Ikimokyklinio ugdymo pedagogo profesijos kompetencijos įsivertinimas
Self-evaluation professional competences of early childhood teachers

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses early childhood teachers’ self-evaluation of professional competences and changes in roles of educators. The goal of the research is to reveal self-evaluation of early childhood teacher competences. The methods of the research include questionnaires and statistical analysis. 204 educators with different experience in pre-school education participated in the research. The research revealed that a big part of preschool educators (approximately half of the respondents) see their competences as moderate. Only the social competence received high evaluation (about 50 % of the educators). The respondents face problems related to insufficient level of analytical-research, educational, communicative, common cultural and change management skills. The research highlighted the tendency of a gradual building up of pre-school education competences: the more extensive the experience, the higher self-evaluation of knowledge, abilities and principles is observed. Only one fourth of the respondents without professional experience (first year students) and a slightly bigger proportion of novice educators consider their competences to be of high level, whereas almost half of the experienced early childhood educators evaluate themselves as skilled professionals. The research also shows that about a third of future educators (first year students) state that they face no problems related to the level of their efficient activity and social competences. However, approximately half of the first year students think that the knowledge and skills of analytical-research and educational activity are insufficient. The professional competence of novice educators received a slightly higher evaluation than that of the students in the research. Almost half of the beginning educators rely on their social competence, though a smaller proportion of them compared to first year students think that they have developed sufficient skills of efficient activity. A considerably smaller part of the beginning educators (one third) provided low evaluation of their research and educational activity skills compared to the group of the students. In the beginning of their professional career approximately one third of educators feel lack of communication skills. The respondents with an extensive professional experience demonstrated a higher self-evaluation of all their competences compared to future and novice educators. More than half of them encounter no problems related to communication, educational, social, efficient activity and self-development competences. However, the experienced educators pointed out an insufficient level of their change management, research, information management and common cultural skills.

• Details
• Contents