Cultural differences and upbringing of pre-school children

Valeriia Marianova (2017) Cultural differences and upbringing of pre-school children. MSc thesis.

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Abstract

Intercultural education is aiming at young people and children, because they are the ones who will definitely live in intercultural society in the future. It is important that personality differences are shown as something natural and positive to the children in the early period, best when they come to kindergarten. The creation of a positive attitude towards difference is enabled by a series of activities that are reasonably related and allow children to learn about the difference between them and the other people which surround them. The aim of the master's thesis was to investigate the factors of culture that influence the upbring of children, the feelings of educators when accepting a child from another cultural environment, ways of integrating children of other cultures into the group, the speed of adapting children of other cultures to the group, the effectiveness and speed of adaptation of children from other cultures, to determine the feelings of other children when adopting a child from another cultural environment to the group, to identify the main factors that inhibit the effective integration of children of other cultures into the kindergarten, to identify the role of parents of other children's cultures in involving children in the kindergarten, to determine whether there is a link between the culture of the child and successful integration into the kindergarten and between the education and working life of the educator and the successful integration of the child into the kindergarten, determine how teachers and kindergarten develop implementing curriculum in to the group, where children from other cultural backgrounds are and to determine the time that children from different cultures need to adapt to a new culture and other environment. The research was based on a quantitative research approach and a descriptive method of empirical qualitative research. In the quantitative part of the research we used a structured online questionnaire, which was designed for the purpose of research. We interviewed employees in kindergartens in Gorenjska region and Ljubljana. The collected data was quantitatively processed. In the qualitative part of the research, the data was obtained through a semi-structured interview. We have established a statistically significant correlation between the length of service and the involvement of a child from another culture to a group by the educator. Respondents with a shorter working time are more likely to agree with those mentioned as respondents with longer working time. A statistically significant correlation also occurs between the education and the appropriate period of adaptation for the child from other culture in to the group. Respondents with higher education more strongly agree that the child needs to be adapted as a respondent with lower education. On the basis of the obtained results of quantitative and qualitative research, we came to the realization that employees in kindergartens intercultural raise children and try to integrate children from other cultural backgrounds as effectively as possible, but we also detected certain areas in which they could improve their working methods.

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