Abstract:

Study deals with research on current children, which is associated with VEGA project 1/0598/15 „Children at the threshold of education and their world“. From the wider context of research of children we are dealing with this part of research: social space of current children.

The aim of the research is to explore the concepts and preconcepts of young learners about selected concepts of social space – home, leisure time, games and toys and children relationship to the given social attributes – desires and pleasures, ambitions and fears. The research strategy is a qualitative research using quantitative research procedures as well. Research methods are flexible semi-structured interviews with children and questionnaire for adults. Questions for children in the interview are analogous to the questions in the questionnaire for teachers and parents. The structure of the interview and the questionnaire were constructed in the following way: interview questions for children were made by categorizing the possible category of responses that we subsequently used as options for questions in the questionnaire for teachers and parents. Children's answers from the interview are compared to adult responses. We find out if they match or, respectively, do not match with the views of adults on current children with real answers of current young learners.
The research sample consists of children aged 5-7 years from schools selected by available selection stratified throughout the territory of the Slovak Republic, teachers of primary education, teachers of pre-primary education and parents. Research has been carried out in 2016-2017.

The expected benefits of our research should be updated knowledge about the social space of current children. The benefit of the research findings is intended to the teachers of early education, who will be informed about results of research as well as about methods of objective observation and examination of children preconcepts.

Keywords:

Young learners, parent, teacher, social space, home, leisure time, games, toys, desires, ambitions, children's fears.