Abstract
Early childhood is the most important period from a child’s life, as it is marked by crucial moments for its success at school and in life. Adult’s intervention during this period is fundamental. Early education targets the time interval between birth – because the child starts learning and develop since birth–and the age of 6/7 - the age of school start. Early education is done both in the family as well as within the specialized services, as day-care or kindergarten. For most of the teachers (kindergarten teacher – child carers) who took part in this study, early education of the early preschool age children was a challenge, but, after the adjusting period of the children they noticed clear progresses of their behaviour, sometimes even in short intervals of time (1-2 weeks). The subject suggested for research is comprised within the early education field, in the meaning of specialized intervention within the small child’s education. The education before preschool period is very important for the early development of the child.
Keywords: Early childhoodpreschool educationparent’s perceptions
Introduction
Early education is comprised of the total of individual done and social existent or organized
experiences, of which the child benefits in its toddler period, aiming at protecting, growing and
developing the human being by gifting it with abilities and physical, psychic, cultural achievements
which could offer him identity and self-dignity. It is the basis of both physic and psychic as well as
complex social, spiritual and cultural development. What children learn in their first years of life stands
for more than half of what they will learn in their entire life (Official Documents of MECTS, 2008,
2015). Early education refers strictly at the toddlers’ learning moments, in a Romanian concept. This
concept, in a broad sense, means the child’s early development, involves learning, care and protection.
Early education is done as informal education (in the family, in neighbouring and community relations,
by mass-media), and as non-formal education (in sports clubs, clubs for the children, activities from non-
governmental organizations).
In Romanian pedagogy early education is a relatively new concept. In a traditional way, the child’s
between 0 and 6/7 years old pedagogical matter, was considered as preschool education. The current
educational policy involves a specific section regarding early education of the toddler. From a practical
point of view, the focus in the field of early education within the current educational policy is stressed
upon preschool and early preschool education (Travis & Cooper, 1996; Ionescu, 2010; Clipa, 2015).
The aim of the strategy in the field of child’s early education is giving to every child the right to an
education and full development in order to give him the ability to reach its full potential in accordance to
the European and international standards.
The focus on early education and preschool years is important because this is the period when the
children are rapidly growing and if the development process is neglected in this stage, it is more difficult
and expensive to compensate these losses later (Gramaticu, 2011;Badea, 2014; Clipa & Boghean, 2015).
It is well known and obvious the fact that the choices done now and the actions taken by the parents and
society in early childhood have a very strong and long lasting influence on the child’s individual progress
and on the nations progress, in a broader sense (Clipa, Mihalache, Serdenciuc, 2016).
An efficient teaching program is a program which targets at taking into accounts the child from his
first moments of existence and which involves all the educational agents contributing at its growth and
development.
Methodology of Research
The concept of early education refers, thus, to two dimensions the beginning of the educational
concerns from small ages and the family and community’s involvement in the toddler and pre-schooler
child’s education.
beneficial for their development and for the parents to understand the concrete methods of doing early
education.
order to confirm or deny the aimed hypothesis.
In order to guide the research activity we established and formulated the following
The research of the way children of early preschool age adjusts to kindergarten activities;
Investigating the extent to which early education contributes to the development of early pre-schoolers and pre-schoolers sociability and emotionality;
Identifying children’s behavioural, socio-emotional difficulties by observing their behaviour during kindergarten program;
Identifying, registering and analysing the obstacles and specific errors in early pre-schoolers groups;
Analysing the teaching strategies used in early pre-schoolers education, from the studied mater perspective.
The study tried approaching the matter of the extent to which early influence in ante-preschool children education is beneficial for their development and for the families they belong to, targeting especially the social, relational, adjustment component of very small children at kindergarten schedule, when interacting with other adults other than the enlarged family members (parents, brothers, grandparents, uncles) as well as in establishing relationships with same age children.
The
In formulating the
Research variables:
Parents’ subjectivity in filling in the questionnaires, even if they are anonymous
Observing children in their natural environment - their daily activity can be disturbed
by the presence of a stranger, in this case being necessary to read the kindergarten teacher notes
Instruments/ Methods:
-Observing the early preschool and preschool children behaviour; observing and
analysing the kindergarten teacher
-Documents study: taking notes about children development, observations of the kindergarten teacher, analysis of the children activity products (portfolios),
Designing and implementing questionnaires,
Statistical data interpretation.
The experimental research was done aiming at proving the way in which early intervention in
early preschool children education is good for their evolution and for their parents to understand the
actual methods to be used for early education.
