Communication as the foundation of all relationships, especially the ones in education, is the subject of many scientific studies. This is understandable because the child's overall development is largely dependent on... [ view full abstract ]
Communication as the foundation of all relationships, especially the ones in education, is the subject of many scientific studies. This is understandable because the child's overall development is largely dependent on interpersonal communication, which the child carries out with its social environment. With the child’s arrival to kindergarten the educator continues and completes the function of a communicator, as a communicational model. The quality of the educator’s communication with the children, as well as the profile of communicational skills which children develop will depend on the type, frequency and quality of verbal and nonverbal procedures and their compatibility.
Accordingly, this article describes the research, in which the authors, through qualitative and quantitative analysis, gathered data on quality of communication between children and educators. 122 conversations between the children, age range from 2,5 and 7 years, and educators have been recorded during the child's morning arrival to the group. The authors wanted to investigate what procedures the educators most often use in this situation, how children respond to the initiative of educators and how educators give feedback to children’s initiative. Verbal communication was recorded with a tape recorder and then transferred to the written code, and a specially constructed table was used to observe non-verbal behaviour. The results have shown that educators largely apply appropriate communication procedures during the child’s morning arrival to kindergarten. Younger children have longer communication with the educator using a wide variety of nonverbal signals, while older children’s contacts are accompanied by more verbal messages and tend to be shorter.
Keywords: verbal and nonverbal communication, educator, preschooler, active listening
