Innovative models of initial training for early childhood education’s teachers
María C. Domínguez Garrido, Raúl González Fernández, María C. Medina Domínguez, Antonio Medina Rivilla
Early childhood education is the basic educational phase that underlies the educational system. It is a privileged moment in the education of new generations. In the development of this phase, teachers are the key element. It is fundamental that they have a high level initial training, in which they should be given the fundamental abilities to handle the specificity of their student’s age range and to appropriately respond to the changing needs of today’s society. Thus, the new educational model for Early Childhood teachers that we propose is based on the development of the necessary teaching competencies, so that the teachers may carry out their duties in this phase as well as on the belief that the initial training should be strengthened. The study attempts to highlight the essential principles for designing initial training programs that could contribute to improve the professional level of early education teachers. A qualitative inquiry was performed to conduct a content analysis of the discussion groups held with the teaching teams from the Departments of Education of two Spanish and one Mexican universities. The results obtained reveal the predominance of competencies that are linked to human values (empathy, communication, recreation, etc.), in line with relevant beliefs such as community commitment, cultural diversity, human potential, family interaction and collaboration.
Keywords
Competences; Beliefs; Teachers; Preschool Education; Initial training.
