The views of profesional workers of Kindergarten Ledina on the importance of in – service education and training emloyee

Pre-school education is of significant importance in the society as it educates the youngest children who are for the first time separated from their home environment and their families. That is why professional workers are entrusted with an important task, them being the first ones to enter the interaction with both parents and children. The changes which on a daily basis occur around us and which are part of the daily life, as well as processes and relationships in the kindergarten, demand from employees to constantly adjust and find new solutions as well as forms and methods of work. Children who attend kindergarten come from families with different values and cultures and apart from belonging to various language communities, children also have parents who cultivate different levels of expectations and demands towards them. In recent years, we can observe a growing number of children who require adjustments and individual approaches in their everyday stay and learning in kindergarten. Apart from this, we need to take into account both the policy of the State, which sets the operating conditions with its imposed laws, as well as the fact that we live in the time of rapid development of knowledge and technology, which regularly formulates and changes the thinking thread of the society by means of the information availability. The knowledge, which has been acquired by professional workers through formal education, is not sufficient for work duties to be carried out in a quality manner. Consequently, further education and training is of key importance for professional workers and must be adjusted to every individual's needs in order for the individual to fill the deficits as well as to obtain the necessary answers, solutions and literature, needed for his or her work. Highly competent professional kindergarten workers who apart from empathy also apply novelties to their work tend to be more successful in doing their job. That is why it is highly significant to plan professional development, which does not include merely opportunities for promotion, but above all accessibility, the possibility of acquiring new knowledge, and changing the work patterns. It is the Head of Kindergarten who plays an important role in achieving this by having to support the professional development of the employees, knowing their work, encouraging cooperation, and last but not least, setting an example to all the employees. The theoretical part, prepared by means of various authors, provides an analysis of the significance of preschool education, the Curriculum, and the importance of further education and training for professional development with the aim of quality improvement. We have also inspected the role of the Head of Kindergarten in the process of determining and ensuring quality of preschool education in public kindergartens. The empirical part first introduces the analysis, which has been made based on the six-year-long monitoring of the professional education and training process in Ledina Kindergarten. Further, by means of quantitative research we have explored the professional kindergarten workers' views on the importance of professional development, particularly in terms of introducing new contents and work forms into the practical work with the aim of improving quality of educational work and the necessary educational contents