Teachers in kindergartens deal with different children. Each child brings their own story to a group, which affects the course of educational work in various ways. The vast majority of pre-school teachers have certainly already encountered deviant behaviour, with some of them paying more attention to this and others less, and some failing to notice this type of behaviour.
My master's thesis aims to primarily address pre-school teachers about the importance of their preventive action prior to the occurrence of deviant behaviour. In the theoretical part, I first present the child's social and emotional development, which is essential to understand the child's response to various external stimuli. I subsequently define deviant behaviour and outline the factors conducive to the development of deviant behaviour. The theoretical part is concluded by offering kindergarten teachers, educators and other professionals the guidelines and strategies they may apply in their work with children to prevent deviant behaviour. I further support the theoretical background of the thesis with research work employing the qualitative method of work. I conducted six interviews with pre-school teachers employed both in public and private kindergartens. I explored how teachers perceive deviant behaviour in their work, what the forms of deviant behaviour are that teachers most often encounter, how they respond to such behaviour and what they do to avoid deviant behaviour in their work. Moreover, I dedicated part of the research to the operation of the counselling service in public kindergartens and to the options that teachers employed in private kindergartens with no counselling service as part of their organisation have when seeking additional professional help.
The research has shown that pre-school teachers perceive deviant child behaviour in their work. The most common forms of deviant behaviour manifestations include disregarding the rules in a group, physical violence, opposing the teacher and thus gaining their peer's attention, low concentration levels, inability to perform simple tasks, and apathy. In response to such behaviour, teachers most frequently react with calmness or resort to playfulness. Trying to address the perceived deviant behaviour in a comprehensive manner, they often make in-depth observations of the child and explore the reasons for the occurrence of this type of behaviour. Pre-school teachers in public kindergartens can turn to the counselling service for help while in private kindergartens there is no such service provided and teachers have to work on their own to find solutions or contact various experts individually or jointly with the kindergarten management.
With my master's thesis, I primarily wish to encourage pre-school teachers to employ preventive action in their work prior to the occurrence of deviant behaviour thus trying to prevent its emergence. In addition, I want to highlight a gap that we may observe in private kindergartens. Despite the quality of work maintained in private kindergartens, there are nevertheless too many deviations in dealing with various developmental disabilities affecting children. Teachers in private kindergartens are left to cope on their own and lack the opportunity to work with a counselling service within their institution. They may obtain the assistance of a counselling service outside their institution, but in most cases it is too late for preventive action.
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