Educación temprana. Evaluación del programa de la escuela infantil Kutunbaita

Abstract

El objetivo de este trabajo es evaluar un programa de educación temprana que se está llevando a cabo en una escuela infantil de San Sebastián. La actual legislación ha elevado a rango educativo la etapa de preescolar. Ello ha conllevado que este ciclo, anteriormente asistencial, tenga una finalidad educativa, que implique que el profesional deba estimular las capacidades del niño para lograr el desarrollo de la personalidad. Unido a lo anterior, la ley sugiere que se respete el principio de calidad y que se evalúen los elementos que intervienen en el proceso de enseñanza–aprendizaje. Por tanto, la evaluación de programas se convierte en una necesidad para asegurar que realmente se están cumpliendo unos objetivos, una obligación respondiendo a la petición de la LOCE. En la legislación vigente, la evaluación de programas es, en primer lugar, que realmente se está respondiendo a la finalidad educativa que reclama el primer ciclo de educación infantil con programas denominados de educación temprana, y en segundo lugar, de saber que realmente se pueden ofrecer experiencias educativas de calidad que fomenten el pleno desarrollo de las capacidades del niño.

The main objective of this investigation is to evaluate the efficacy and the quality of an early childhood program that is being developed in a pre kindergarten centre of San Sebastian (Spain) that tries to develop the physical, cognitive, social and moral capacities of children, during their first three years. The methodology of this program is characterized by linguistic immersion that will allow to the children to listen three languages: spanish, english and basque. The methodology also includes different exercises of motility (creeping and crawling, for example) and activities like bits of intelligence. The Spanish legislation suggests that during this period, educators can stimulate the capacities of all children because of the educative and assistential finality that demands this period. Furthermore, it suggests that it has to attend to the quality principle and, for this reason, the evaluation program is the only way to assure and guarantee that activities really respond to this demand. But the way to develop a quality program for children under the three year is not defined in the legislation. For this reason is really important to clarify the way to develop the capacities of children attending the principle of quality. The present evaluation program has considered the orientations of the Perez Juste evaluation model and the considerations of Glassman and Nevo theory. The agents that participated in this evaluation were the children (the pupils of two year old of this pre kindergarten), the parents, the teachers, the context, and the program per se. The moments where the evaluation was developed were before the development of the program, during the development, and after the implementation of the program, during two year. Furthermore, the dimensions, the indicators, the variables were the categories that we used to study the results of this evaluation. The result of the evaluation indicates that is possible to implement an early childhood program that develops the capacities of children attending the quality principle.