engleski

Structural dimensions of the culture of the institution of early education: Ensuring the well-being of child

The culture of a preschool institution is determined as a strong network of traditions, rules, norms and behaviours of all its participants and is recognised by their mutual relations, by the leadership of the institution, by the organisational and physical surrounding and by the level of orientation to learning and research. The spatial and material surrounding and the time organisation of living are the structural dimensions of the context of the institutution through which the culture of the institution becomes transparent. Therefore we opine that the structural dimensions of the context of the institution powerfully determine the mode and the quality of children’s lives. The National curriculum for early and preschool education (2014) is oriented towards ensuring the wellbeing of a child and is an interactive and contextual process which integrates a successful individual functioning and positive social relations in a quality surrounding of the kindergarten which, among other things, is constituted by space, materials and time organisation. Thus an appropriate organisation of structural dimensions of the context of the institution can be considered as one of the ways of ensuring the well-being of a child. The work presents the differences in shaping structural dimensions of the context of the institution in three different countries. The research was conducted on the overall sample of N = 680 educators in Croatia (35%), Serbia (40.4%) and Slovenia (24.6%). The Questionnaire for the Evaluation of the Culture of an Educational Institution, which has been designed for the purposes of the scientific and research project „The Culture of an Educational Institution as a Factor in the Co-Construction of Knowledge“ by the Faculty of Teacher Education in Rijeka was used for data collection. Using the Scale of the State of Kindergarten Culture we strived to examine the current state of structural dimensions in institutions of early education. In order to determine whether there are differences in shaping structual dimensions in the institutions of early education between the three countries, a unidirectional analysis of the variance (ANOVA) was undertaken. A statistically significant difference was found between the countries in all the variables of the current state of structural dimensions of the institution. The findings indicated that educators in Croatian institutions of early education apply contemporary strategies in designing and organisation of the spatial and material surrounding more often, as well as implement a more flexible time organisation of living in the institution.

the culture of the institution of early education ; structural dimensions of an institution wellbeing of a child

Rad je prezentiran u sklopu projekta "Kultura odgojno-obrazovne ustanove kao čimbenik sukonstrukcije znanja" Sveučilišta u Rijeci (broj potpore: 13.10.2.2.01