The research was done in 10 kindergartens with extended and normal schedules form
Botosaniregion and comprised the following steps:
-
Discussions with the kindergarten teachers, medical and care staffroom kindergartens,
The analysis of the school documents: monthly, annual and semester planning, in compliance with the early education Curricula requirements, the selection of age adequate contents,
-
-
-
As a result of the direct observations, the analysis of the above mentioned documents, the discussions
with all the persons involved in preschool children education the following conclusionswere drawn:
-From the total of 180 children observed and analysed from the 10 groups, 152 of them adjusted
to the kindergarten program when they were two years old with no major problems, in one month (in the
first kindergarten year); 21 of them had adjustment problems with the schedule and in relations to other
adults then their parents; 5 had communication problems in the first 6 months, having great difficulties in
adjusting to the schedule and 3 children could not integrate at the age of two and the parents had to
withdraw them and come back the next year, at the age of three,
-The 16 kindergarten teachers prove to have skills for teaching early preschool children, both by
specific training courses attendance, as well as by proving, in their teaching the competences achieved
from training courses attendance. The kindergarten teacher projects and develops specific activities for
the group level, they observe, interfere, help the children in their social, emotional, intellectual and
practical development; they concentrate the whole teaching process on the formative part, on the children
direct contact with the reality around them, on the development of each child potential depending on its
own possibilities.
The observation is extremely important in child oriented education, being the basis of the preschool
child assessment and consists in the attentive and systematic observation of the child behaviour (without
any intervention from the kindergarten teacher), aiming at noticing its characteristic aspects.
The observation object is the children activity, the products of the activity resulted according to the
programs requests for the preschool education system.
In order to know a child it is necessary a lot of time but also certain competences from the
kindergarten teacher who has to:
-make objective observations;
-Correctly use the necessary instruments for information registration;
- give a pertinent interpretation to the observations.
The information that the kindergarten teacher has to obtain about the child refers to:
-the way it interacts with the objects (how it handles them, if he invents new ways of using them, if he
plays with the materials from all the Centres, if he uses a variety of materials or chooses only some of
them);
-the way the child interacts with the others (kindergarten teacher, children, other adults): verbal/non-
verbal communication way, self-control ability, communication initiative, ability to express emotions and
understand other children/adults emotions;
-the relations within the social preschool children group (if the child plays with the others, what roles
does it prefer, if he initiates games, with which children it prefers to play).
As a result of the questionnaire applied to the plot of selected subjects, namely 142, the following
conclusions were drawn:
1. What is the reason for which you chose this kindergarten?
1.Are you satisfied with the teaching quality that your child gets at kindergarten?
The majority of the parents (76%) are declared very satisfied about the quality of the teaching
methods for early education. In other article the teaching activity is perceived by the teacher from
kindergarten as one of the most stressful occupations, leading to the presumption that the preschool
teacher occupation is as stressful, as the study results confirm (Clipa&Boghean, 2015).
For the questions: Are you supported by the kindergarten’s staff in educating your children? –
Parents give answer in this way:
For the next question about efficiency of the communication between parents and teachers, they
give many positive answers (97% are very satisfied).
For the following question about solve the different problem a big percent of this sample (87%)
give a positive answers.
Parents want to register the children in kindergarten at the different ages. The most of the parents
bring the children at two years old in educational institution. The numbers are in a follow table:
Parents consider adapt of the children for the kindergarten schedule with some difficulties. Most of
the parents choose partially adapt to this and 17% consider this very good.
Parents consider very useful for children development to attend the early preschool group. All
parents from the sample are agreeing to this:
Conclusions
Early childhood is the most important period from a child’s life, since it is influenced by crucial
moments for his later success, at school and in life. The adult’s intervention on the child during this
period is fundamental. Early education targets the period of time comprised between births- because the
child starts developing and learning since birth until the age of 6 or 7 – the age it attends school. This
education is done within both family and specialized services, as well as in day-care or kindergarten
(Vrasmas, 2002; Ionescu, 2010).
The results of the research proved that early integration of the children in early preschool
kindergarten groups has a stimulating effect on the development of their abilities to relate, communicate,
assimilate; it is a necessity for the family – which does not cover socially speaking, the period comprised
between 2 and 3 years old, since the mother starts working again till the child attends youngsters group,
in accordance with the National Education Law.
For most of the teachers (kindergarten teacher – child carers)who took part in this study, early
education of the early preschool age children was a challenge, but, after the adjusting period of the
children they noticed clear progresses of their behaviour, sometimes even in short intervals of time (1-2
weeks).
An early stimulation is very important for the child development, even if we think or notice that
the little one cannot finish the tasks he received or understand the game rules. As the time passes he will
grow up and will be able to finish the skills exercises. Focusing on early education is normal, as it is
known that children development is rapid in this age stage, and the exploitation of the potential the child
has creates the premises for his following achievements.
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Publication Date
25 May 2017
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Educational strategies, educational policy, organization of education, management of education, teacher, teacher training
Cite this article as:
Clipa, O., & Gavriluță, P. (2017). Early Childhood Education – Parents’ Perceptions. In E. Soare, & C. Langa (Eds.), Education Facing Contemporary World Issues, vol 23. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 1716-1723). Future Academy. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017.05.02.210