The development of and prospects for pedagogy in Croatia

Dr. Štefka Batinić and dr. Igor Radeka

Summary:  The study of pedagogy in Croatia began at the University of Zagreb in 1928. Prior to this, pedagogy had been modelled and developed in the likeness of the pedagogy in German-speaking regions – primarily as a practical discipline within the school system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and also as a theoretical discipline based on Herbart’s pedagogy. The first university lectures in pedagogy for prospective catechism teachers were given by Ivan Koharić (1874/75) at the Faculty of Theology, and for prospective secondary school teachers by Franjo Marković (1876/77) at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb, where the Pedagogical Seminar was initiated in 1896 and conducted by Ðuro Arnold until 1923. Theoreticians of pedagogy in the academic community, namely Stjepan Matičević, Stjepan Pataki, Pavao Vuk-Pavlović and Vlado Petz, came to prominence in the 1920s. They formulated the basic teleological questions of pedagogy, taught at the College of Pedagogy and the Pedagogical Seminar and contributed to the establishment of pedagogy as an independent discipline. In the context of the new political and social circumstances following World War II, the role of the Pedagogical Seminar was taken over by the Institute of Pedagogy (1946), where the instructional and research functions of the seminar were brought together. Stjepan Pataki, the main pre-war representative of cultural pedagogy and the post-war founder of socialist pedagogy in Croatia, was the Institute’s Principal until he passed away in 1953. The new organisational form – the Department of Pedagogy at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Institute of Pedagogy as its constituent element – has been retained to this day. The remaining four university degrees in pedagogy in Croatia were founded in the 1960s and at the start of the 21st century. The first lectures in pedagogy at the University of Zadar, founded in 1955 as a separate faculty of the only Croatian university of the time, the University of Zagreb, were given by Vladimir Janković in 1958/59 – initially at the Chair of Pedagogy, which was transformed into the Department of Pedagogy in 1966. The study of pedagogy in Zadar started in 1961. New universities established in the Croatian regional centres of Rijeka, Split and Osijek in the first half of the 1970s also featured the development of pedagogy in two directions (as was the case with Zagreb and Zadar): first, through the continuous pedagogical education of teachers and subject-specific teachers, and second, through the establishment of integral pedagogy studies in Rijeka in 1966 (industrial pedagogy degree) and 1978 (general pedagogy degree), in Osijek in 2003 and in Split in 2007. All five university degrees in pedagogy were included in the reform of study programmes in Croatia initiated in 2005/06, which was based on introducing three levels of higher education in accordance with the Bologna Process. Currently, four Croatian pedagogy study programmes (at the universities of Zagreb, Zadar, Rijeka and Osijek) offer all three academic levels, up to the doctorate, while the programme in Split offers only two levels, the bachelor’s degree and the master’s degree in pedagogy.