Abstract:

The culture of the educational institution represents one of the key cornerstones of qualitative changes in practice and in the implementation of the basic determinants of the Croatian National Curriculum for Early and Preschool Education (2015) in the Republic of Croatia, and especially in understanding the importance of professional development of educators. Referring to many authors in the work, the culture of educational institution is recognized by the mutual relations of the members of the institution and their common work, management style, organizational and physical environment, and by the degree of focus on continuous learning and research of educational practice.

The theoretical part of the paper relates to the presentation of the complexity and dynamism of the institutional culture, in which its dimensions are presented in more detail, and finally their interdependence in action is emphasized. It is emphasized the importance of professional development as a way to improve the quality of the institutional culture. The empirical part of the paper is about gaining insight into educators' personal perceptions of their own profession and professional development as dimensions of kindergarten culture. The following research questions have been formulated in order to achieve the set research goal: What is it about an individual's life history that determines his or her understanding of professional development within the culture of the institution in which he or she operates? How do educators describe the image of a child, the early education institution, and their role in the children's education? How do educators describe their professional development and what importance do they attach to it? How do educators describe relationships within the institution as one of the dimensions of kindergarten culture? Given the nature of the purpose of this research, a qualitative, narrative approach was used with elements of an ethnographic approach as it looks at participants in their natural environment and starts from their reference frame - personal stories (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007; Halmi, 2013).

The professional development of educators and relationships within the early childhood education institution will be linked as two dimensions of the institutional culture and will gain insight into their inseparability in research of an educational practice (Barrett, 2009; Mac Naughton, & Huges, 2009). Five educators participated in this study and semi-structured interviews were conducted for the purpose of data collection. In order to answer the research questions of this paper, the thematic analysis method was used in the analysis of data obtained through semi-structured interviews. An analysis of the obtained results is given through thematic networks, which provides insight into the educators' understanding of professional development and other factors of the culture of the educational institution.

Keywords:

Culture of an educational institution, narrative approach, professional development, relationships within the institution.