Professional development of Swedish and Slovenian preschool teachers

Europe has, based on Lisbon declaration in the year of 2000, officially transformed into society of knowledge on cultural, economical and social level. Since then the ongoing processes of globalization and transformation of educational systems can be seen on its wide area. People became Europe’s first advantage and the lifelong learning became a major factor for the development and functioning of society that is built upon knowledge (»Memorandum o vseživljenjskem učenju«, 2000). The role of a preschool teacher is in this view very responsible and important since it strongly influences the education and development of an individual and forms a foundation for further learning. Because of societies constant changing, the preschool teachers need to follow the development and complement its knowledge in order to offer the best quality performance in every moment. Based on that the society strives to constant professional development of preschool teachers for which options we will study in this diploma thesis. As M. Hmelak (2012) says that professional development of preschool teachers is a life proces inside which the processes of personality maturation and gathering of work related knowledge and experience are carried out. Constant professional learning as such nowdays isn’t only an individual’s choice but rather a necessity and a professional duty of each preschool teacher (Valenčič Zuljan and Blanuša Trošelj, 2014). Diploma thesis are based on a case study of professional development of Slovenian and Swedish preschool teachers and a comparissment between them since the structural renovation of school system in Europe wishes to offer equal opportunities for education in every European country. Diploma thesis represents education systems of both countries and the whole cycle of professional development of preschool teachers in Sweden as well as in Slovenia. At the end comes the comparisment between both educational paths of preschool teachers and the findings that these two are to some point relatively equal