Professional development of early childhood educators - a pathway to reputation enhancement of the profession

Abstract

Profesionalni razvoj trebao bi biti sastavni dio posla svakog odgojitelja. Odgojitelj je jedna od najvažnijih osoba u prvim godinama djetetova života. Kompetencije potrebne za rad s djecom odgojitelj stječe tijekom svog visokoškolskog obrazovanja, nakon čega mu se pružaju različite mogućnosti profesionalnog usavršavanja. Različiti načini profesionalnog usavršavanja provode se radi usavršavanja i stjecanja novih znanja i vještina koje će odgojitelji koristiti u svojoj odgojno obrazovnoj praksi te time neposredno utjecati i na podizanje ugleda odgojitelja. U teorijskom djelu definiraju se kompetencije odgojitelja, najčešći oblici profesionalnog usavršavanja te koje su mogućnosti, pravila i uvjeti za njegovo napredovanje. U empirijskom dijelu rada provedeno je istraživanje kojem je cilj istražiti koje oblike profesionalnog usavršavanja preferiraju odgojitelji i na koje se načine može podizati ugled odgojiteljske struke. Za potrebe ovog istraživanja konstruiran je upitnik u kojem je sudjelovalo 33 odgojitelja. Upitnik sadrži sedam pitanja, od čega su dva pitanja otvorenog tipa, dva pitanja zatvorenog tipa i dva pitanja kombiniranog tipa. Uz navedena pitanja upitnik sadrži i Likertovu skalu.Professional development should be a part of every preschool teacher’s job. The preschool teacher is one of the most important people in the early years of every child. Competences necessary for working with children the preschool teacher acquires throughout his higher education after which the he gets different possibilities for professional development. Different ways of professional development are carried out for perfecting and acquiring new knowledge and skills that preschool teachers will use in their educational practice, and by that directly affect raising of the educators reputation. In theoretical part of the paper preschool teacher's competences will be defined, also the most common forms of professional development, possibilities, rules and terms for their progress. The empirical part contains conducted research. Purpose of that research is to find out the most common forms of professional develpoment and how to build up a preschool teacher's reputation. That research is made of a question-form with seventeen questions in which participated thirty three preschool teachers. Eleven of them is in Likert form, two questions are opened-ended, two questions close-ended and two of them are combined