The pedagogical competences of early childhood education teachers – an account of the research

In my article I deal with the problems connected with the debate on the Polish teacher condition in the situation of the system transformation, changes in the Polish school and new challenges which it faces. The particular role in this process, I ascribe an early childhood education teacher and I pose the questions on how this teacher is equipped as far as his or her pedagogical competences are concerned. I also take into consideration the subject matter of the teacher professional development and also internal factors (personality, burnout syndrome) and external factors (professional advancement, didactic staff mutual relations, school localization), which are in respect to these competences. Formulated problems and assumed hypotheses have become the starting point for empirical research carried out in the properly selected environments (town and rural). A group of 529 teachers took part in this research whose professionalism was valued on the basis of self-assessment and observation results made by 101 headmasters. The obtained empirical documentation is the base for quantitative and qualitative analysis of indexes determining the level of selected „pedagogical competences” and factors conditioning these competences. The research results gave the empirical material proving the fact that early childhood education teachers present a good level of professional pragmatic competences, communicative-interpretative and cooperation competences, on the other hand, their creativity competences and computer science and media competences turned out to be worse. This diversity creates important circumstances which induce to carry out further research.Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00