Abstract:

High level of teacher training, as well as well-designed career development and long-life learning of teachers are considered to be very important standpoints for education from preschool to university settings. It is no doubt, that without professional competences of teachers, quality education of preschool children cannot be secured. European organizations such as the European Commission and the European Council, explicitly argue for providing and securing high-quality early childhood education. Several studies have provided compelling evidence that an investment in education and training benefiting young children produces the largest gains in terms of human capital, for both children and society.

Recent research has shown the importance of teacher sensitivity for young children’s recent and later academic, behavioural and socio-emotional development. Moreover, teacher sensitivity has been found to have compensatory effects for the development of children at-risk. Therefore, the Playing-2-gether program (P2G) aims to improve teacher sensitivity for both pre-service and in-service teachers when playing with pre-schoolers in the classroom. By training both non-verbal and verbal teacher sensitivity skills, teachers are supported in dealing with diversified groups of learners. The program was developed within the Erasmus + project, KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. The most impacted field is (KA201) Strategic partnerships for school education in cooperation with higher education institutions from Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands and Slovakia.

The intention of the program is to help the teacher improve the environment with play activities in order to help children to better inclusion and socialization in kindergartens. Within the project, free and directed plays are defined based on the theories of Pianta (2015), Hamre et al. (2014), Vancraeyveldt (2015) and others. Based on the above mentioned theoretical sources of the program, individual principles were applied in Slovak conditions. The program is implemented in a kindergarten with selected children, who have behavioural problems and problems with adaptation in the classroom environment. The paper deals with the description of child behaviour and teacher intervention through P2G. The naturalistic observation and the analysis of realized video recordings show the possibility to implement the program in kindergartens with regard to the socio-cultural context. At the same time, it will serve as a methodological source for pre-service and in-service teachers. The outputs of the project published on the web platform in Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will provide the possibility for sharing the mutual experience of kindergarten teachers at the European level, which is also the goal of the project and it contributes to the internationalization of pre-school education.

Keywords:

Preschool education, playing together program, teacher sensivity, good practise videos, Massive Open Online Course.