engleski

Relationships in the Educational Institution as a Dimension of Kindergarten Culture: A Narrative Study

The theoretical part of the paper explains the complexity of the concept of an educational institution's culture and the importance of creating a culture of collaborative relations in early childhood institutions as a prerequisite for changing and improving all of its dimensions. An early and preschool education institution consists of people with different systems of values, norms, and feelings. However, to be able to function and communicate within an institution, they need to combine their differences. We define institutional culture as an expression of common, basic settings, beliefs of preschool teachers/elementary school teachers, professional associates, the administrative and support staff, parents, principals, typical of an educational institution, which is recognized by the mutual relations of its people and their joint work activities, management style, organizational and physical environment, and the degree of focus on continuous learning and research of educational practice. In the empirical part of the paper, qualitative narrative research is presented, which aims to provide insight into preschool teachers' understandings about the relationships within the institution as a dimension of kindergarten culture. We wished to explore the meanings that participants attribute to their relationships with others inside the institution in which they work and the ways and opportunities they suggest for improving the culture of collaborative relationships. We chose the narrative approach to achieve the research goal since it allows us to understand the meaning that research participants attach to a particular event, person, or situation through the so-called personal stories [1, 2, 3]. The semi-structured interview was chosen as the primary method of data collection. The researcher performed the processing of the collected data using the thematic analysis [4], which starts from the transcription of audio recordings of conducted interviews and proceeds with the initial coding of data. The underlying objective is thereby to uncover the main topics and similarities among the coded data. The thematic analysis results are presented through a thematic network, which provides insight into the preschool teachers' perceptions and understanding of the relationship between members of the institution as one of the dimensions of kindergarten culture.

Narrative research ; Professional development ; Institutional culture ; Relationships ; Preschool teacher

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