La cura della professionalità insegnante nella scuola dell'infanzia.

The present publication report the findings of a research carried out on issues of early childhood professionalism in some Italian province. The study, that is pre- dominantly qualitative, aims to investigate the relation between care practices and professional development within institutions. The research methodology used by all three contributions is all of a qualitative nature and is inspired by a problemati- cist/phenomenological approach. The following procedures were used to gather data: focus groups, questionnaires with open-ended questions and observations of conversational contexts. The first and second strategy, one immediately following on from the other, represented two phases of the research. This was followed by a third stage involving the socialisation of the collected data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]