First Contact with the Word of Work: The Competence Built in the Teaching Practices

Abstract

This document describes a study, performed with students during the teaching practice in the course of preschool education. It analyses the competences that they believe to have built through the contact with the professional context. Data is acquired from their portfolios, since they protrude the competences built during the practice activities and the most interesting aspects to analyse. The study puts in evidence that teaching practice enhances professional competences construction, although the outlines of this construction vary according to the educational action model and the supervision model. It is clear that the action of the kindergarten teacher is complex and that they develop within the confluence of knowledge of different nature. The centrality of the teacher-child interactions sets up as the defining frame of professional competences construction. Teaching practice is the moment of socialization that allows future kindergarten teachers contact with the values, language and body of the profession specific knowledge, facilitating a more realistic view over the world of work.