LEARNING AND TEACHING STYLES: THE OPTIMAL METHOD OF CREATING THE MOST EFFECTIVE TEXTBOOKS ON SECONDARY VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS

The work presented in this paper is based on more than 30 years experiences in technology education in Slovakia, in the present research conditions concentrated to the new structures of state educational program and school educational program, study plans, curriculum changes made based upon teaching skills and the professional profiles derived from the studies, require methodological adaptations in order to change the didactics in which the secondary vocational schools textbooks work.

From pedagogic applications, information, communication, and multimedia technology are opening up new pathways to increase the efficiency of existing learning content systems. However, the utilization and implementation of new technologies has been occurring at such a rapid pace that theory and research has been unable to keep up. This is particularly evident in the educational methods coupled with textbooks for technology oriented subjects in secondary vocational schools. In this way a convenient teaching style put into practice in textbook that is both effective for students and comfortable for the professor will develop naturally and relatively simple, with an important effect on the quality of student’s individual key competences.

The aim of the investigation was to understand schools knowledge and attitudes about changes in vocational education in Slovakia. The objective of this research was to find which learning styles are preferred by most students, and how individual student’s learning style on secondary vocational school works, and to investigate the influence of new textbooks concept in subject Computer Equipment accepting individual student’s learning style through an analytical separation of learning styles derived from the educational theory of Felder-Silverman.

The investigation was undertaken with these themes in mind. The current study conducted in Bratislava, and Zilina, Slovakia, included 82 students from two secondary vocational schools and 75 teachers from two secondary vocational schools and two groups of beginning teachers in Supplementary Pedagogical Education of the University of Zilina.

Moreover, with an eye to helping secondary schools headers with the change that is accompanying the creation of school educational program, the investigators sought to understand the importance that teachers place upon professional development and how current approaches to didactics at the vocational schools level could be improved. The results indicate partial degree of ignorance regarding changes in 21st century vocational schools education as well as a feeling of resistance on the part of teachers and principals.