Early Literacy Education in Preschool Curriculum Reforms: The Case of Post-Communist Slovakia

Early Literacy Education in Preschool Curriculum Reforms: The Case of Post-Communist Slovakia

This paper describes the development of preschool literacy education in Slovakia, beginning with the communist era, when the country was isolated from broader international academic discourse and early literacy research, then the period after the fall of the totalitarian regime up to the present day...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Oľga Zápotočná, Zuzana Petrová
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Mercy College 2018-07-01
Series:Global Education Review
Subjects:
beginning with the communist era
when the country was isolated from broader international academic discourse and early literacy research
then the period after the fall of the totalitarian regime up to the present day. It describes how the traditional approach to teaching literacy
relying on an obsolete model of reading and writing instruction taught at primary school
has resulted in preschools having limited capacity to develop children’s literacy. It also explains attempts to reform the preschool literacy curriculum after the fall of the totalitarian regime. The first of these followed Slovakia’s most comprehensive education reform act in 2008
but it underestimated the specific role of written language in children’s language and cognitive development and in subsequent academic performance. Consequently
the reforms merely reproduced the traditional approach to literacy development within the new format of a decentralized curriculum. The consequences of the 2008 education reform act
and the pressure exerted by the results of international student assessments
resulted in a strong initiative from the academic field to reform the preschool curriculum on an evidentiary basis. The authors of this paper describe how they developed the thinking behind the new preschool literacy curriculum. The paper looks at how this became part of Slovakia’s national preschool curriculum which was implemented in 2016
including the process in which the curriculum was reviewed by the institutions of the Ministry of Education and by professional organizations involved in early childhood education in Slovakia.
early literacy
curriculum reform
preschool teachers
early literacy development
Slovakia
Online Access:http://ger.mercy.edu/index.php/ger/article/view/394

Internet

http://ger.mercy.edu/index.php/ger/article/view/394

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