Jurka Lepičnik Vodopivec, Darja Žikovšek

Abstract

For children and their parents, starting kindergarten is an important turning point in life. In this period, it is important that parents, prior starting kindergarten, have a quality consultation with the kindergarten’s pedagogue. With his/hers professional knowledge he/she is competent enough to carry out an education counselling interview with parents of preschool children. Through an education counselling interview, a pedagogue presents all aspects of the problem connected with the start of kindergarten, as well as the optimal way of confronting this event. Hereinafter, we present the results of the research which intention was to study the process, contents, and meaning of introductory education counselling interviews with parents. Further, we wanted to establish the pedagogues’ role in Slovenian kindergartens regarding the integration of a child in kindergarten. We obtained an insight in problems that occur during pedagogues’ work directly in practice and stressed proposals which could better their position. Based on the analysis of data gained by interviewing pedagogues employed in Slovenian kindergartens, we found out that the pedagogues’ role regarding the integration of children in kindergartens is not well known yet.

Key words: kindergarten, pedagogue, integration of a child in kindergarten