PREDICTORS OF THE BENEFITS OF PRESCHOOL EDUCATION: PARENTAL EXPECTATIONS AND ATTITUDES

Abstract

The article contains substantiation and systematization of prognostic factors, which represent parents’ expectations about the possibilities of the preschool institution to provide effective indicators of the child’s development, these expectations are related to the realization of the child’s personal resources. For this purpose, we have studied the criteria that parents focus on when choosing a preschool institution. Criteria are positioned in the reflections of parents as the leading markers of conditionally “attractive”, “desirable” preschool institution for education, training and development of the child, the acquisition of appropriate competencies. Methodology. The research has been based on the conceptual provisions of systemic, synergetic and axiological approaches to identify and analyze the logic of extrapolation of ideas about the quality of preschool education to parents’ decision to choose a preschool institution. The application of the criterion approach was relevant for the methodological foundations of the study, because semantically it emphasizes the degree of presentation of those features that indicate the effectiveness of educational services. The study of criteria presupposed the coherence of their meaning, as choice is a subjective assessment of reality and the context to which it relates. The method of survey research became a diagnostic tool. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the differentiation of criteria that parents focus on when searching for a preschool institution for their children. In particular, these are significant indicators of human resources of preschool education, the results of its activities, material and information resources and dispositional (territorial) factor. Conclusions. The choice of a preschool institution by parents is a multicriteria one, at the same time focused on determining the most significant indicator among others. Priority is given by parents, first of all, to the localization of the preschool institution, its material base, human resources, then a positive image and information openness in the activity.