Changes in the education of early school education teachers in Poland in the context of students’ anticipation of the profession

Abstract

In this study I describe the problem of changes in the education of pre-school and primary school (grades I-III) teachers in Poland, paying attention to the political and ideological as well as the philosophical context. I provide arguments for the need to care for the quality of education and the need for continuous teacher education. I draw attention to the David Clarke’s and Hilary Hollingsworth’s Correlation Model of Professional Development of Teacher, useful in this regard, and to the European context of solutions in this field. In the further part of the study, I consider the education philosophy of early school education teachers, citing for example Potulicka’s critical views on the neoliberal American philosophy, and providing a different approach of Bay Area Teacher Training Institute (BATTI) (also American), which assumes that the philosophy of teachers education is closely related to the philosophy of education. The second part of this article presents my own qualitative study on the self-anticipation of students regarding the profession of early school education teacher. As a result of the analysis of students’ essays, I selected several types of teacher: ‘professional’, ‘apprentice/constantly learning’, ‘artist/animator’, ‘friend of children and parents/authority’, ‘enthusiast/passionate, ‘constructivist’.