Turinys / Contents

COVER

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Cover page, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021, SPVK/EPMQ

CONTENTS

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Contents, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021, SPVK/EPMQ

THE RENEWAL OF GENERAL CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK: WHERE ARE WE MOVING TOWARDS?

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The need to update the curriculum and the Curriculum framework of general education has been discussed for several years, as long as a year ago, the renewal work of primary and basic education curriculum began, and this year the renewal of the secondary and preschool education curriculum started. The curriculum of the general preschool education is described for one year, with the possibility for the child to study for the second year. The preschool education programme is not structured in separate subjects – the knowledge is acquired integrally, by developing seven competencies in all activities in which the child participates, in order to ensure the balance and coherence of all competencies in different content areas. Excluded content areas are given equal volume. It is being focused on the purpose and goals of preschool education, areas of achievement and intended achievements. The learning content is divided into five areas of learning content: • language education; • social education; • STEM education(natural science, mathematics and informatics, technological education); • health and physical education; • artistic education. The general curricula for pre-primary, primary, basic and secondary education must ensure vertical and horizontal coherence of content, possible interdisciplinary links, and indicate how they can be meaningfully disclosed including the interdisciplinary topics set out in the General curriculum framework updating guidelines: • personal power, • cultural identity and community spirit, • sustainable development. The volumes of primary, basic and secondary education curricula are presented distinguishing between compulsory subject content (about 70 per cent) and optional content (about 30 per cent), which is selected and modelled by the teacher himself, taking into account school, classroom context, student needs, achievements, possibilities and in coordination with other teachers as required. When implementing optional content, more time is devoted to the development of certain skills, values, and learning of subject topics. Project works can be organised, interdisciplinary themes can be developed, time can be allocated for cognitive, cultural, artistic, and creative activities. According to the concept of the Guidelines for the Renewal of the General Curriculum Framework, this distribution of the content ratio is focused on deeper learning, integration, topic development, competence development.

EDUCATION OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: THE QUALITY ASPECT

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In the 21st century, education is identified not only as one of the fundamental human rights that ensure the quality of life, but also as a key driver for the sustainable development of society. Therefore, in modern society, the pursuit of knowledge should become a priority and a way of life for every young person. These reasons encourage the analysis and evaluation of the factors that determine the quality of education, because the context of today's Lithuanian and European dimensions of education determines the necessity of ensuring the importance of the quality of education from an early age. This situation presupposes a problematic question of the research: what factors determine the quality of primary education. That the analysis requires quality assurance issues at the primary level of education becomes clear from the analysis of scientific, methodological literature and educational documents, as issues of quality of education at this level are insufficiently researched and emphasized. More attention is paid to the analysis of quality education in the pre-school sector and basic school. On the other hand, it is a very important and timely issue, because primary education is the first stage of formal education, which has important goals and objectives related to the child's educational opportunities, challenges and further development perspectives. In order to collect the research data, a questionnaire survey was conducted, in which 110 primary education teachers working in the country's educational institutions participated. A questionnaire was prepared, in which the essential information blocks related to the quality of education of primary school students were singled out: planning and organization of the educational process, creation of the educational environment, the teacher's personality and his professionalism. During the research, the factors that determine the quality of education of primary school students were analyzed theoretically and empirically. Statistically significant differences were found in the assessment of different factors, pedagogical work experience and groups of teachers with different qualification categories.

ORGANIZATION OF GIFTED STUDENTS’ EDUCATION IN COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS: TEACHERS` POSITION

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The education of gifted students is one of the areas of differentiated education, the main goal of which is to study people with special/particular abilities. The problem of talent is now becoming more and more relevant. This is primarily due to the need of society to develop creative personalities. The uncertainty of the modern environment requires not only a high level of human activity, but also his skills and ability to behave in a non-standard way. It is obvious that the early identification, teaching and education of gifted students is one of the key challenges in improving the education system. However, insufficient psychological teachers’ preparation/readiness to work with children, who behave and think in a non-standard way, leads to inadequate assessment of their personal characteristics and all activities. In January-March 2021, a qualitative study was conducted, in which 10 teachers of general education schools participated. Data obtained through semi-structured interviews were analysed using the content analysis method. It has been found that the majority of teachers are able to describe gifted students, trust their competence to identify them. It has been revealed that certain differences exist between the schools analysed. Some schools systematically and qualitatively educate the gifted, while others lack common agreements on the education of the gifted, there is no system, support for teachers and students. Due to the different conditions, not all gifted students receive appropriate support, and the ongoing programmes accept a limited number of students, which creates a problem of access to the quality education of the gifted. Such situation may have arisen due to the lack of a clear state strategy for the education of gifted students, and educational guidelines for schools and teachers. It is obvious that in order to improve the quality of gifted students’ education, it is necessary to update educational documents, that regulate gifted students’ education and create a unified Lithuanian students’ education system based on positive examples of schools and many years of experience.

POST EXAM ANALYSIS SELECTION OF HIGH AND LOW EXAM RESULT GROUPS BY NORMAL DISTRIBUTION CURVE

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The key factor of an assessment is to minimize the errors by having a good reliability and validity of the assessment yardstick. To achieve high score in the test examinee must be aware about assessment cycle and use it in appropriate way in post exam analysis. Outcome of the results can be utilized as a constructive feedback in any given program. This cross-sectional study was conducted at department of Biochemistry, University of Rajarata. Multiple choice questions, structured essay type questions, objective structured practical examination, and continuous assessment was used in this study. Total number of students are 180 and was assessed for difficulty index, discrimination index, reliability, and standard error of measurement. In this study sample for analysis was used basically the examiner divides students into two groups (‘high’ and ‘low’) according to the score sheet of each student. Most of them are doing in a wrong way basically they divide high and low clusters as 25% each and considered upper quartile and lower quartile. In this study we compared it with the standard normal distribution curve where high and low groups are considered as 16% where is the standard. There is no significant difference among both clusters, and we recommend using the standard 16% as the high and low groups in post examination analysis.

4th INTERNATIONAL BALTIC SYMPOSIUM ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION “SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION: DEVELOPING A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE (BalticSTE2021)”: SYMPOSIUM REVIEW

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Time is running relentlessly fast. The Fourth International Symposium was held on June 21-22 this year. The topic of the Symposium was “Science and technology education: Developing a global perspective”. More than 60 scientists from 18 countries participated in the symposium. Comparing with the symposium which took place in 2019, the geographical distribution of the participants is wide and diverse. Ukrainian, Serbian, Moldavian, Malaysian, Latvian, Slovak etc. researchers participated in the symposium. Another important feature of the symposium is that it was held remotely/online due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. One of this international symposium ideas is – to show that Baltic region countries also actively participate in natural science and technology education research, especially in STEAM context. The second idea is that Baltic countries as well as other small regions of the world need corresponding close communication and cooperation. During this symposium, these two essential ideas were developed and supported.

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End page, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021, SPVK/EPMQ