Abstract:

The study is a part of the Research Project ‘The School and Health for the 21st Century’. The class teacher is a coordinating and integrating factor with an important educational mission towards the pupils, their parents, other school teachers, school authorities, and, under special circumstances, towards the general public as well. In this respect, the class teacher has become an educational authority being endowed with enormous possibilities of affecting mental health, physical, and social development of the pupils and the school classroom.

The research aims at the complex analysis of the class teacher activities promoting health of the pupils, including the analysis of the conditions of the class teachers in implementing those specific activities at the current stage of the development of the Czech school. The research project results in theoretical studies summarizing the research findings and perspective outcomes, suggestions and recommendations for the optimization of both undergraduate and postgraduate teacher training courses and other educating professions.

Research methodology: The use of special text content analyses, survey research, scaling using bipolar and Likert scaling methods; structured and non-structured interviews, case studies, grounded theory method. The survey data have been transformed into a database, coded, and analysed by the SPSS program. The transcript, code, and data processing checks have been carried out by means of basic descriptive statistics calculations (minimum, maximum, missing values, category formation). The basic descriptive statistics have been performed, e.g., frequency distribution, average, median, mode, dispersion, deviance, and normality distribution calculations). Some statistically significant variances have been examined by means of dispersion analysis comparing several statistical averages (non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test). For the processing purposes, the experimental data (hypothesis) have had to be operationalized into statistical hypothesis.
Basic research samples: Sample No 1: 240 (100%) respondents (primary and secondary school teachers). Sample No 2: 248 (100%) respondents, i.e. 169 (69%) primary and secondary school female students, 79 (31%) primary and secondary school male students. Sample No 3: 304 parents.

The study encompasses selected research findings generalizing the outcomes and recommendations for the education practice of teachers in primary and secondary schools.

Keywords:

research project, class teacher.