Remedial classes are a form of learning assistance organized for students with learning difficulties (Zakon o osnovni šoli, 1996). Additional classes are a special form of learning which is carried out outside the regular lessons and is intended to encourage the development of gifted students (Strmčnik, 1987). Both remedial and additional classes are part of an extended program of elementary school, which every school must offer, but pupil’s attendance is non-obligatory. There are 35 lessons in a whole school year intended for remedial and additional classes, which means that on weekly basis there is half an hour for each of them. There is no specific provision about the outsourcing of remedial and additional classes, so every teacher can adapt the outsourcing to the pupil’s needs, wishes, abilities and to the possibility of implementation, a teacher has.
In the master thesis, we wanted to find out how primary education teachers carry out remedial and additional classes of Slovene lessons. We made our own online survey questionnaire and passed it to teachers, which were in the school year 2019/20 teaching at the primary education level. We acquired data with quantitative research.
The results of the survey were quite in line with our expectations. We found out that primary education teachers are more often conducting remedial classes than additional classes of Slovene, but even more often they conduct remedial and additional classes of mathematics. Remedial classes of Slovene are usually obligatory for pupils, determined by the teachers before the lesson, the additional classes, however, are mostly optional. As we announced, individual work predominated in both remedial and additional classes, and teachers do self-evaluation of the effectiveness of the classes from time to time, more often for remedial classes.
In the survey, we were also interested in conducting remedial and additional classes of Slovene lessons during the home-schooling. We found out that teachers usually sent pupils written instructions for individual work or conducted lessons via videoconference. We detected some characteristics which also appear in the normally organized remedial and additional classes of Slovene lessons.
With the master thesis, we have achieved the set goal. We gained insight into outsourcing remedial and additional classes at the primary education level. The survey showed us the potential for improvements in this area. We also hope that this survey will help to raise teachers' awareness of the importance of well-conducted remedial and additional classes and that it will help to improve them.
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