Loodusainete õpetajate suhtlustavad Eesti koolis

Date

2008

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Tartu Ülikool

Abstract

Description

The main aim of this bachelor's thesis was to find out the communication habits of the science teachers` in Estonian school. There are many reasons why it is important to examine that. At first there have been very few studies about the communication between Estonian teachers. Also the theme is topical at the moment, as it appeared in the recent PISA study that Estonian students` knowledge about the science subjects is on much higher level than previously expected. At the same time TIMSS 2003 showed that Estonian science teachers are one of the most unsatisfied ones in the world. Also students` attitude towards science subjects is not good. The question arises if better communication between teachers could make them more satisfied and hence advantage in Estonian students` better attitude towards science subjects. In the course of the bachelor's thesis the author planned to find out if and about which topics Estonian science teachers are communicating. The communication is connected to school culture and organizational communication, which are both in turn connected to the teachers’ satisfaction. It is also important to study this topic because science subjects – physics, chemistry, biology – are all integrated to one another. For that reason the subjects are taught as one subject – Science – in many countries in the world. That helps to synchronize the concepts, definitions, methods and approaches, which are used to teach a certain theme in the better way. Teaching science subjects according to the discipline focused approach might lead to the result where a student does not have a connected understanding about the natural processes. In the worst scenario they don’t even understand the content of their studies; they just learn the one-sided definitions presented by the teacher by heart. As there is no constructive learning, the student forgets what he has learned after the test. That means that generally he will not use the knowledge that he has acquired in school in his every day life. That is not in accordance with National Curriculum for Primary School and Gymnasium. According to it one of the aims of the school`s activities is to accomplish that the high school graduate is an individual, who thinks systematically and sees connections. It is clear that in achieving these goals also the teacher’s communication plays an important role. Hence the present bachelor's thesis focused on if and how much the teachers are communicating in the topics, which are connected to their subject field and how much they communicate in other topics. The communication networks were also examined. The author examined school as an organization, which members` better communication may bring benefit to all organization participants. The author used her theoretical knowledge as well as knowledge about social science study methods, which she has acquired during her studies. Mainly the author focused on describing and analyzing the communication habits. In this study the author was not going profoundly into the aspects of educational sciences, because these outputs are not included in the aims of this bachelor’s thesis. The used method was a survey (questionnaire). It enables to use a wider sampling than for example interviews. For some questions about the present situations teachers were asked to describe also the ideal version of the situation. That helped to prevent the situation where teachers are answering as they think they are expected to. The established aims of the bachelor’s thesis have been accomplished. After analyzing the results it can be said that teachers do communicate with each other by discussing the subjects from their subject field but the communication is not regular and systematic. It is rather occasional. There is still room for growth and development in teachers` planned and organized collaboration and this is the issue schools` directorate should take into consideration. These results are in accord with some results from previous studies (e.g. Salumaa 2007).

Keywords

H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd

Citation