engleski

The Professional Development of Educators – A Challenge for Pedagogues

Continuous development of everyday educational kindergarten practice places a complex task before pedagogues who need to encourage, motivate and guide other experts on their professional development path. Pedagogues are expected to posses numerous professional competences that rely on modern pedagogical principles, as well as to know and apply modern types and methods of work. Their communication skills are also very important for establishing quality communication and relationships with all of the participants who are involved in the educational process. The pedagogue’s readiness for self-evaluation and the evaluation of various aspects of the educational practice is of significant importance. An adequately trained pedagogue is aware of the context and the needs of the community in which they work, and they possess knowledge of institutional education systems. The pedagogue follows, explores and analyses the work of the educator and proposes forms and ways of improving their work. In order to be able to fulfil their task, the pedagogue must be very familiar with everyday activities of the education groups, follow interactions between children, as well as between children and educators. The pedagogue continuously collaborates with all members of the education process and encourages qualitative changes in the institution. The pedagogue gains competence for providing such support only partially through their initial education, and mostly through continuous professional development. By observing the educational practice and the direct work of the educators, the pedagogue can spot the discrepancy between what the educator advocates and what they manage to achieve in practice. In this sense, it is the task of the pedagogue to consistently raise the research and reflective competences of educators necessary for eliminating the discrepancy between proclaimed and achieved goals. Their task is to help the educators who are in the process of developing their reflective practice, i.e. to encourage them to observe, better understand and change their practice, within specific conditions. Action research represents the most efficient form of professional development for educators. It involves continued self-evaluation and evaluation of their work, the art of documenting the educational process, as well as the skill of participating in discussions regarding their professional work. In addition, the pedagogue should create new theory from the educational practice, using action research, which would then be applied in practice and again continuously questioned, changed and amended. Practice is the best measure of the success, failure or sustainability of existing theories. In our paper, we will describe the pedagogue’s development path and their professional competence which is crucial to their work with educators. We will reflect on the approaches to improving professional work and we will mention certain forms of professional development for educators, as well as the importance of action research and the role of the educator as the reflective practitioner. At the end of the paper, we will also state the challenges that pedagogues most often face in professionally developing educators.

pedagogical competence, pedagogue, professional development, action research, reflective practitioner, challenges

nije evidentirano