Teacher training in early education: an urgent priority

Abstract

Early childhood is the stage of human life from birth to 6 years of age, considered by scientists to be the most important in human development because it is the period in which the neurophysiological structures that will be the fundamentals of personality development are formed; it has been shown that the environment where the child develops is the main generator of incentives that promote the nervous connections essential for learning and development. In this process, the role of the teacher is essential; he or she is in charge of creating optimal conditions to strengthen the integral development; therefore, professional training is required to respond to the needs of early childhood so that the teacher can organize, plan, direct and conduct pedagogical activities with theoretical and methodological support, and assume an attitude of respect for the child's diversity and individual differences. The main objective of the study is to describe the training of pre-school teachers and the way in which the educational teaching process develops; the study was done with 233 educators from 10 nursery schools and with promoters of CONAFE's Non-School Early Education program. The methodology used is qualitative with a phenomenological perspective. The information triangulation method is multiple and consists of methodological and theoretical triangulation. The results of this study show that there is a serious lack of teacher training, which has repercussions on an educational practice that is arbitrary and without theoretical and methodological support.