Transversal literacies and the attitude of teachers towards their implementation into the new Slovak curriculum

Prof Zuzana Straková, University of Presov, Slovakia

The new curriculum for elementary schools in Slovakia brings a few innovations in concepts with their particular specification for the Slovak educational context. Teachers of foreign languages are predominantly interested in what the change of curriculum means for them in terms of grammar, vocabulary topics, textbooks etc. A little less they are interested in the conceptual changes and challenges which are proposed by the transformation of the curriculum. The recent redesign of the state educational programme represents a huge change, especially in the understanding of desirable approaches which should be applied in education with the understanding that the new generation will need to function in the extremely dynamic environment of the 21st century. Thus, educators need to equip their students not only with the knowledge of a particular subject but also with what has been addressed as global skills or as the curriculum addressed it transversal literacies. This term is somehow new to the teachers if it is not related to what they might understand as global or life skills or competencies. This study focuses on the concept of transversal literacies, the attitude of foreign language teachers towards them and their willingness to incorporate these literacies into their teaching. The qualitative method of individual interviews and thematic analysis was used to identify teachers´ awareness of what transversal literacies are, to identify how they feel finding the space for these literacies in foreign language classrooms and to identify a desirable typology of learning tasks that could support this implementation. The results indicate a very low level of awareness of transversal literacies among foreign language teachers and a high level of confusion about what is expected from language teachers while implementing these literacies. Surprisingly novice teachers seemed to be more oriented and felt more confident about the implementation of the literacies in their teaching. This supports the expectation that if the awareness starts to be focused on pre-service education the implementation of the new curriculum could be smoother.