Abstract:

The contribution presents the results of the research focused on identification of critical areas in philosophy, i. e. areas in the educational content of philosophy that are considered critical by teachers and students.

The existing literature characterizes critical areas as curriculum parts where students manifest the greatest failure rate or which they fail to learn sufficiently. Based on our findings, however, these parts of the curriculum are demanding for teachers as well, since they are required to professionally manage the didactic transformation. We therefore understand critical areas as the curriculum parts whose didactic transformation is difficult to process for both participants of the education process.

This contribution identifies critical areas, specifies them, and analyses the causes of their occurrence, using both qualitative and quantitative methodology. Data collection was done through semi-structured interviews with active secondary-grammar-school teachers of the subject Introduction to Social Sciences, primarily ones from the Czech Republic (in the Czech Republic this subject includes contents of disciplines such as philosophy, economics, law, psychology, sociology, ethics, political studies and religion). Throughout their career, these teachers have taught at least once the grade where classes are focused on topics in philosophy, and they fulfil the prerequisite of at least two years’ practice according to the proposed professional standard. Additionally, the research also determined the extent and particular types of utilization of education materials (textbooks, worksheets, etc.) and the methods and forms of education that are considered suitable by both groups of respondents.

The results of the qualitative survey were used to design a questionnaire intended for students of Palacký University Olomouc, Faculty of Education, who previously studied at a secondary grammar school. The contribution also presents the results of this questionnaire survey and points out the significant correlation of data obtained from the teachers and the students with regard to critical areas in philosophy.

Keywords:

Critical Areas, Philosophy, Didactic Transformation, Curriculum, Secondary Grammar Schools.