Between formal framework and professional autonomy: preschool education and pluralisation of family life dr. Mojca Kovač Šebart and dr. Roman Kuhar
Summary: The paper first presents the formal framework which is the foundation for planning and implementing preschool education. It demonstrates that formal provisions protect the participants in preschool education from the danger of referring to professional autonomy which could, on the one hand, turn into unprofessional arbitrariness of educational personnel, and on the other into setting boundaries to parental interventions, kindergarten management, the Ministry or any other entity from interfering with professional decisions. In the second half of the paper, the provisions of the formal framework are applied to concrete treatment of families and family life in a public kindergarten, with special attention being paid to the phenomenon of pluralisation of family life. The family is the child’s most important reference framework in which they experience themselves and the world around them. Each child comes to the kindergarten from a certain kind of family environment and returns back to it. Consequently, it is all the more important for the kindergarten reality to respect family pluralism and treat it as such in everyday life and work.