Teachers’ feelings of curriculum ownership: the Estonian case

ABSTRACT

The post-Soviet transition agenda in the Baltic states included changing the role of teachers from passive recipients of top-down orders to active curriculum developers who feel ownership over curriculum decision-making. Recent studies have seriously questioned the achievement of this goal. In this article, we aim to elucidate Estonian schoolteachers’ feelings of curriculum ownership as expressed in a questionnaire that asked about their role as curriculum developers and curriculum users. We found that most of the respondents did not express feelings of curriculum ownership. We will discuss the potential reasons for this finding and the implications for further enhancing teachers’ curriculum ownership.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum development
• teacher ownership
• general education
• teacher autonomy

Disclosure statement

The questionnaire and the related activities were inspected by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Tartu. The Committee found that the research activities fulfilled all technical requirements necessary to demonstrate the use of ethical procedures in researching human participants.

Notes

1. TALIS – The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey. doi:10.1787/9,789,264,196,261-en.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Social Fund [TA7610]; Estonian Research Council [IUT18-2].

Notes on contributors

Piret Viirpalu

Piret Viirpalu is a PhD student at the Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Tartu. She works as an assistant in art education methodology, and a programme director of the arts and technology teacher curriculum at the Viljandi Culture Academy, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Tartu. Her doctoral thesis examines schoolteachers’ curricular expectations and ownership.

E. Krull

E. Krull is a professor of general education at the Institute of Education, University of Tartu. His main areas of research are teacher education and professional development, methodology of teaching, educational psychology, curriculum studies, and the history of educational ideas. He is a member of the Estonian Academic Society of Pedagogy and the European Educational Research Association.

R. Mikser

R. Mikser is a senior research fellow in the School of Educational Sciences, Tallinn University. He has previously worked as a lecturer at the Institute of Education, Faculty of Social Sciences and Education, University of Tartu. He is a member of the Estonian Academic Society of Pedagogy. His main areas of research are curriculum development, curriculum policy, and teacher professionalism.