Abstract:

The content and methods of education are the most significant key 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 the education reform. The existing education content is obsolete; therefore, it is proposed to introduce changes in both the education system and education content. The education content is revised in the light of reports and policy documents produced both domestically and at the European level. The analysis presented in this paper is part of a broader H2020 collaborative research project called “Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future” (CHIEF, Agreement No. 770464) about how young people engage with the meanings and forms of European cultural heritage in various educational contexts, e.g. school, civil society, family, peer groups, and heritage sites, and whether this engagement leads to an increase in their cultural literacy.

Transition to Latvian as the language of instruction and introduction of a competence approach are the most significant issues of the education reform. However, for the reform to be successful, it is important to know not only the opinion of policy makers and experts, but also that of students about the current situation in education and their hopes for future changes. In order to conduct the study, the fieldwork at schools was organized. A total of 60 students (aged 14-18) 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. A thematic analysis of the interviews 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 study also analyzed educational curricula and documents on education policy; additional literature on the development of the educational system and special features of culture in Latvia was used to create the educational context. Despite the fact that students do not know much about the education reform, during the interviews they expressed their views indirectly in support of the education reform incentives. Students raise the issue of the importance of acquiring certain life skills at school, thereby indirectly supporting the introduction of a competence approach.

Keywords:

Latvian education system, education reform, competence approach, curricula, general secondary education.