A child’s time, spent in school, has a major impact both on their development and their future life. The theoretical part of this Master's degree defines the main areas of child development: the physical development and movement skills, emotional and social development, cognitive development and development of human will, i.e. achievement motivation. The latter areas are closely related to each other. It is of utmost importance that children are equally encouraged in all areas of their development and that the environment treats them as a whole as opposed to only addressing one aspect of child development (e.g. cognitive development). As a child is growing up, the intensity of development in different areas varies. The degree identifies the main characteristics of some of the private schools in Slovenia. One of them is a school, based on the educational programme, called »Education for Life«, with encouraging the integrated child development as one of its main principles. The empirical part of the degree focuses on answering the question, to what extent the school, following the »Education for Life« programme, can in fact take into account the integrated child development. With the aim of gathering knowledge from different perspectives, a »triangulation« research method has been applied. The degree offers insight into how much the integrated child development concept is being reflected in final reports on a child's progress, how the same concept affects class lessons and what is the parents', whose children are being educated in the fore mentioned educational programme, stance on the subject matter.The qualitative research has been carried out and to get a better view, also the final reports on children's progress from the school following the educational programme »Education for Life« have been compared to final report cards of children enrolled in public schools. The research showed that the majority of class lessons according to »Education for Life« programme placed the emphasis on cognitive development of a child. That is being followed by activities, encouraging emotional and social development of an individuum, then there are activities, encouraging a child's physical development and the least attention is being given to the activities that encourage the human will (achievement motivation). The substantial analysis of final report cards and reports on children's progress showed that both, private and public educational programme, describe a child's cognitive development in the majority of sentences and the least focus is placed on the development of human will (achievement motivation). Final report cards of a public school contain a statistically important higher ammount of sentences, addressing the child's cognitive development than reports on children's progress under the »Education for Life« educational programme. On the contrary, more sentences focus on the emotional and social development under the »Education for Life« educational programme than in the final report cards obtained in a public school. The parents of children, enrolled in the educational programme »Education for Life« believe the fore mentioned educational programme encourages the integrated development of a child. They observe it both in reports on children's progress as well as in wholistically oriented class lessons activities. They are satisfied with the level of communication with the teachers and to a large extent notice that the impacts of the integrated approach in school extend to their life outside school. They note that the child is familiar with relaxation techniques and knows how to use them, has a greater sense of empathy than before enrolling in the »Education for Life« programme, has a better self-image and a more positive view of the world.
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