(604) THE QUALITY OF SCHOOL LIFE: A COMPARISON OF STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION IN TRADITIONAL AND ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS

摘要

Within contemporary pedagogical discourse, the importance of building a school as a human prosocial community has been recognized. In this context, many researches are focused on how students feel at school in general, how they perceive and experience relationship between teachers and students, how they perceive the quality of social integration in school, do they feel motivated and competent at what they do at school, etc. The importance of reflecting on such and similar issues is based on the view that the student's experience of school life plays an important role not only for their socio-emotional wellbeing but also for their school success. In that sense, increasing emphasis is placed on the socioemotional dimension of school life which has already been integral part of numerous alternative pedagogical conceptions and schools, such as Waldorf. The aim of this empirical study was to assess and compare students’ perception of quality of school life in traditional and Waldorf schools. The participants were 256 students from fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade (188 from 3 state schools and 68 from 2 Waldorf schools in Croatia). The data were collected by the mean of questionnaire. The analyses of the results indicate that students from Waldorf schools express positive feelings toward school while students from state school express neutral feelings. Differences were also evident regarding student’s perception of specific dimension of school life (sense of school competence, relevance of schooling, learning experience, relationship with the teachers and social integration) in favour of students from Waldorf schools especially with regard to their learning experience at school. Proceeding from research results and some specifics of Waldorf pedagogical conception, prerequisites for development of quality of school life is discussed with special emphasis on the teacher's role.