Syllabus content on forces and interactions in pre-service primary teacher education: a Croatian case study in relation to the natural science curriculum

Introduction The introduction of the experimental programme “Primary School as a Full-Day School: A Balanced, Equitable, Efficient and Sustainable System of Education” in 2023 brought a new school subject, Natural Science, into Croatian primary schools. The curriculum for this subject includes educational outcomes that were not previously represented in the subject Nature and Society, raising the question of their representation in initial teacher education. Methods This study aimed to analyse the extent to which syllabi of science and teaching methodology courses within integrated teacher education programmes in Croatia explicitly include learning outcomes and content related to the effects of force, gravitational force, friction, and magnetic interaction, as defined by educational outcome PRI OŠ B.2.2 for the second grade of primary school, and how this content is distributed across courses and syllabi within the analysed study programmes. A qualitative document analysis was conducted on 56 publicly available syllabi selected from seven study programmes. Results The analysis showed that categories C1 -C4 were not explicitly represented in the learning outcomes of the analysed syllabi, whereas each of the four categories was explicitly represented in the course content of 2 of the 56 syllabi (3.57%). Relevant content was distributed across different courses and syllabi, while its explicit connection to the teaching of concepts covered by educational outcome PRI OŠ B.2.2 was not consistently documented. Discussion Because the analysis is limited to the documented curriculum, the findings do not allow conclusions to be drawn about pre-service teachers' actual knowledge, competencies, or preparedness to teach this content. The findings indicate a need for clearer documentation of the links between existing science and teaching methodology content and learning outcomes and the requirements of the new school Natural Science Curriculum.