Parents' attitudes towards the early childhood and preschool teachers' physical appearance

Velik dio posla odgajatelja je suradnja s roditeljima i drugim odraslim osobama. Prvi dojam o osobi stvaramo već u prvoj desetini sekunde, najčešće na temelju fizičkog izgleda (Willisa i Todorova, 2006; prema Ćurković i Franc, 2010). S obzirom da roditelji i odgajatelji provode jako malo vremena zajedno, najčešće prilikom dolaska i odlaska djeteta, dojam koji su roditelji o odgajatelju stekli, teško se mijenja. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je ispitati stavove roditelja o važnosti fizičkog izgleda za procjenu kvalitete rada odgajatelja njihovog djeteta. Također, ispitivane su razlike u stavovima roditelja prema fizičkom izgledu odgajatelja u odnosu na duljinu boravka djeteta u vrtiću. Pokušalo se odgovoriti na pitanje postoje li razlike u poimanju ljepote/fizičkog izgleda u odnosu na vrijednosnu dimenziju tradicionalizam – modernizam vodeći se Ingelhartovom teorijom modernizma prilikom formiranja kriterija za kategorije tradicionalnih/modernih vrijednosti. Iako su elementi fizičkog izgleda, generalno, procijenjeni nevažnima za rad odgajatelja, zapažene su određene razlike među pojedinim skupinama roditelja.Great part of being a preschool teach is cooperation with parents and other adults. First impression about a person is made within one tenth of a second, usually based on physical appearance (Willisa i Todorova, 2006; prema Ćurković i Franc, 2010). Since parents and teacher spend very little time together, usually during dropping off and picking up children, impressions made by the parents about the teachers are hard to change. The goal of this research was to question parental attitudes about the importance of physical appearance of preschool teachers in comparison to the quality of their work with children. We also questioned the differences in parental attitudes towards physical appearance in correlation to the time child is in preschool. We tried to answer are there differences in understanding beauty / physical appearance in relation to dimensions of traditionalism – modernism guided by Inglehart's modernization theory when forming the criteria for categorization of traditional / modern values. Even though the elements of physical appearance are, in general, estimated as not important for quality of teachers work, we noticed some differences in specific groups of parents