Lidija Vujičić

Professional development of preschool teachers and changing the culture of the institution of early education

ABSTRACT The culture of institutions of early education is a strong network of customs, rules, norms and behaviours that affect the daily life and work of all its individuals. Consequently, the professional development of preschool teachers is not only an individual process of professional advancement, but also a process that changes the culture of the institution of early education and includes all participants of the educational process. In this paper, we examine the perception of the preschool teacher profession and the connection between the preschool teachers’ attitudes about their profession and their focus on continuous learning and exploring personal practice. The research was conducted on a random sample of N = 238 preschool teachers in Croatia. For data collection, we used the Questionnaire for the assessment of the culture of the educational institution designed for the needs of the scientific research project ‘Culture of the educational institution as a factor of co-constructing knowledge’.