Training future pre-school professionals in psycho-pedagogical support for early childhood development

The main tasks of pre-school education specialists become the formation of a favourable educational environment for children’s development, effecient organization of time and interaction with children. The training of future specialists should be focused on their personal and professional maturity in order to develop the child’s personality and improve the quality of preschool education. The aim of the article was to empirically study the approaches to preparing future specialists of preschool education for psychological and pedagogical support of early childhood development. The research methodology includes content analysis of regulatory documents and standards in the preschool education subsystem, analysis of secondary data from a survey of Ukrainian university students regarding satisfaction with the disciplines that provide training in early childhood psychological and pedagogical support. The results indicate the use of the competent approach in the training of specialists embedded in the main standards of the preschool education subsystem. The standards define the requirements for the child’s mandatory competencies and educational outcomes as well as the competencies of the child’s educator. The need for alignment and revision of the professional standard for educator as well as the standard for higher education in the context of the alignment of competencies acquired by students in the process of education has been identified. The results of the survey indicate a high level of student satisfaction with the training in the discipline “Psychological and pedagogical foundations of early childhood”.