The aim of this master's thesis is to determine the competencies and approaches that may be
helpful to preschool teachers when working with children with special needs in a group, best
practices and challenges preschool teachers face when working with children with special needs
in a group, forms of support offered to preschool teachers when working with children with
special needs, the rule of a caregiver of a child with special needs according to preschool
teachers and the experience preschool teachers have in cooperating with a caregiver of a child
with special needs. In the theoretical introduction, I first present a chapter on children with
special needs in preschool. I continue with a chapter on the role of preschool teachers when
working with children with special needs. In the last section of the theoretical introduction, I
present support systems in preschool. The empirical part presents experience of nine preschool
teachers that have a child with special needs in their group and their caregivers. It was
determined that preschool teachers must display different competencies to work with children
with special needs, including knowledge, experience and personal characteristics. When
working with children with special needs in a group, they use different pedagogic methods and
approaches. Preschool teachers also face numerous challenges and cooperate both with
professional services within the preschool and professional services outside the preschool. They
perceive cooperation with caregivers of children with special needs, with whom they have
different experience in practice, as an important preschool support system. The results of this
master's thesis are extremely invaluable for the field of social work as they underline key
challenges and fields where social workers could better support preschool teachers of children
with special needs in preschool.
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