Abstract:

One of the most important tasks of preschool educators in kindergarten is the development of positive relationships as a basic prerequisite for the healthy and optimal socio-emotional development of children. Starting from the definition and operationalization of the relationship between educators and children in terms of two basic areas: Closeness and Conflict. This paper analyses these two aspects, as well as the role of personal characteristics of educators and children in their development. At the same time, it is important to emphasize that the younger the children, the greater the specifics and challenges in developing the relationship between educators and children, so this paper focuses on analyzing some aspects between educators and toddlers. Since previous research has shown that the relationship between educators and children is significantly determined by several variables (the personality traits of educators, their well-being, the temperament of children, and socio-demographic characteristics such as the gender and age of children and educators, as well as the difficulty of working with children), closeness and conflict between educators and children are analyzed in relation to these variables. The relationship between them and whether it is possible to predict closeness and conflict between educators and toddlers based on the above variables are investigated. A total of 22 kindergarten teachers from 6 randomly selected kindergartens in the counties of Primorje-Gorski Kotar and Istria participated in the study. The kindergarten teachers assessed their relationship with toddlers in their groups, their temperament, the difficulty of working with them, their own personality traits, optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness. A total of 77 children (35 boys and 42 girls) with a mean age of M=2.74 were assessed in the range of 1 to 3 years. The educators evaluated 1 to 8 children in the groups they work with, maintaining anonymity and confidentiality of the data at the highest level. On average, they rated working with children as easier, closeness as greater, and conflict with young children as less. After performing correlation analyses, high and significant correlations of closeness and conflicts with ease of work, gender and age of children, age of educators, and temperament of children were found. Accordingly, the regression analyses performed showed that significant predictors of high closeness between educators and young children were high ease in working with children, high sociability and emotionality of children, younger age of educators, younger age of children, and higher life satisfaction and low happiness and agreeableness in educators. For the conflict between educators and children, greater difficulty at work and higher age of the educator emerged as significant predictors. In addition, higher levels of happiness and optimism and lower levels of conscientiousness among educators were found to be significant predictors of higher levels of conflict. Although this is one of the few studies in this area, the results indicate the importance of developing the quality of the relationship between educators and young children and professional programs to support educators, taking into account the described results on significant predictors of closeness and conflict in their relationship.

Keywords:

Closeness, conflict, early childhood educators, personal variables, toddlers.