University Kindergarten-A Specific Platform For Education And Collaboration Of All Its Agents

Abstract

Since 2011, nine kindergartens have been founded by universities in the Czech Republic with financial support from the EU. These kindergartens were set up as private schools to help reconcile professional and parental roles of mostly university staff. A research was conducted in one of these schools in order to describe it and to reveal the context in which it operates. The research also had an ambition to understand how the kindergarten works and to characterize the subjects and circumstances which affect it most. The strategy of the research was to make a case study including interviews with school stakeholders - teachers, parents, teaching staff in pedagogy apprenticeship and with members of the school board representing the founding institution as well. In addition, there was a questionnaire survey for parents, observation of school events, and a content analysis of the school documents. The obtained data showed that the examined kindergarten is working under specific conditions of high contextual conditionality and mutual sharing with the university environment. The functioning of the school is conditioned by an intensive interaction with parents from the university, teachers in training, the school board and the faculty that is part of the founding university and which prepares students.

Keywords: Agents of universitycase studycollaborationkindergarten

Introduction

One of the tools for state family support is assistance in daycare of pre-school children. In this family policy agenda, proper kindergartens have their irreplaceable role. It opens up one of the tasks of their work - aimed at parents and fulfilment of their job responsibilities and professional ambitions. Kindergarten is an important tool for providing a broad, physically and financially accessible professional daycare service for pre-school children and it also represents a guarantee of their harmonious development through purposeful education.

The emergence of university kindergartens in the Czech Republic was a response to the lack of places for pre-school children in regional kindergartens. Since 2010, 9 out of 16 Czech universities established a university kindergarten with financial support from the EU Social Funds. Another important motive for their establishment was to contribute to the reconciliation of the parental and professional roles of their employees. The purpose of the university kindergartens was to meet the demands of university staff and students and to accelerate their return to work or study. These kindergartens have become an effective tool applied to young families with pre-school children, i.e. in the early stages of their parenthood. It should be noted that the possibility of placing a child in this type of school was an employee bonus that increased the credibility of the workplace itself.

A report of research from 2015-16 carried out at one of the university kindergartens was published in the form of a monograph (Majerčíková & Rebendová, 2016). For the purposes of this study, we analysed one of the aspects of life at one of the studied schools, namely the functioning of the school reflected in the mutual interactions of its agents.

Problem Statement

University kindergartens are pre-school facilities where certain specifics can be expected. The main feature that distinguishes them from other institutions, such as public nursery schools, is the fact that their founder is a university. The university, as a legal person, co-finances and governs the school. The management of the school takes place in cooperation with the school director and the Board of school legal entity, which constitutes an administrative body representing the founder. The Board of school legal entity includes parents and other university staff.

Another aspect determining the character of the university kindergarten is the fact that it fulfils the criteria for the status of a corporate school, i.e. schools designed to educate the children of the employees of the founder or other employers. The corporate school has a legally authorized right to accept children to the kindergarten preferentially by a decision of the founder, without this procedure being considered discriminatory. The kindergarten therefore primarily concentrates children of academics and students of the given university, which already establishes prerequisites for creation of a relatively specific educational environment.

Parents in university kindergartens are characterized by a common level of education. These parents have college education, in many cases they have a doctoral degree. Some of the parents also have other academic degrees, acting as university educators. It determines their actions, behaviour, attitudes, opinions, attitudes towards institutional pre-school education and specific school. There is no doubt that attitudes of parents towards school and education can be differentiated according to the social class they belong to or the type of education they have. We include university parents in the so-called new middle class, whose main focus is education and professional qualification that allows them the same social advance as the one achieved by old middle classes through acquired financial capital (Keller, 2012). This predicts the quality of their collaboration with their children's school. Today, we know that middle-class families are the best at understanding the school's "language" and that they cooperate well with the schools, and also middle-class children are more successful at school, have better grades, and their parents have a closer relationship with the school (Šeďová, 2009).

Even pedagogical sciences reflect sociological explanation theory, especially education reproduction theory, in their justification and explanation of parental influence on education of their offspring, which they consider important. However, the most frequently concept for explanation of children’s school performance is the cultural capital by P. Bourdieu. It appears that even in pre-school facilities, influence of parents with a high level of cultural capital can be apparent. Researches with pre-school children indicate that parents declare different educational aspirations for their children even before their school results can be influenced (Reed, 2012).

Some university kindergartens also fulfil the function of a training workplace and provide room for realization of pedagogical apprenticeships of students of pedagogical fields at given university, if such fields are accredited there. In terminology of university education of teacher adepts - these are the faculty kindergartens. They create space for development of professional teacher skills, they are able to engage in research activities and university projects and can represent a target group for various courses and other forms of lifelong education of teachers (Průcha & Veteška, 2012). This fact certainly affects the functioning and development of the kindergarten itself.

