Features of preschool education: foreign experience

In most countries of the world, preschool education is the primary link in the general education and upbringing system. And this system is taken care of by state, local authorities, individuals, public organizations, agricultural and industrial enterprises, and religious organizations. Usually, in many foreign countries, there are seasonal and stationary nurseries, preschool departments that open at primary grades, kindergartens with special working hours, various playgrounds and mother schools. The purpose of educational work in such institutions is the all-round development of children, and the skills of life in society are acquired by children in accordance with educational programs. Each national system has its own characteristics of preschool education and its own best practices.

For example, the English education system accepts three or four year olds in primary school. Also, preparatory classes are organized for children who are five years old. The concept of preschool education in the UK is characterized by a wide variety of preschool institutions. English education is focused on the development of the child's personality, motivational factors, initiative to study. The child goes through the first days of adaptation in kindergarten together with his mother. In preschool institutions, one teacher is involved in the upbringing of three to five toddlers aged three to five.

Preschool institutions in Denmark have playgrounds, day nurseries, day nurseries, kindergartens or just kindergartens, as well as round-the-clock kindergartens that are involved in the upbringing and treatment of children with mental or physical disabilities. Before direct work, the teaching staff is trained for three years in pedagogy, psychology and philology. An interesting fact is that among all teachers there are 20 percent of men.

Public preschool education in Germany has a very ancient tradition. Visiting there is free. Parents pay only half of the cost of supporting their children, while the rest of the costs are borne by the owner of the establishment. The state maintains only a fifth of the existing preschool educational institutions, the rest are sponsored by trade unions, charitable societies, etc.

Preschool education in Poland is formed by nursery schools with parttime or full-time children, kindergartens, two-week nursery schools, as well as family micro-gardens, which are located in apartments of multi-storey buildings.

In the United States of America, each state develops its own educational standards. Each American institution operates according to a specific program.

In Japan, the upbringing system is focused on identifying different abilities in children at an early age and their further development. Groups in Japanese kindergartens are large (up to forty people). The participation of all children in artistic work is mandatory, since the Japanese believe that only manmade beauty affects the philosophical understanding of beauty.

Each country has its own procedures for the implementation of preschool education. But each system individually reports significant efforts in the development of talented children and not only; the most favorable conditions are created for their normal life. Children learn to be in a society without parents, cultivate hard work, responsibility both to parents and to educators. Considerable attention is also paid to improving the musical abilities of children.

According to the periodization of mental development existing in Russian psychology, objective activity is leading at an early age. In the process of this activity, the mastery of socially developed methods of action with objects occurs.

Stages of development of actions with objects. Subject activity has its own logic of development. Already in the first year of life, the child forms nonspecific manipulative actions with objects, which are initially carried out regardless of their properties: the child treats any object in the same way that falls into his hands (sucks, taps, waves, etc.). At the same time, he carefully examines objects, listens to their sound, turns them in his hands, shifts them from place to place, repeating the same action many times.

A little later, specific manipulations take shape. The kid begins to notice and use the features of objects, their simplest properties and relationships. For example, he rattles with a rattle, crumples paper, puts one object into another, passes a toy through the grates of the arena. He loves to deal not only with objects of the man-made world, but also with natural objects - water, sand, pebbles, etc.

Both of these types of actions are an independent phenomenon, a variant of exploratory behavior, conditioned by the cognitive activity of the child, his curiosity. Experimenting with objects using non-specific and specific manipulations, he extracts a lot of information about objects, learns to establish connections between them. Exploratory behavior develops intensively when the child begins to move independently and gains access to the objects of the world around him.

One of the important conditions for the development of research behavior is communication with adults, who organize a stimulating object environment, attract the child's attention to new objects, and encourage and support his curiosity. Exploratory behavior improves during an early age, remaining an important component of cognitive and creative development both in this and in subsequent age periods. In addition, in the process of experimentation, the child receives purely functional pleasure from the action itself, because in this he feels himself to be the subject of what is happening, a source of changes in the world around him.