Abstract:

Nowadays, many changes are taking place in organization of university studies in the Czech Republic. These changes are mainly motivated by the common European framework for study at universities introduced in Bologna Declaration (1999). The Bologna Declaration measures have been anchored in the Czech Republic's Higher Education Act. Since teachers are educated at universities in the Czech Republic, this transformation process has influenced teacher training programs as well.

One of the main measures in Bologna Declaration is the introduction of a two-stage curricular system: an initial cycle of at least three years leading if possible to a professional qualification and a subsequent second cycle concluded with a master's (or doctoral) degree. This two-stage system has been introduced in teacher training programs at Czech universities. The previous system consisting of one five-year stage leading to a master's degree has been replaced by the two-stage system, leading first to a Bachelor's and subsequently to a Master's degree. Since the introduction of the new system there are fears that the quality of the teacher education might decline.

This paper first analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the two-stage teacher training in the Czech Republic in general. Second, we describe the transformation process at the Charles University in Prague – Faculty of Education, which introduced the two-stage system of lower and higher secondary teacher's training in the academic year 2006/2007. Specifically, we present some results of the Faculty Research Project “Teacher profession in the changing education requirements” which aims, among others, at exploration of the influence of the new two-stage system on the quality of the study. The goal of the project is to describe and analyze the current two-stage teacher training and summarize the experiences and opinions of both teachers and students at universities. Subsequently, we try to find out how to minimize problems resulting from the new two-stage system. This research might lead to a proposal for an improvement of the current current two-stage study or even a recommendation for re-accreditation of the previous five-year master's degree teacher training program.

Keywords:

Bologna Declaration, teacher training, Czech Republic.