Abstract:

The research thesis is based on the assumption that the professional status “teacher” is generalized and could not “take over” the chaos of roles that the teacher performs.

Therefore, the teaching profession should be interpreted as “the existence of a certain (or indefinite) number of independent structural units - components of the teaching profession, which mark different aspects of the teacher’s status in the profession. The roles that the teacher assumes in connection with one or another status act in a system and form a “status space” (Kaloyanova, 2010-2011). But this structure is relative, because a certain status in specific conditions can be "minimized" to a role, and certain roles can be "maximized" to a status. To perform the roles in a certain status, the teacher "unlocks" a set of competencies that determine the functional structure of the role. If there is a deficit in competencies, the functional structure of the role becomes unstable, resp. the role is not well interiorized, the teacher falls into a role conflict, his status in each situation fails to establish itself.

This process is significantly influenced by the attitudes of the teacher, because rejecting the importance of certain roles, the teacher resists the mastery of new competencies, respectively manifests a status-role model that is inadequate to the modern educational environment.

The aim of the study is to be determined empirically the actual status-role and competence models of Bulgarian preschool teachers. The study involved 200 bulgarian preschool teachers.

The research methodology includes a structured questionary, organized in 3 sections.
Section 1 include 9 questions for establishment of teachers attitudes about contemporary professional status and roles.
Section 2 include 9 questions for establishment of teachers attitudes about key professional competences.
Section 3 include demographical questions.

In Section 1 and Section 2 questions represent an ordinal scale, 6 questions have an optional answer, and 10 questions require a free answer from the respondents. The results are analyzed with qualitative and quantitative content analyze, correlative analyze and analyze of the weighting factors. The received results are compared with the results of previous studies. The findings of the study inform about the dynamics of the status-role models of preschool teachers and their dependence on the specific educational situation.

Keywords:

Preschool teachers, teacher's professional roles, teacher's professional competenteces, status-role models.