engleski

Education reform in Croatia: a tug of war

Between 1991, when Croatia gained independence, and 2002 there were six attempts at educational reform. Croatia is the only country in transition out of 30 countries in which reform attempts have failed one after the other. Homeland war, the post-communist period mentality, and authoritarian models were, in Mijatović’s (2002) words, some of the obstacles in the path of school democratization. Some of these changes brought about minor improvements, none of which were significant in terms of student performance – PISA reports for 2009 and 2015 show that Croatian students are slightly below OECD average in science, mathematics, and reading literacy (Fleischman, Hopstock, Pelczar, & Shelley, 2010 ; OECD, 2017). In 2014 the Croatian Parliament passed a resolution on the Strategy of Education, Science and Technology and as a part of that the last (still ongoing) Comprehensive Curriculum Reform was initiated. Around 500 teachers and scientists designed the proposal for a new curriculum in 2016. After the elections, the left-wing government was superseded by a right- wing government, which was unsupportive of the reform so its implementation was called into question. This sparked heated public debates and on 1 June 2016 peaceful demonstrations were organized in many Croatian cities to support the continuation of the reform. A number of Croatian designers supported the demonstration by creating posters in order to encourage citizens to join the peaceful protests. Being teachers, we went to the protest, excited about the fact that education had finally hit the headlines. Being linguists, we could not help wonder about the role of language in persuasion, particularly the choice of narrative and metaphors in public discourse in the media and at the protest.

narrative, metaphor, educational reform

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