Abstract:

School as educational organization works in a certain way because of many different factors such as educational tradition, current educational policy and educational law, socio-economic context, education and thinking of teachers and educational leaders. Author claims that thinking about school and education, especially thinking of teachers, plays the most important role in shaping everyday educational practice in schools and results in students development. The way they think about basic educational values, the way they understand primary goals of schools and mission of teaching profession may be called mental model of education and will contribute to everyday practice in the classroom and result in students development and learning.

Paper focuses on thinking about school of students taking part in initial teacher training (ITT) courses. Research was carried out in 2016 with participation of 106 students at Jagiellonian University that took part in ITT course. They were asked to answer an open question concerning their understanding of a good school. Analysis of their answers shows diversity of students’ understandings. Author uses the model of three educational ideologies (cultural transmission, romantic and progressive) to categorise those answers and show possible practical consequences of such understanding for future teacher’s work of students.

Keywords:

Good school, school culture, teacher training, mental models.