Personal Development in Vocational School and Higher Education Programs in Early Childhood Education

Personal Development in Vocational School and Higher Education Programs in Early Childhood Education

The professionalization and academization of the early childhood educator profession over the past 15 years has led to profound processes of change in the qualification of educational professionals for the age group from 0 to 10 or 12 years. Personal development is regarded as fundamental to the professional capacity to act of early childhood educators and childhood education specialists and is formulated as an educational objective in the discussion surrounding the reform of traditional early childhood educator training, but has so far hardly been researched.

The project therefore focused on the following questions

1. which goals and methods are used to present personal development in the curriculum of educational higher education and vocational school programs,
2. how lecturers, students, and graduates assess the significance and success of study offerings aimed at personal development for themselves and for their educational practice.

This was examined through a two-stage empirical study:

• In the first step, a nationwide analysis of the curricular content on personal development in childhood education degree and training programs was conducted (for vocational school programs: the federal states’ curricula and the cross-state curriculum; for higher education degree programs: module handbooks), and interviews were carried out with program directors on the goals, didactic approaches, and methods of personal development in early childhood education training programs.
• In the second step, interviews with various stakeholders (lecturers, students, graduates) were conducted at four selected institutions regarding the significance of personal development for the development of professional competence, taking biographical experiences into account.

The results show that study offerings on personal development are consistently implemented on a conceptual basis, are equipped with an appropriate range of methods, and that, from the perspective of both teaching staff and students and graduates, a personality profile suitable for educational practice can be developed over the course of the program.

However, the findings also make clear that there is still a considerable need for further development, for example in the systematic training of teaching staff and in the evaluation and further development of the strategies and methods used for personal development.

Third-party funders: Mahle Foundation, Waldorf Foundation

Selected publications

• Conein, S., Röhler, A., & Fengler, J. (2015). Methods of personal development in the training of early childhood educators and childhood education specialists. In M. Stock, P. Schlögl, K. Schmid, Kurt, & D. Moser (Eds.), Competent – for what? Life Skills, vocationalism, personal development: Contributions to vocational education research; conference proceedings of the 4th Austrian Conference on Vocational Education Research, July 3/4, 2014 (109-123). Innsbruck: Studien Verlag.
• Fengler, J., Röhler, A. & Conein, S. (2015). The Role of Personal Development in German Early Childhood Training Programs. In ATEE (Association for Teacher Education) and CIED (Research Centre in Education) (Ed.), ATEE Annual Conference 2014 – Transitions in teacher education and professional identities. Proceedings (349-357). Available at https://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/handle/1822/36281?locale=en. [retrieved 30 Oct., 2015]