted from the questionnaire survey was a finding that to support the cross curricular relations the teachers use various non-standard teaching/learning resources and at the same time even 36 % feel a lack of them. In general the results proved that focus of the planned learning resources on the history of technology is a new approach, as it supports also the technology cross curricular relations with human and educative school subjects.

Keywords:

Cross curricular relations, technology education, primary and secondary schools, ISCED 2, curricula reform, State Educational Program.