Democratisation of early childhood education in the attitudes of Slovene and Finnish teachers

The article presents the findings of the comparative survey on attitudes (beliefs, preferences) of 222 Slovenian and 230 Finnish early childhood teachers (Turnsek 2005). They have completed the questionnaire on aspect of democratisation of early childhood education, which consisted of attitude (Likart) scales and questions of ranking the preferences. The descriptive statistics were made, cluster analysis, analysis of variance (Chi-square test, t-test) and two-way Anova/Manova analysis. One half of the Slovenian teachers are pro-democratic oriented; the percentage of teachers whose attitudes are extremely pro-democratic is higher (17.9%) than of those with extremely counter-democratic attitudes (9.3%). Their beliefs are in moderate correlation with the level of education, but not with working experience. The variable COUNTRY has prevalent impact on the set of democratic beliefs and attitudes. The differences between Slovenian and Finnish teachers are significant on most variables; the largest concern the attitudes towards children of immigrants.