Senior Consultant for pre-school education for the National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (NEIS)
Janja Cotic Pajntar is a senior consultant for pre-school education at the National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (NEIS). She received her master’s degree from the Faculty of Arts, at the University of Ljubljana in 1998. From 1996 to 2001, she was employed as a young researcher at the Educational Research Institute of Slovenia. From 2002 to 2010, she worked as a higher education assistant on the Methodology of Social Sciences programme for the Department for Pre-School Education, the Faculty of Education at the University of Ljubljana and Koper. From 2003 to 2009, she was head of the Department for Education for Children with SEN. She is the co-author and editor of numerous programme documents and publications in the field of education for children with special needs and for pre-school education. In 2021, she led an expert group in the preparation of the basis for the renewal of the kindergarten curriculum, and is currently leading the process of updating the curriculum for kindergartens.
Head of the Department for Pre-school Education, National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (NEIS)
Nives Zore works as head of the Department for Pre-school Education at the National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia (NEIS). She graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana in 1989. Since 1994, she has been employed at the NEIS as a consultant for pre-school education. She was a coordinator on the development project Reconceptualization of Time in Kindergarten. She is the author of the Child and Computer in Kindergarten handbook. She was involved in the gradual introduction of the first pre-school curriculum in Slovenia (1999–2002) and in the project Network of Mentor Kindergartens, within which the introduction of the curriculum continued. She is a co-author of various manuals in the field of preschool education. Nives participated in the preparation of starting points for the renewal of the curriculum for kindergartens and is now involved in the process of updating the curriculum for kindergartens.
In this chapter we outline: the organisation of pre-school education in Slovenia, continuous professional development for teachers, and reasons for the current renewal of the national pre-school curriculum. The national Kindergarten Curriculum (1999) forms the foundation for professional work in kindergartens in Slovenia. It consists of the basic elements of a modern curriculum and enables educators to plan a process-developmental and learning-targeted strategy for educational work in different learning areas. It also includes other conditions and obstacles for the realisation of the curriculum’s objectives, including the hidden curriculum. When we talk about the hidden curriculum, we are talking about the “other” of the curriculum, all that is taken for granted and uncritically accepted in the pedagogical situation. It is therefore essential to raise awareness of the hidden curriculum, which should contribute to greater transparency in all that happens in kindergartens and contributes to the actual realisation of fundamental human right.
However, rapid changes in society and recent theoretical knowledge about early learning dictate the review and modernisation of the curriculum. Some of the key data – such as the high number of toddlers in kindergartens, the increase in the share of children of foreign nationalities enrolled in the Slovenian education system, the increase in the number of children with risk factors, the increase in issues regarding school delays, etc. – require a particularly well thought-out process of updating the curriculum for kindergartens.
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