Keyword: «professional community»

The significant increase in the number of children with disabilities and the overall focus on inclusion on the one hand, and the reduction of specialized educational institutions on the other send new challenges not so much to the system, but for real acting teachers. Today, educators, teachers, instructors need to develop professional and personal qualities, master new methods, techniques for working with children with disabilities in addition to their basic competences. The specifics of working with this category of children, undoubtedly, not only affects the content of the teachers’ work, the nature of the professional difficulties that they face in the process of working with different subjects, but also generally changes their trajectory of professional development. The aim of this study is to determine the specifics of professional and personal qualities, the characteristics of the work of teachers at preschool educational institutions interacting with children who do not have/have psychophysical health conditions. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study consists of the works of domestic and foreign teachers, psychologists and sociologists, who reveal issues of the essence and content of pedagogical activity, the specifics of the work of teachers at the level of preschool educational institutions. General scientific methods (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, classification) are used as theoretical research methods; in-depth interviews and questionnaires are used to collect empirical information. The theoretical significance of the article lies in the fact that it identifies the specifics of the professional and personal qualities necessary for preschool teachers to work with children who do not have/have psychophysical health conditions; the specific features of interaction have been updated and the nature of professional difficulties in the work of teachers at preschool institutions of a combined type with the main subjects of pedagogical activity (a normal typical child/a child with disabilities - parent - teacher-colleague - administrator) has been determined. The study also made it possible to determine the level of teachers’ readiness for professional development and their opinion about promising areas of personal professional growth. The authors come to the conclusion that kindergarten teachers working with children with disabilities feel the need for professional development. However, low awareness of training programs and advanced training courses implemented with the aim of mastering new methods of working with children with special educational needs limits their educational route. The solution to these problems will be facilitated by measures to increase teachers’ awareness of the options for their professional development, the practice of exchanging teaching experience with colleagues and receiving consultations of psychologists.