| Abstract [eng] |
Relevance of the study. When having enough legal knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of the child the pre-school teachers are able to introduce the rights and responsibilities to children. The rights and responsibilities of the child must function together. “A sustainable development of the personality and a successful social integration requires legal education and legal training starting from the childhood. This is because childhood is a period when a person is changing extremely rapidly and is developing while going through various experiences of life. During this period while being physically weak, immature and inexperienced children are fully or partially dependent on the surrounding adults. Their life and growth depends on the care and effort of the people responsible for them.” (Prakapas R., Žilinskienė R. (2008))According to Jovaiša (1993), in the colloquial language, sophistication is understood as the education of a person, his/her knowledge, skills and the decoding of this knowledge in the future at the appropriate situation. Knowledge is defined as the results of the reality cognition providing verbal and symbolic information on a variety of objects, phenomena and their mutual relations. According to the patriarch of Lithuanian education Leonas Jovaiša (2000), knowing is the retention of a knowledge-based understanding and the ability to reproduce it. Knowing is an experience of the certainty of the obtained information, expressed in the internal and external language, as well as a reflection of the acquired connections and their whole in the consciousness. In this paper, legal sophistication of the pre-school teachers is understood as the knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of the child. Object of the study. Legal sophistication of the pre-school teachers. Structure of the paper. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter examines the theoretical aspects of legal sophistication of the pre-school teachers in respect to the rights and responsibilities of the child. The second chapter presents the methodology and methods. The final chapter of the thesis discloses the quantitative research of legal sophistication of the pre-school teachers. Methodology and methods. The study is based on the philosophy of existentialism, as well as the theories of pragmatism and constructivism. The applied methods of the study: a survey questionnaire. Site and sample of the study. In April, 2011, two questionnaires were prepared: one for the pre-school teachers from Šiauliai, Kuršėnai, Kelmė and the other for the parents of children attending the pre-school education activities from Šiauliai, Kuršėnai, Kelmė. 145 questionnaires were distributed among the teachers, 104 of which were returned. The parents received 93 questionnaires and returned 82 of them. Main findings. The legal status of the child is regulated by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania, the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child (1959), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the Law on the Basic Rights of the Child (1956), the Civil Code of 2000 and other laws of the Republic of Lithuania. The fundamental groups of rights in the pre-school age are as follows: the existence, development, participation, and protection. The pre-school teachers have partial legal knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of the child. They lack information about the rights and responsibilities of the child. They receive the majority of the information about the rights of the child from the Internet. While seeking to ensure the rights and responsibilities of the child, the pre-school teachers ground their actions on democratic principles. While evaluating the importance of the rights and responsibilities of the child they take into account the needs of the child. The majority of the preschool teachers introduce the children to their rights and responsibilities during the discussions. For the deepening of the knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of the child the teachers lack seminars, conferences, books, lectures, and methodical recommendations on how to conduct the educational activities on this subject. According to the parents, teachers ensure the rights of the children in a pre-school institution. Many parents indicate that a teacher comforts a child through the verbal means and contact, and takes interest in the child’s life outside a nursery institution. |
