Children with special needs who, due to the complexity of their deficits or the simultaneous expression of several special needs, are unable to keep up with the pace of work in the regular kindergarten group are during the pre-school period included in the Adapted Preschool Programme. In order to provide the most holistic and high-quality treatment for children with special needs, teams of professionals are formed in the kindergarten special education unit to plan, implement and evaluate educational work in teams. Within the kindergarten special education unit the preschool teacher of children with special needs and the assistant preschool teacher work as a team every day, and are joined by other professionals, depending on the identified special needs of each individual child. The effectiveness of their teamwork can be influenced by various factors: the composition of the team, the conditions under which teamwork is carried out, the motivation of the team members, the personality traits of the team members, etc. An important personality trait that affects not only the teamwork efficiency but also other factors of teamwork, is the emotional competency of team members. The aim of the study was to examine the teamwork of education professionals in the kindergarten special education unit, to find out the emotional competence of education professionals in teamwork and to investigate the statistical correlation between the emotional competency of education professionals in teamwork and other factors of teamwork (frequency of teamwork stages, efficiency of own teamwork, motivation for teamwork, teamwork skills). Forty-two education professionals working in the kindergarten special education unit were included in the sample. The data were obtained by means of an electronic questionnaire as part of a larger study under the internal research project Psihološke razsežnosti timskega dela in njihov prispevek k učinkovitosti timov v vzgoji in izobraževanju (TIMDEVI). We found that the diversity of professional profiles of the education professionals involved in the team in the kindergarten special education unit is very high, which is very important in terms of providing a holistic, interdisciplinary treatment for children with special needs. We also found that the interviewed educational professionals have mostly positive experiences both with teamwork in the kindergarten special education unit and with teamwork with external experts. The data collected suggest that, on average, all areas of efficiency in teamwork are about equally well developed among the education professionals in the kindergarten special education unit. The most frequently performed stage of teamwork is team teaching, while team planning and team evaluation are less frequently preformed. In the area of emotional competency, on average, education professionals in the kindergarten special education unit have the highest development of self-regulation of emotions in teamwork, and the lowest development of recognising and understanding emotions in teamwork. The more emotionally competent and less emotionally competent education professionals in teamwork in the kindergarten special education unit differ statistically significantly in the frequency of performing the team planning and team evaluation stages, but not in the frequency of performing the team teaching stage. Education professionals in the kindergarten special education unit who demonstrate greater emotional competency in teamwork have a higher perceptions of their own team's effectiveness, are more motivated to work as a team and demonstrate better teamwork skills.
|
