Abstract:

Everyday practice and life experiences suggest that traditional approach to the teaching practice is no longer sufficient to improve the quality of primary education. The education system must find strategies to empower students to take responsibility for their own learning. Contextual teaching and learning (CTL) seems to be one of the pathways to resolving this problem that education systems have been encountering for the past three centuries. The application of CTL in teaching implies the changing roles of participants in the process and shifts the focus of the teaching process from teaching to learning. CTL is still rarely applied in our schools, but some of its elements are present in combination with traditional teaching. The aim of this paper is to examine and analyse how teachers assess their own competence to apply CTL. A total of 97 primary school teachers in the Split city in Republic of Croatia from various educational fields participated in the study. The overall results suggest the need to start preparing for the implementation of CTL as early as the basic teacher education, but also with the preparation of schools and school culture for the implementation of this teaching method. The results of this study concur with the findings of other studies suggesting that teacher training in the area of contextual learning, designing of teaching materials and organization of teaching at the curricular level are crucial for the successful implementation of the contextual teaching approach.

Keywords:

Contextual learning and teaching, contextual teaching, didactics.