In this paper, we discuss the term literacy, focusing on how the term is known among educators and assistant educators. This paper consists of a theoretical and an empirical part. In the theoretical part, we first define literacy, we present the past of literacy, and we list and describe some types of literacy that we believe educators and assistant educators should be well familiar with. Then, we present research on literacy made in Slovenia and some of the latest results. We also present the estimated literacy level of professional workers and their competences. We also define how professional workers can promote the development of literacy in children. At the end, we describe the Montessori Pedagogy Programme and the role of educators in the learning process and children’s development within this programme.
The empirical part consists of the analysis and interpretation of the results of our survey. Questionnaires were completed by 58 professional workers, but all of them did not answer all questions, which is why we state the number of answers for each question separately. The professional workers included in the survey are employed in public and private kindergartens, a Montessori Pedagogy kindergarten and an elementary school. The research was performed quantitatively. First, we present the demographic information on professional workers: genre, age, level of education, years of service, job title, and employer. Answers are presented in graphs and tables, and explained based on scientific literature.
The analysis showed that all professional workers believe that they are literate and they are aware that they need to improve their literacy by taking part in different training courses, reading and similar activities. We found that professional workers mostly have a good knowledge of mathematical, reading, computer and media literacy. Most of them believe that reading literacy needs to be developed in children and they use different activities to promote the development of different types of literacy. Almost half of professional workers believe that there are differences in the level of literacy among educators and assistant educators. We found that professional workers can well define literacy and they develop their literacy by reading, taking part in training courses, and using interactive technologies. We received answers on how professional workers daily use mathematical literacy and we discovered where they are most often confronted with literacy challenges. Professional workers also had to complete a special task that included writing an invitation to a parent-teacher meeting – which was well done by everyone. The last question with 15 statements, rated using the Likert scale, provided different data that was used for determining whether they agree with the statements or not. The survey successfully provided all the required data that answered the research questions that were raised before the beginning of the research. We also gained interesting data on the opinion of educators regarding the importance of literacy, their activities for the development of literacy, how often they develop their literacy, and how they value the goals set out in the curriculum for kindergartens in the field of literacy.
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