The objective of our study is to examine the image of the educator and the concept of the game as an educational means from future educators of early school age (department of Early Childhood Education \Technical Educational Institute of Athens). Furthermore, we wanted to determine to what extent these are determined by their personal experiences and whether studies differentiate their attitude. The aim is to ascertain the way through which future educators perceive the role of the pre-school educator, as well as the importance given to educational practices, to his/her anthropocentric attitude and his/her culture.
The method that we used to collect the data of our study is the biographical approach and more specifically the technique of narrating a life. (Mertens, 2005) For someone to narrate something from his life does not mean that he simple talks or remembers. It is an activity, a meeting with reality. Biography is not composed from the simple accumulative narration of past events, but consists of a continuous reconstruction of these events, which obtain specific meaning in the framework of the present situation. The form and the content of the narration, as well as the inter-subjective framework of the instance of narration demonstrate that biography itself includes a series of elements for the reconstruction of reality (Pantazis, 2004).
92 students of the 2nd Spring semester of 2003 in the department of Early Childhood Education were asked as part of the course "Child-Game" to record their personal experiences from their childhood to the present day, which are related to game. In addition, we have asked 206 students of different semesters to answer in writing the one and only question: "who was your first educator?"
The results demonstrate that the recorded percentage of positive attitude towards game is not translated to the expectation of educational use. The shaping of the image of the educator by the students seems to be defined both by references to the character, appearance, age, class organization, inter-personal relationships, as well as to his/her attitude to specific instances as described by the students. Furthermore, elements that compose the image of the educator, such as his/her work, his/her attitude and his/her behavior seem to be differentiated to students of the final semesters, who have more knowledge and can make better evaluations based on educational criteria.