Early childhood education – students’ self-assessment of their teaching competences in the arts

Abstract

The term ‘competences’ in this paper refers to a combination of knowledge, skills and abilities that students gain through initial teacher education and use for effective teaching in early childhood and pre-school settings. Activities in visual arts and music are important aspects of early childhood education, because they facilitate emotional, cognitive, social and psychomotor development. The role of educators is to provide children with a supportive environment where they can express themselves artistically and develop a certain level of competence in the arts; hence the purpose of this study was to measure and evaluate teaching competences of preschool education students in arts. We present the outcomes of a research on students in the third year of preschool education at the University of Maribor, Faculty of Education and at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Education who were self-assessment for their competences from the point of view of artisticdidactic contents. Keywords: Preschool education, competences, fine arts, music.