Abstract:

Culture, which is determined by ethnic, historical, religious, political and other developments has a potential to ensure human unity, understanding between individuals and nations despite ethnic, religious and other differences. Therefore, today cultural education begins to occupy an increasingly important place in the education system. Latvia’s national policies related to cultural education assign an import role to culture. In the latest policy documents, culture is considered a resource with an unlimited potential that can ensure successful development of the country by developing the population’s creativity. The study aimed to analyse the peculiarities of cultural education in the system of Latvian general secondary education was based on the opinions of young people and teachers and was conducted in the framework of Horizon 2020’s CHIEF project (Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future).

In order to conduct the study, the fieldwork at schools was organized. It took place from 10 February 2019 to 30 May 2019. A total of 60 students and nine teachers in the three schools of Latvia were interviewed. The total duration of student and teacher interviews was 44 hours and 22 minutes, of which the interviews with students lasted for 36 hours and 40 minutes, but those with teachers – 7 hours and 36 minutes. A thematic analysis of the documents was undertaken using an iterative, inductive approach to the generation of codes and themes guided by the aims and objectives of the review. The interviews were coded by employing NVivo 12 software.

The fieldwork results show that the content and methods of education (including cultural education) are the most urgent issues of today’s Latvian education system, in which a large part of society is actively involved through participation in the debate on the issues of education reform. The education reform also has a significant impact on the sphere of cultural education. Both young people and teachers have a wide understanding of culture and cultural education. Young people emphasize the importance of acquiring certain life skills at school, thereby indirectly supporting the introduction of a competence approach (which is the most important innovation of the education reform). Young people consider communication skills as one of the key competences to be developed at school.

Young people want more freedom in the choice of study subjects, a more interesting learning process, more exchange trips and tours that would allow them to more successfully learn their own and other cultures. Teachers consider “learning by doing” one of the most successful methods to improve the level of cultural education and cultural participation. However, teachers’ opinions are mostly conservative, suggesting that Latvia’s teachers are not ready for the changes under the reform.

Keywords:

Cultural education, formal education, content, methods, fieldwork.