Abstract:

Within contemporary pedagogical discourse, the importance of building a school as a human prosocial community has been recognized. In this context, many researches are focused on how pupils feel at school in general, how they perceive and experience relationship between teachers and students, how they perceive the quality of social integration in school, whether they feel motivated and competent at what they do at school, etc. The importance of reflecting on such and similar issues is based on the view that the students' experience of school life plays an important role not only for their socio-emotional well-being but also for their school success. In that sense, significant emphasis is placed on the socio-emotional dimension of school life which has already been integral part of numerous alternative pedagogical conceptions and schools, such as Waldorf. The aim of this empirical study was to assess and compare students’ perception of quality of school life in traditional and Waldorf schools in Croatia. The participants were 256 students from fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade (188 from 3 state schools and 66 from 2 Waldorf schools). The data were collected by the mean of questionnaire. The analyses of the results indicate that the students from Waldorf schools express positive feelings toward school while the state school students express neutral feelings. Differences are also evident regarding the students’ perception of specific dimension of school life (sense of school competence, relevance of education, learning experience, relationship with the teachers and social integration) in favour of the Waldorf students especially with regard to their learning experience at school. Taking into consideration the research results and some specifics of Waldorf pedagogical conception, prerequisites for development of quality of school life is discussed with special emphasis on a teacher's role.

Keywords:

Alternative schools, Croatia, quality, school life, students, traditional schools.