Вестник ТГПУ им Л.Н. Толстого №3 2005

№ 3, 2005 ВЕСТНИК ТГПУ им. Л. Н. Толстого 3. Teachers’ Views - ASurvey This research was conducted in 2002 through 2005, focusing on how teachers saw kindergartens. The target was to become well informed about their opinions on the institutions where they worked and get the idea about how kindergartens functioned in general. The questions were related to school programs, integration, children of different nationalities, personal environment, the children of today and the like. The survey included teachers and head teachers attending courses held by educational centers in various Bohemian and Moravian towns. The sample includes 310 respondents from towns and municipalities of different sizes. The answers to two principal questions were selected to help to illustrate the views and theoretical thoughts in this paper. 3.1 How Do Kindergarten Teachers See Current Preschool Children? The teachers were answering the question what are current preschool children like in 5- 10 key words, which were analyzed in terms of quality and labeled as to frequency, which was later expressed in numbers. Table 1 below shows a list of 20 most frequent features and traits mentioned by the teachers. Order number Teacher description Frequency, % 1 Inquisitive (smart) 32,3 2 Enterprising (active) 26,1 3 Informed (intellectually mature) 21,3 4 Confident 20,3 5 Having speech and self-expressive impediments 20,0 6 Sociable (spontaneous) 19,7 7 Playful 14,5 8-10 Quite independent 12,9 8-10 Emotionally rather deprived 12,9 8-10 Somewhat less sensitive or even aggressive 12,9 11 Grateful for teacher’s attention 12,3 12 Restless (inattentive) 11,9 13 Quite free (happy) 11,6 14 Self-oriented (strong personality) 10,3 15 Sharing little experience with parents 10,0 16-17 Energetic (brave) 9,7 16-17 TV-affected 9,7 18-20 Technically minded (gifted) 8,1 18-20 Creative 8,1 18-20 Rather clumsy 8,1 98,5 % of ail teachers are in favor of natural integration of socially and culturally disadvantaged children and children of different nationalities. All of them support the idea not to exclude the children to form special groups and reception classes. 3.2. How Do Teachers See Current Kindergartens? The following table lists the most frequent answers to the question what are the features of current kindergartens. The answers were obtained under the same conditions and from the same respondents as above. Table 2 lists 20 most frequent answers to the respective questions.