Exploring Teachers’ Awareness of the Implementation the Teamwork towards Development Communicative Competencies in the Preschool Groups

Year 2017, Special Issue 2, 382 - 393, 22.12.2017

Teodora Valova

Abstract

The aim of this study is to research teachers’
awareness of the benefits of using the team work towards development
communicative competencies in the preschool groups. A pedagogical qualitative
research was conducted through a questionnaire, according some variables such
as gender, age, composition of the team, frequency of using teamwork, the use
of teamwork in the frame of school schedule, the frequency of working in a
team, developing teacher’s competencies for teamwork. The target population of
the study was composed of 410 teachers from 12 different regions in Bulgaria
attending into face-to-face training and seminars at national level in 2014-2016
academic years. The next methods of research are being used: 1) A theoretical
analysis of pedagogical, methodological and psychological analysis of the
literature on the studied problem. 2) Sociological Methods – Survey research of
collecting information about teachers’ awareness. 3) Mathematical-statistic
methods. 4) Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the results obtained from
research, in relation to the teachers’ awareness of the implementation the
teamwork towards development communicative competencies. In order to collect
data a non-standardized anonymous survey were applied to the teachers. A
seven-point scale of agreement is being used including a choice from ‘agree
strongly’ to ‘disagree strongly’. In order to analyze the collected data, descriptive
statistics (frequency and percentage), IBM SPSS 19.0 software were used.
According to the findings of teachers’ attitude the research found that almost
half of the respondents have no experience in using the teamwork. Two-third of
respondents does not apply team interaction in the development of communicative
skills of 5- to 6-year-old preschoolers. Various general and specialised
literary sources on the topic are being studied and analysed. Researching the
literature it is understood that there has been very limited interest in
researches on the attitudes of teachers’ awareness towards development
communicative competencies in the preschool groups in the context of teamwork.
Therefore, this kind of studies is important in order to understand the thoughts
and practices of teachers’ community on interaction in the teamwork.

Keywords

Teamwork, Teachers’ Awareness, Communicative Competencies, Preschoolers

References

• Education and Training 2020 Work programme (2012). Thematic Working Group 'Assessment of Key Competencies'; Literature review, Glossary and examples. http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/education_culture/repository/education/policy/school/doc/keyreview_en.pdf.
• Gilleran, A., Kearney C. (2014). Developing pupil competencies through eTwinning. Central Support Service for eTwinning. http://www.cmepius.si/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EN_Developing-pupil-competences-through-eTwinning.pdf.
• Hoskins, B. & Deakin Crick, R., (2010). Competences for Learning to Learn and Active Citizenship: different currencies or two sides of the same coin? European Journal of Education, Vol. 45, Number 1, March.
• Legendre Marie-Francoise (2008). La notion de competence au coeur des reformes curriculaires: Effet demode ou moteur de changements en profondeur?
• OECD (2009). Creating Effective Teaching and Learning Environments: First results from TALIS. https://www.oecd.org/edu/school/43023606.pdf. Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (2006/962/EC). http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32006H0962&from=EN
• The definition and selection of key competencies (2005). Executive Summary. OECD. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/35070367.pdf.
• Vuorikari, R. (2012). eTwinning School Teams. Case studies on teacher collaboration through eTwinning. Central Support Service for eTwinning (CSS), Brussels.