Professional activity, kindergarten teacher, change, preschool child, kindergarten

Since school year 2016/2017 changes in pre-school education have been applied in the Czech education system. The two major changes include: 1) Compulsory kindergarten attendance has been introduced for children in their last year before the compulsory school attendance commencement. 2) Kindergartens are now available for children from two years up. The question is what consequences the above mentioned changes have for the kindergarten teacher profession. The purpose of the research was to find out whether the changes concerning pre-school children attending kindergartens also change the set of professional activities performed by kindergarten teachers with children they are in direct contact with at work, including the frequency and length of the activities. The most general objective of the research was to contribute to the current state of knowledge of the kindergarten teacher profession. The research was implemented in two periods of the school year 2016/2017 by the method of written records of testimonials of kindergarten teachers about their own work and by the method of non-structured observations with video recordings. The research sample included 10 kindergarten teachers for the observations and 170 teachers for the written recording.