Impact of the Bologna process two-cycle implementation on teacher education in the Czech Republic 1

As a consequence of the Bologna process, five-year master's teacher education programmes have been divided into three-year bachelor's and two-year master's studies in the Czech Republic. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of the two-cycle implementation in teacher education programmes in the Czech Republic and present survey results about the opinions of both the academic staff and students at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague on the implementation. In the first and second parts, we summarize Bologna goals and reaction to the two-cycle implementation in general. In the third part, we analyze the two-cycle system implementation from its introduction into the Czech legal system to a recent successful re-accreditation of a one-cycle programme at one faculty of education and strengthening voices for reintroduction of a one-cycle system for teacher education. In the fourth part, we present the survey results. It has been shown that about nine out of ten staff members had disagreed with the two-cycle implementation at the time of its introduction in 2006, and there has been no significant change of their opinions over time. Moreover, more than sixty percent of the academic staff do not agree with the co-existence of the two systems. On the contrary, students prefer the two-cycle system to the one-cycle system (7:3). Most bachelor's students intend to continue in the follow-up master's study suggesting that the division is more or less formal. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]