Original scientific paper
The Perception of Students of Preschool Education Programmes Regarding the Profession of Preschool Educators in Relation to their Levels of Education
Tijana Borovac
; Faculty of primary education, University of J. J. Strossmayer in Osijek
Abstract
The last decade of research in the area of education has witnessed the dominance of the competence-oriented approach,that is the education of preschool educators has been evaluated based on the learning outcomes. However, the implementation of the Bologna process within the sphere of higher education demands taking into account the students’ perspective concerning professional duties and the profession in general. This implies a co-existence of opposite perspectives – social ones (what the society expects from pre-school educators) and individual ones (how students of pre-school education perceive their profession). As students of pre-school education can enroll both undergraduate and graduate university programmes (their study programme is based on the 3+2 model) and as the study programmes are subjected to revisions and changes, it is important to learn more about the students’ perspective on the profession that they are being trained for. In order to find out whether there are differences between the way students perceive the profession of pre educators and their level of education, a questionnaire has been compiled, consisting of three subscales – understanding of development-adequate practice (R), image of a child and perception of childhood (D) and perception of competences and professional duties (K). The research was conducted among the students of the final (third) year of undergraduate study programme in pre-school education and students of the final (fifth) year of graduate study programme (N=74). The measuring features of the questionnaire are as follows: Cronbach alpha .86, Spearman Brown coefficient 0.91, split half .72 − .79. The results lead to the conclusion that the students of the third and the fifth year differ in their perception of the profession of pre-educators in all three subscales. These results can be used for further analysis of students’ perception of their future profession, especially metacompetences, and it is possible to use them as a part of evaluation process of the efficiency of the programme for professional education of pre-school educators.
Keywords
students of preschool education programmes; profession of pre-school educators; competences
Hrčak ID:
123228
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2014.
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