Abstract:

Aim:
Considering that teachers are not always able to present the original reality to students, they use didactic materials as an adequate substitute for students to learn the contents prescribed by the curriculum. In the educational process, several terms are used for didactic material, such as teaching aids, teaching media, and didactic games. It is known that students learn best based on specific subjects and situations, so it is reasonably expected that teachers use didactic material in their work. In this way, the learning process is simplified for students, making it more interesting and enabling the visualization of abstract concepts. The didactic material facilitates teaching and learning. The research analyzes the attitudes of primary school teachers about the use of didactic materials in primary education.

Methods:
The paper presents the data from the survey that involved 678 primary school teachers in the Republic of Croatia with a questionnaire of 14 questions, of which three questions of general type (gender, grade, years of work experience in education). The other 11 questions refer to the attitudes of teachers about the use of didactic material in teaching. The main questions are: Which students benefit the most by using didactic material in teaching; In which subject do they use the largest number of didactic material and Do you prefer didactic computer games or traditional didactic games.

Results:
There were 17 (2.5%) male respondents in the sample, while there were 661 females (97.5%). The results of the research show:
1. 97.1% of respondents believe that the use of didactic material in the teaching process benefits all students equally, while 2.8% believe it benefits students with disabilities. None of the respondents believes that gifted students benefit from the use of didactic material in teaching.
2. Didactic material is mostly used in the subject of mathematics, this is the opinion of 50.4% of respondents, 34.2% of the respondents states it is in the subject of nature, Croatian language (10,9%), and music culture (1,5%) while, in the opinion of the participants, didactic material is least used in art education: only 1.5% stated that.
3. To the question “Do you prefer didactic computer games or traditional didactic games in the teaching process?” 30.8% of research participants have answered that traditional didactic games are the most acceptable, while the option that didactic computer games are the most acceptable in the teaching process has been chosen by 7.5% of survey participants. The remaining 61.7% prefer to use in teaching both traditional and computer didactic games.
4. The effectiveness of didactic material in the teaching process is equally expressed in the processing of new teaching content as in the repetition and practice of teaching content. That is the opinion of 75.7% of respondents.
The research further showed that many teachers independently produce didactic materials for the teaching process, but they also use materials obtained from publishing houses.

Conclusions:
Education is advancing, classrooms are being modernized with the progress of society and technology, and therefore the didactic material that adapts to the requirements of the modern age is changing.
The fact is that the teaching process would not be equally successful without didactic material, so teachers need to incorporate it into teaching and adapt it to the needs and desires of their students.

Keywords:

Didactic material, teaching, teaching process, primary education.