Abstract:

The paper publishes the research results focused on the analysis of curricular reform acceptation and adoption by Slovak teachers in primary and lower secondary education. The fundamental school reform realised according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) in 2008 has brought different demands and requirements to teaching process. Many studies pointed out that teachers have found it difficult to deal with new conditions (Kosová, 2018). Many reform plans have been rejected by the teachers in general, but on the other hand the factor analysis of teachers' attitudes to reform has shown that attitudes are strongly stratified. It is hard to talk about reform attitudes as a whole. Rather, it is necessary to talk about attitudes towards partial changes that the reform in teachers' work implied.

The authors of the study present the analysis of the teachers' attitudes towards reform in two dimensions:
• the dimension of change that was realised by school according to its highlighted values
• the dimension of school curriculum content change.

The authors analyse the respondents’ attitudes depending on contextual (so-called moderator) variables, which determine the intensity of attitudes in the monitored group of respondents. The analysis of moderator variables has been considered increasingly a desirable statistical construct. These variables are defined as variables that correlate with the dependent monitored variables and logically explain the different values of dependent variables in the observed cases (Hendl, 2008). The analysis of context variables is often associated with the concept of ecological validity of U. Neisser (1976). This explains the validity of research findings in real-life conditions. In the paper, the authors focus on identifying context variables for the IKRA questionnaire (Poliach, 2016). The authors used cluster analysis for research findings that point out not all teachers can be expected to respond positively to new education reforms. The research results show that the rate of acceptance of school reform changes depends on the teachers’ expectations, especially in the sphere of values. The ideological acceptance of the education change has been accepted strongly by those teachers who promoted changes school values.

Acknowledgement:
This paper was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-16-0458.

Keywords:

School reform, reform acceptation, teachers' attitudes, school values, moderator variables.