University kindergarten – a specific platform for education and collaboration of all its agents

Abstract

Since 2011, nine kindergartens have been founded by universities in the Czech Republic with financial support from the EU. These kindergartens were set up as private schools to help reconcile professional and parental roles of mostly university staff. A research was conducted in one of these schools in order to describe it and to reveal the context in which it operates. The research also had an ambition to understand how the kindergarten works and to characterize the subjects and circumstances which affect it most. The strategy of the research was to make a case study including interviews with school stakeholders - teachers, parents, teaching staff in pedagogy apprenticeship and with members of the school board representing the founding institution as well. In addition, there was a questionnaire survey for parents, observation of school events, and a content analysis of the school documents. The obtained data showed that the examined kindergarten is working under specific conditions of high contextual conditionality and mutual sharing with the university environment. The functioning of the school is conditioned by an intensive interaction with parents from the university, teachers in training, the school board and the faculty that is part of the founding university and which prepares students. (C) 2019 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org .UK