The core of a good school is a good teacher. Our aim is to support teachers, as ones of the most relevant stakeholders in the whole preschool educational process. We aim to improve their competences, support their educational opportunities and strengthen their position in the eyes of parents. The concept of self-evaluation is a quite new concept and its application in preschool education may help teachers to enhance the quality of their educational activities namely, increase the level of adoption of new abilities and skills by preschoolers. Adoption of the new methodology on how to implement the self-evaluation concept into the educational process reinforces pedagogical competences of preschool teachers. In today's world, parents have huge opportunities to get information about parenting and also about preschool education, they also discuss many issues with friends and relatives. Unfortunately, there is also a big room for myths and misleading advice, which makes the situation more challenging for teachers who need to provide parents with more qualified and understandable arguments than before. With the help of innovative and sophisticated pedagogical methods helping children to increase their potential the teachers gain more respect in the eyes of parents and also colleagues. Our project aims to support teachers in kindergartens with the efficient, user-friendly and also flexible tool for the self-evaluation of their activities and professional competences. The tool will be designed to provide teachers with the relevant and individual information helping them to evaluate and develop their competences. The records can be made in paper or digital form which makes the tool users-friendly. The tool will be flexible and adaptable for the individual needs of each teacher and also region. The main innovation our team experts and practitioners offers is the application of the new concept of self-evaluation, the concept that will be tested, scientifically proved and discussed with all stakeholders. We do not have the ambition to create new models and theories, we aim to collect and analyze existing approaches and design, test and implement a new methodological tool in accordance with current knowledge and opportunities we have. We will focus on its usability. It will be the most important innovativeness of our project. We plan to maintain the following activities: 1. describing and sharing the current methods of self-evaluation and identifying the needs of teachers for the advanced and innovative methods and determining the “Quality framework of teacher work in preschool” 2. defining and creating a methodological tool for teachers both in paper and in digital form 3. implementation of the new methodological tool into the daily routine 4. Dissemination of the outcomes There are 6 partnering organisations involved in the project: 1)Vzdělávací a diagnostické středisko STEP s.r.o. (Czechia) - coordination partner, counselling centre 2) Základní a mateřská škola Barrandov (Czechia) - kindergarten 3) Budur Nene Hatun Anaokulu (Turkey) - kindergarten 4) Burdur RehbelikArastirma Merkezi (Turkey) - guidance and research centre 5) University of Latvija (Latvia) - university 6) Rigas pirmsskolas izlitibas iestade Madarina (Latvia) - kindergarten The outcomes of the project will be available for all educators working in preschool education: - official outputs (methodological tool, teachers guide) - Information kit (banners, short texts, video and the sources of outputs in relevant countries) - more comprehensive information about the project in the special section on the website of the leading organization Our new tool is not only based on scientific theories. The tool should be user-friendly and very beneficial for its users - teachers. Therefore we will prepare in the standard (paper) version and also in two digital versions to eliminate the need for paperwork. The digital application (SW) will be the main innovativeness of our project. The S-E app (the self-evaluation application) will be flexible (adaptable) to respond to the individual needs of teachers/schools. It means the teachers will be able to set up their goals and evaluate the achieved results more easily than when using the paper version. The app can be used on mobile devices, which makes it more flexible. We expect the positive results will lead to the enhancement of teaching competences of preschool teachers, first in the participating kindergartens and then also in other regions and countries.
Our project aimed to support kindergarten teachers with an effective, user-friendly and at the same time flexible tool for self-evaluation of their activities and professional competencies. An application designed to provide teachers with relevant and individualized information to help them evaluate and develop their competencies. At the same time, we decided to offer educators an overview of essential activities that will help them strengthen relevant competencies. From a technical point of view, we set ourselves the goal of creating a tool using the possibilities of digital processing with the options of use on different devices. At the same time, we decided to create a flexible and customizable version for the hitherto undescribed needs of each teacher and region (editable version). The main innovation that our team of experts and practitioners offers is the application of a new concept of self-evaluation. We created this concept in cooperation with kindergarten teachers and designed it for their needs.
The foundation of a good school is a good teacher. This statement is true at all levels of education. In discussions with kindergarten teachers, we identified a fundamental contradiction between the need for a conceptual approach to developing their professional competencies on the one hand and the formality of various forms of assessment, self-evaluation (self-evaluation) and personal development planning on the other. The above contradiction we also may define as the need for educators to perform self-evaluation in a safe, effective and meaningful way. At the same time, be able to interpret the results found in a way that will contribute to the targeted professional development of teachers. The concept of self-evaluation is not unknown, and most educators can list the entire list of advantages it brings. Nevertheless, the functional idea of self-evaluation is not a common standard in many European countries, which we confirmed during discussions with other project partners. Together, we decided to contribute to the beginning of solving the problem by creating a specific tool that supports preschool teachers' meaningful and effective self-evaluation.