Abstract:

For about 25 years the subject Informatics used to be only an elective subject in the primary education in the Republic of Croatia. It was offered to students from the 5th to the 8th grade (ages 11 to 14). Because it was only an elective subject it was possible that some students did not attend any classes in that subject. After finishing their primary education, such students were formally computer and information illiterate.

Since the end of 2014 in the Republic of Croatia there has been an organized government effort to reform and improve not only the curriculum of the subject Informatics, but also curricula in other subjects in the primary and secondary education. One of the goals is to introduce more problem-solving teaching methods and skills and to reduce learning and memorizing the facts.

This effort became known as The Complete Curricular Reform (Croatian: Cjelovita kurikularna reforma). After the first successful results in the development of the new curriculum in 2016, the parliamentary elections were held which resulted in the change of the government. Despite these changes, the curricular reform has been continuing today under the new name The School for Life (Croatian: Škola za život). However, since this project has a significant importance and influence on the nation’s primary and secondary education curricula, after the parliamentary elections the politics got even more involved, with some political parties supporting the reform and some not because of their worldview differences on some subjects. It seems that the public support for the curricular reform is split as well.

Since students’ parents are a part of the public to whom the quality of education is most important, the authors have decided to explore their attitudes towards the introduction of the subject Informatics as a compulsory subject in the primary education.

In March 2018, six months before the new curriculum had been introduced to the primary education, the authors conducted a research study on parents’ attitudes towards the introduction of Informatics as a compulsory subject in the primary education. In this paper they present some of the results of that research study.

The results of the research conducted on a sample of 410 parents (N=410) show that 89% of the surveyed parents either agree or totally agree with the introduction of Informatics as a compulsory subject in the primary education. Other results have shown that there is no statistically significant correlation between the parents’ age and their attitudes towards the introduction of Informatics as a compulsory subject. There is no correlation between the parents' level of education and their attitude towards the introduction of Informatics as a compulsory subject as well.

The results show that parents, as the members of the public, are well aware of the importance of the subject Informatics for their children’s education and that most of them support the introduction of Informatics as a compulsory subject in the new curriculum for the primary education in the Republic of Croatia.

In September 2018, the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia introduced the new curriculum in the primary education. The subject Informatics became the compulsory subject in grades 5 and 6 (ages 11-12).

Keywords:

Curriculum, primary education, informatics.