DIGITAL LIBRARY
PEDAGOGICAL DEPARTMENT KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS – STUDENTS’ POLICY AND OPINION ABOUT THE SYLLABUS
University of Western Macedonia (GREECE)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2012 Proceedings
Publication year: 2012
Pages: 6117-6122
ISBN: 978-84-616-0763-1
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 5th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 19-21 November, 2012
Location: Madrid, Spain
Abstract:
The Syllabus composition forms a procedure that is carried out by special University committees in which instructors evaluate the data related to the more general educational policy regarding the content of knowledge that has to be provided in the faculties in functional association with the corresponding grade in which they will be invited to instruct.

The present research, which was carried out throughout the academic year 2011-2012, was addressed to the students of the Pedagogical Department Kindergarten Teachers of Western Macedonia so that their evaluations about the Syllabus as well as their suggestions about the composition of another Syllabus are observed.

A sample of First-Year and Fourth-Year students was used to carry out semi-constructed interviews. The researchers’ selection was based on the assumption that the First-Year students will express what is expected by their studies in the university department, without restrictions, perhaps by the evaluations regarding the subjects’ difficulties. As they were trusted and assigned such an important project, they would try to be precise, systematic and responsible since they considered the fact that at some point they would be the co-formulators of the Syllabus. As regards the Fourth-Year students, the assumption that they were better aware of all the subjects’ structure and content was formulated; they had, therefore, a more complete viewpoint about the Syllabus content. It was also considered, as something positive, that since they had completed their degree examinations, the Syllabus evaluation would be disconnected from the instructors avoiding, this way, an eventual “stigmatization”, in case they would reject the particular subject, due to the instructors’ negative attitude towards them.

It is particularly interesting that both categories underlined the studies’ theoretical character and that the Syllabus is less concentrated on practice issues. Their contact with the spaces in which they are supposed to work is limited. In the Syllabus, Fourth-Year students, in particular, underlined that subjects regarding students’ management are absent. In this sense, the “classroom management” is absent within a society characterized by prevailing communicative procedures. First and Fourth-year students pinpoint issues related to new technologies and their utilization within the classroom, a matter that does not seem to be implemented. More generally, the students set forth issues about the function of a different university education tending to be re-drafted on the basis of an educational policy for a modern education in all grades.
Keywords:
Kindergarten Teachers, educational policy, Syllabus.