Professionalization of University Students of Pre-school Education (through the views of students on pre-school and the family in the Czech Republic)

Pre-school is a space which provides an environment for the cognitive, affective, social and physical development of children at pre-school ages as well as conditions for their preparation for life. Pre-school facilities and teachers play a key role in facilitating this development. There is, however, little scientific research on how university students become teachers. The aim of this project is to describe the process of the professionalization of pre-school university students-starting from their initial concepts of the child, childhood and pre-school and continuing on to the creation of their own conception of self as a teacher and teaching in the course of the university programme. The study provides the partial results of research which is still currently being worked on with the support of an IGA grant project under the number FHS/2015/04. The project will be completed in 2017. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.