THE INTEGRATION OF TEACHING RESOURCES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SUPERVISED TEACHING PRACTICE IN PRESCHOOL* EDUCATION

The training of kindergarten teachers in Portugal is carried out in two ways: A Master's degree in Early Childhood or a Master's program in which the Preschool education and the 1st cycle of Basic Education are articulated (Master's degree in Early Childhood and 1st Cycle of Basic Education). Within the framework of the competences that students are expected to develop throughout their training, special attention is given to the issue of integration of teaching resources in three areas they will have to work in as future kindergarten teachers: personal and social development, communication and expression and knowledge of the world. In this work, we present a study conducted in the context of the supervised teaching practice (internship) in preschool education of the Master's Degree in Early Childhood and 1st Cycle of Basic Education. It took place in a public teaching institution in the North of Portugal, in the academic year 2016/17, with the participation of fourteen trainees. Looking to work in a balanced way all content areas, we consider that the main objective of this research is to evaluate the performance of future kindergarten teachers regarding integration of teaching resources in these three areas, with the support of the legal documents that regulate Preschool Education, in particular, the Curricular Guidelines for Preschool Education. The methodology adopted was qualitative following a case study design, and the data collection instruments were the non-participant observation, document analysis and the portfolios that each of the students developed during their internship. As a technique of data analysis, we chose content analysis that allowed us to define categories of analysis in the corpus. In general, the results point to an integration of the educational resources very carefully and systematically, along the tasks performed in the various content areas, showing a very structured and adequate educational practice on the part of the trainees.