UDŽBENICI I PRIRUČNICI U FUNKCIJI PROBLEMSKE NASTAVE O PRIRODI I DRUŠTVU – PERCEPCIJA UČITELJA

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of problem-based nature and society teaching from a theoretical perspective. The theoretical observation implied the methodological context of the research. A random sample of 417 teachers was surveyed using a descriptive method to assess their views on content resources and potential factors for implementing problem-based teaching of nature and society in the first cycle of primary education. More specifically, the aim of the research is to examine how teachers perceive the potential of textbooks and manuals in terms of their contribution to planning and implementing teaching about nature and society. By exploring the content potentials of textbooks and manuals, respondents evaluated their contribution to: setting and formulat- ing the problem situation; formulating hypotheses; decomposing the problem; solving tasks and testing the obtained solutions in new situations. The significance of the findings was verified using ANOVA, LSD, and t-tests. According to the teachers’ assessments, textbooks and manuals on nature and society provide the greatest contribution in the segment of defining the problem situation, followed by formulating hypotheses, while the application of solutions in new situations ranks last. The findings signal a potential problem: insufficient orientation of current content resources towards the operationalization of learned material and the application of acquired knowledge in new situations. The independent variables of the research partially influenced the research results. The reasons for different assessments of certain categories of problem-based learning in textbooks can be sought in the domain of the respondents’ competencies, insufficient knowledge of the stages of implementing problem-based teaching, both on theoretical and empirical bases, which is largely determined by undergraduate and master’s studies curricula, seminars for professional development in the field of problem-based learning and teaching, as well as the working experience of teachers. An interesting finding is that the academic education and working experience of teachers do not significantly determine their average assessments of the potential of manuals for applying problem-based learning in teaching nature and society. However, pro- fessional development of teachers through informal training programs has influenced the assessments of the contribution of manuals in almost all analyzed categories, except in the context of setting and defining problems. Specifically, teachers who attended training programs in problem-based teaching assess the categories of problem-based teaching better compared to others. It is evident that teachers who are more familiar with the possibilities of problem-based teaching project their knowledge when “readingˮ manuals, thus achieving better content detection of the manuals. In this sense, the manual has a stimulating role in further planning and implementation of problem-based teaching in nature and society. Therefore, through comparative analysis, it has been established that teachers assess manuals better than textbooks as a content resource for problem-based teaching, which can be explained by the tailored methodological procedures and specific instructions of the manual, which are not easily visible in textbooks. However, all teachers, regardless of their level of education, years of service, and experience in professional development in the field, equally position the setting and defining of problems in both textbooks and manuals, which is to be expected since this stage of the teaching process is the easiest to detect. The reasons for the differing assessments of certain categories, which also constitute the structure of problem-based teaching and stages of problem-solving, can be sought in the domain of the respondents’ competencies, their knowledge of problem-based teaching both theoretically and empirically, which is largely determined by the study programs of undergraduate and master’s studies, seminars for professional development in the field of problem-based learning and teaching, as well as their teaching experience.