Reasons and process of creating an alternative school from the perspective of its founders

The diploma thesis deals with the processes taking place in setting up alternative schools and reflects the founders'views on the start-up process as well as their satisfaction with the outcome. The theoretical part introduces the important alternative directions in education, brings forward the principles of how free and democratic schools work, presents some personalities associated with the educational alternative and briefly mentions selected platforms and concepts based on the principles of respect for the individual. The empirical part analyses interviews with the founders of five alternative schools on their reasons for setting up the school and their appreciation of the proces. The main techniques for data collection are in-depth semi-structured interviews. Given the research objective a qualitative approach inspired by phenomenological investigation and grounded theory was used and subsequently the card interpretation technique. There are several reasons for setting up alternative schools, the main one seems to be the need to provide current generation of children a school which would support their talents, gives them the individual approach and where their opinion would be respected. Other reasons include the need for freedom or the need to be professionally implemented. The process of setting up..