Answers and innovations in pre-school education in Portugal and Slovenia

• Autor(a) principal: Castanheira, Luis
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Devjak, Tâtjana
• Tipo de documento: Livro
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/16975

Pre-school education is an integral part of an educational system, which assumes a significant role in remedying educational deficiencies. In today’s world, which is characterized by mixed races, religions, cultures, value systems and different economic systems, pre-school education should be oriented towards the multicultural dimension, towards understanding and the justice system functioning, as well as towards the provision of the conditions for participation and empowerment of the individual as an individual and as a community member. The scientific monograph titled Answers and Innovations in Pre-School Education in Portugal and Slovenia comprises theoretical and empirical papers, which provide the formal basis of the pre-school education in Portugal and Slovenia, and various innovations that improve the quality of pre-school education. The first two papers are dedicated to the fundamentals of the pre-school education system. Tatjana Devjak in her paper Concept of Pre-school Education in Slovenia Through Theoretical Framework presents the uniform system of pre-school education in Slovenia as a significant constituent of the educational policy. In the paper, the provision of preschool education is viewed as one of the fundamental tasks of the municipality, while the main tasks of kindergartens are to assist parents in providing comprehensive care for children, improving the quality of life of families and children, and creating opportunities for integrated child development. The paper also introduces the pre-school education studies, in the scope of which students become familiar with various characteristics of the childhood and education, and gain a core theoretical and practical knowledge of individual areas of kindergarten activities in accordance with the publicly valid programme, i.e. Kindergarten Curriculum. Luis Castanheira in his paper titled Concept of Pre-School Education in Portugal Through Theoretical Framework introduces the theoretical framework of Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Portugal which has a leading role in the development of children in all areas and domains. He presents ECE as a right for everyone, a precondition for enriched development, which enhances the democratic principle of equality of opportunity, both in access and in educational success throughout life. Although there is no compulsory national pre-school education programme, there are Curriculum Guidelines for Pre-school Education, which are based on the overall pedagogical objectives, and are intended to support the creation and implementation of the curriculum in the pre-school centres under the responsibility of each pre-school teacher, in collaboration with the educational team of the local educational establishment/grouping of schools. The third paper titled Slovene and Portuguese Pre-School Teachers about Collaboration with Parents by the authors Tatjana Devjak, Luis Castanheira and Sanja Berčnik states the main objectives and strategies of collaboration between parents and pre-school teachers in both countries. In the theoretical part the authors focus on the legal framework of collaboration with parents, whereas in the empirical part they compare the views of the Slovenian and Portuguese pre-school teachers on the importance of their collaboration with parents, whereby they highlight some personal views of on different ways of parental collaboration, on parental influence on the life and work of the pre-school institution, and on their competencies as regards their collaboration with parents. In the following paper titled Collaboration with Parents as a part of Kindergarten’s Educational Concept the author Sanja Berčnik points out that the global changes in Slovenia also triggered changes in the education system, specifically, more plural early childhood education, at the level of programmes and organizational forms, as well as at the level of content and working methods. She argues that the kindergarten’s educational concept, as a reflection of joint educational activities in the educational institution and each individual in it, requires collective agreements between (pre-school) teachers, children, and parents; based on the importance of collective agreements she analyses the pre-school teachers’ and parents’ expectations as regards their participation in drafting the educational concept. Angelina Sanches in her paper Pedagogical Supervision as a Collaborative Process of Vocational Training; discusses the role of pedagogical supervision in the initial training of early childhood educators/teachers. In the paper, the author analyses supervision as the process that supports and regulates the learning and professional development, and focuses on the importance of embarking on a reflexive (inter)action committed to the construction of quality educational and training responses. Rosa Novo in her paper Modern School Movement (MSM) highlights the pedagogical model of Portuguese Modern School movement (M.E.M.) as an excellent contribution, which ensures quality in each institution. She advocates the democratic the pre-school institution, establishment and discusses the organization of the group of children, the playroom, and the daily routine. Janez Vogrinc and Vesna Podgornik in their paper titled Improving Pre- School Education Through Self-Evaluation focus on self-evaluation research, which can when carried out by pre-school teachers, significantly contribute to improving the quality of work of the pre-primary education institutions. The paper highlights the current situation in the field of self-evaluation research in Slovenian kindergartens and the conditions provided to pre-school teachers for self-evaluation. Cristina Mesquita in her paper Participatory Contexts: Voice of the Child and Pedagogical Intentionality reflects on the importance of participatory contexts in the education of children. She discusses participatory pedagogues and different approaches (High Scope, Pedagogy-in-Participation), that are concerned with the rights of children and their participation in an educational process. The idea of participation is presented as a right and in that context, the importance of building interactive and collaborative environments is discussed. Tatjana Hodnik Čadež focuses on mathematics as a teaching subject in the early years in her paper titled Towards Comparison of Numbers Through Problem-solving in Kindergarten: Analysis of Pre-School Teachers’ and Children’s Performance. She argues that although mathematics is a part of the Slovene curriculum, its activities should be interdisciplinary, i.e. linked to other areas, such as language, art, sport, science, etc., especially in the case of problem-solving. The aim of her research was to examine how the pre-school teachers and children address a particular problem in mathematics in relation to the comparison of numbers. Maria Jose Rodrigues in her paper titled Science Education in the Early Years – Guidelines and Perspectives writes about the placement of science in the guidelines for early childhood education in Portugal. She believes that science should be introduced in the early childhood centres with children from 3 to 6 years. In her opinion there is a growing need to provide research-driven education based on active and participatory methodologies, in order to initiate providing a scientific content to develop reasoning. The aim is to understand the world, to experiment, to innovate, to be autonomous, to cooperate with others and in doing so, fully exercise citizenship. The author of last paper titled Language Support to Immigrant Children is Darija Skubic. She focuses on education as the key factor of successful integration of young generations of migrants in the society. She points out a survey, which shows, that some of the educational systems in Europe (Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Canada, Portugal) are already adapting to the realities of immigration, while Slovenia is still among least committed counties. She underlines, that the language presents mother tongue-based education and language support to immigrant children, especially in two of the aforementioned countries Sweden and Slovenia.