Communication during team work in kindergarten and school

Changes occurring in education strongly affect interpersonal relations and cooperation between kindergarten and school professionals. Teamwork is now more prominent than individual work due to the growing need for this approach in pedagogy. However, individuals need to possess a number of basic skills for effective teamwork, and communication is one of them. Communication skills promote cooperation, knowledge, trust, acceptance, confirmation and constructive conflict resolution among team members. This means that each member must be equally involved in all phases of teamwork, i.e. team planning, implementation and evaluation of the work. The thesis explored communication and its influence on the effectiveness of teamwork among kindergarten and school professionals. The goal was to analyse the characteristics of communication among the said professionals and explore the similarities and differences in communication between them. The data was collected through a survey questionnaire that was developed in line with theoretical assumptions in the field of communication as well as research questions and hypotheses. Of 100 respondents 50 worked in kindergartens and 50 in first grades of primary schools in Slovenia. The results showed statistically insignificant differences between different aspects of communication in kindergartens and schools. Both groups of education professionals believed that communication is an important factor contributing to the effectiveness of teamwork. Another point of interest was the impact of various factors on the quality of communication within a team, including the length of service and job role. No statistically significant differences were observed in team communication among education professionals in kindergartens and schools. The majority of those who felt as equals in their teams used relaxed two-way communication in every stage of teamwork, including conflict resolution while working in tandem