The kindergarten period represents a time of a child’s intensive development in all areas and has an important impact on their future life, which is why it requires special attention. Educational professionals in kindergartens are usually the first ones to recognize developmental deviations of children and provide them with appropriate support – early intervention. Collaboration between professionals who directly work with children is very important, with kindergarten teachers for early intervention and kindergarten teachers playing a key role. In this master’s thesis, we examined the implementation of early intervention in kindergartens with adapted implementation and additional professional assistance, as well as early intervention educators’ attitudes and experiences regarding collaboration with educators. We also wanted to research the prevalence of co-teaching in kindergartens, which is otherwise familiar from the school context as collaborative teaching. In this study, we used the descriptive and causal non-experimental educational research method, and we designed a survey questionnaire. The study included 48 kindergarten teachers for early intervention, who provide additional professional assistance to children with special needs and work with children with risk factors. The results of the study showed that the most common form of work is individual and outside the classroom. Children’s special needs are the factor that influences the decision of early intervention educators regarding their form of work the most. The participants hold very positive attitudes regarding collaboration with educators. They most often collaborate in the daily exchange of information about children and work with them. In more than half of the cases, the initiative for cooperation comes from both professionals, in a little less than half from the early intervention educator, while the initiative from the educator is very rare. Participants would like to have more joint training sessions, mutual classroom observations and co-teaching activities. They find the benefits of collaboration mostly in a more holistic insight into the child and the group, while they list the lack of time as the biggest limitation. When researching the prevalence of collaborative approaches, we found that early childhood educators are most familiar with the approach in which observers are present in the classroom. Early intervention educators have positive attitudes regarding the approaches of co-teaching in kindergarten, with the most common approach being providing immediate help and support to children.
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