University kindergarten therefore represents a distinct platform for education of pre-school children. In social system, it functions as a social unit which, by its nature, fulfils the character of a social institution and social organization. These terms are distinguished mainly in sociological discourse. Social institutions, such as school, family, church or army for example, are an important feature of every culture. If we are confronted with the institutions of a given culture, we have the opportunity to get to learn and understand it. Social institutions, representing the basic elements of each society, present the predominant way of transmitted ideas and behaviours, offer behavioural patterns and represent a guide to how to meet society's needs. The institutional form of the kindergarten has its rules and legislative anchoring, which must be respected. If an institution means a way of doing something, a social organization is made up of people who carry out this institutionalized activity (Collective of authors, 2006) and who are involved in endowing it with a unique character. It is the people, the agents and the relationships created in the organization that determine its character. The kindergarten is therefore a coin with two sides - one as a social institution, the other one as a social organization. University kindergarten provides room for co-existence and mutual sharing not only of teachers and children, but also of students in apprenticeship and to a great extent also of their parents.

Research Questions

In the research, we had the ambition to reveal the specific nature of the university kindergarten through a case study. We chose a single-case study to capture the complexity of the case and holistically describe the relevant relationships (Hendl, 2005). In the relevant context and in connection to the research objectives, we formulated a key research question:

What are the characteristics of a university kindergarten and in which ways is it specific?

The main question was further specified into the following partial research questions:

• What are the subjects and circumstances with which the kindergarten interacts the most and which enter its life.

• How the kindergarten works in mutual interaction of all school agents.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research in the study was to describe the case of a kindergarten that lives, works and develops in an academic environment with regard to the people who meet there. For the description and understanding of the activity at the kindergarten we used the concept of a case study which integrates qualitative and quantitative research orientation. It is known that this strategy offers the opportunity to learn and understand one or a few cases in detail.

The aim of this research was:

• Examine the kindergarten and the context in which it operates.

• To characterize the subjects and the circumstances with which the kindergarten interacts most and which influence its functioning.

• Understand how the kindergarten works in mutual interactions of its agents.

Research Methods

In the present research, the case study was perceived as a research strategy, a research approach. It is intended to use different sources of data obtained through several purposefully combined research methods. As already mentioned, this strategy has also been applied in the presented research. The data was therefore collected through several research methods, both qualitative and quantitative ones. The following research methods were used

• Content analysis of school documents. We analysed pedagogical and other documents related to the functioning of the kindergarten, for example the statutes of the school; inspection report; school education program; records from parents' meetings; records from pedagogical boards; the concept of school development, etc.

• Interview with 14 persons from the kindergarten - with the headmaster of the school, teachers and parents, students in apprenticeship and with members of the Board of school legal entity.

• Observation during 12 school days. This was an open and unstructured observation with the aim of minimizing interactions with children, teachers and other school staff.

• Questionnaire administered to parents of children.

Considering its methods of data collection and analysis, the study inclined to rather qualitative research design. In line with Hendl (2005), we tried to give meaning to the collected data, while we wanted to proceed more holistically, that is by examining these data as a whole. Yin (2014) distinguishes two general data analysis strategies: a strategy based on certain theoretical assertions and the procedure which is more about case description. In case description, the researcher looks for a set of topics and fields that are primarily related to the research question and which should appropriately cover the whole examined case. Our procedures have been tied to this approach; in our research we mostly remained at the descriptive level.

Findings

As a part of the analysis of the acquired empirical data and in combination with field remarks, three functional dimensions of the examined school emerged to form its image. These identified dimensions offered a kind of sketch of the examined school. These were evident in the data obtained from the sources cited above and in certain connotations and through various prisms they resonated in the testimonies of all participants and respondents.

Conclusion

Discussions about any school and its nature point to a dual basic institutional, organizational relationship framework (Pol, 2007). The examined kindergarten also functions as an institution that must respect all the requirements of a private, corporate and faculty school. As shown in the research data, it also develops from the inside, living its story of a school as an organization, profiling its unique character in the dimension of school management, the educational dimension, and the dimension of collaboration with parents. In the case of the institutional and organizational framework of the kindergarten, however, these are not two completely separate assignments and above all - it is not a trivial and potentially problem-free relationship.

The studied kindergarten works under specific conditions of a high contextual conditionality and mutual sharing in connection with the university environment. Due to external conditions and circumstances, a community of people emerged, who have made a joint effort to achieve common goals. It turns out that these people are coaching each other and they grow professionally. Collaboration of all people at the kindergarten appears to be a challenge. It assumes that everyone understands where and why the kindergarten is headed, how their cooperation supports this direction and what strategies are to be used in this collaboration. It is not an easy process, but rather a complicated way of constantly communicating, fine-tuning, discussing, modifying the goals and procedures to achieve them. Words from the school director: The point is to simply find a way in which we will all be able to communicate together ... to cooperate and to form a certain unit together. The success or failure of a school often depends on how to connect personal visions of people - especially the school employees, but also those around the school (Kaldestad, 2009). That is what the studied university kindergarten is always trying to do.

Acknowledgments

The study was created with the support of the project FHS TBU in Zlín - Changes of Child and Childhood and Professionalisation of Teaching.

References

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