Abstract:

The paradigmatic shift from the empirical-analytical, positivist towards the interpretive, critical paradigm has conditioned, among other things, a change in the role of preschool teachers in the educational process (Vujičić, 2016; Šagud, 2011) since research shows that the practitioner, i.e., the teacher or preschool teacher is the most important factor influencing the success of pupils, i.e., children.

In the construct of the new professionalism of preschool teachers, Fullan (2005), Rinaldi (2006), and others refer to contemporary practitioners as theorists in action, theoretical practitioners, systematic thinkers, and new theorists. Preschool teachers today can no longer be understood as “passive technicians,” who simply learn skills through the process of initial education, which they later copy or transfer into educational practice. For this reason, it is necessary to provide forms of preschool teachers’ professional development that will have a research character and will allow preschool teachers to question their own beliefs, experiences, and daily practice. The transformational potential of such forms lies in their constant purification and deepening of personal vision, directing of the forces, objective knowledge of the reality of the institutional context through continuous examination, reflection, and discussion of the objective reality, as indicated by many authors discussed in this research.

The paper presents the two most common forms of professional development that have such potential: documenting the educational process and researching one’s own educational practice.

The process of collecting documentation enables the visibility of the work in early and preschool education institutions and makes it subject of further interpretation, dialogue, and understanding. Documentation, understood as alternating the collection and reflection, is not a one-time phenomenon but a process in which preschool teachers can find importance for further improvement of educational practice and a better understanding of children and their role in the educational process.

The goal to be pursued is the discourse of participation in documenting, in which pedagogical documentation is viewed as a means of reflective practice as well as a basis for joint thinking with colleagues and children. It, thus, becomes the main source of preschool teachers’ professional development and the improvement in the quality of the overall early and preschool education.

Action research was chosen as a basic methodological strategy given that its focus lies in the development of preschool teachers’ reflective practice and the process of researching one’s own educational practice.

Keywords:

Action research, documentation, discourse, reflective practice, video-reflexive methodology.