In the diploma thesis I focused on educational actions in kindergarten. It consists of theoretical and empirical parts. In the theoretical part I first described and defined preschool education, its meaning and its function. I defined the concept of the word education and described its historical background, then I compared it with the modern definitions of it. Later on I also defined the words discipline and punishment and proceeded with an description and definition of the verb authority. I then proceeded to focus on the three main educational styles in preschool and described their meanings and functions of all of them. With that I also explained and described the main characteristics and aspects of discipline and punishment in each one of the educational styles. This has led me to the main chapter of my diploma thesis - educational actions, which I devided into two seperate groups. The first group consists of positive educational actions, like praise, encouragement, reward and example. The second group consists of negative educational actions like physical punishment, witholding love and affection or material goods, reprimand and evoking the feeling of guilt. At the end of my theoretical part I described the purpose of a kindergarten teacher, his job tasks and duties. I mainly focused on the role of a preeschool teacher in those educational actions I gave a detailed description about. In the empirical part of the diploma thesis, I conducted and lead a semi-structured interview with six preschool teachers from three diffrent public kindergartens. I was interested in the different ways and the frequency of educational actions that preschool teachers use during their work, what type of punishment and praise do they use the most and what are the most frequent reasons for performing those actions.
|