Research literacy is becoming a very important part in teacher education. There is ample evidence that teacher research can be a powerful factor in the lives of teacher-researchers: teacher-researchers report learning more about their students, about their schools or kindergartens, and about themselves; they use this knowledge to modify their practice, to feel more professional, and to engage “authentically” with the profession of teaching in a new way (for more on this, see Berger, Boles & Troen 2005). The entire teacher education system should be based on the belief that research of educational practice is one of the instruments for establishing and ensuring the quality of this practice and important factor in promoting teachers´ professional development. Teachers’ professional development is a lifelong process in which teachers constantly acquire new knowledge, develop new skills and competences and they move towards a better quality of teaching performance and other professional work in the school and kindergarten. This process includes teachers’ individual, professional and social dimension, and it also means teachers’ progressing towards the direction of critical, independent, responsible decision-making and acting (Vogrinc, Valenčič Zuljan, 2009). ˝

One of the main problems of educational research conducted by academics is the dissemination of research findings to practitioners, and this is one of the principal reasons for educational research failing to have an adequate influence on the improvement of practice. One way to change educational research so that it improves the practice of (preschool) teachers in schools and kindergartens is to change the research agenda and the research process. This means adopting, as an essential prerequisite for improvement, the involvement of practitioners in all aspects of the research process, from the creation of strategic research plans, the selection of research priorities, and the funding of projects, to the dissemination and implementation of policies and practices arising from or influenced by research findings (cf. Hargreaves 2007).

Practitioner research can be seen as an attempt to link teaching and research so that they are no longer dichotomous activities (Cole & Knowles 2004). It can be defined as a process in which preschool teachers and other participants in kindergartens evaluate, in a managed, systematic, controlled (with clearly stipulated criteria) and critical manner, their own pedagogical work and the effects and processes linked to teaching by means of the strategies, methods and techniques of pedagogical research (Seberová 2010).

In the present paper, we answer the following research questions: (1) How often do preschool teachers undertake research work? (2) In which phases of the research process do preschool teachers express their willingness to participate? (3) Which predictors have a statistically significant influence on the frequency with which preschool teachers engage in research work? (4) What is the correlation between preschool teachers´ attitude towards their professional development and frequency of conducting research work?

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