The Competences of Educative Mentor, Fostering Change in the Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Modern pre-school education together with the whole educational system face the period of constant changes, in which new needs of novices, universities and educational institutions arise. It is extremely important to train such pre-school teachers who can successfully get involved into children educational system and to contribute to faster changes of pre-school educational practice. Purpose of Study - to construct and empirically ground the competences of educative mentor, fostering change in the early childhood education. Methods. The survey of pre-school teacher mentors. Factorial analysis of mentor competences structural factors. Participants. 459 of early childhood education and pre-school teacher mentors working under the conditions of regular reforms and changes for more than a decade and monitoring the future pre-school education teachers have been surveyed. Mentoring is one of the most effective strategies of teacher training, which helps to achieve these aims. The article emphasises and describes the concept of traditional mentoring based on behaviouristic theories, educative mentoring based on constructivist theories and reform-based change fostering mentoring. Having done the factorial analysis of mentor competence structural factors in the mentor competence model consisting of 8 competences, the following essential mentor competences have arisen: personal, communicative; expert assessment and reflection, student practice and reflection.