5. How Can the Reformed Kindergarte

5. How Can the Reformed Kindergarten Teacher Education Program Prepare Students to be Professionals? It seems that the practical training periods and role play activities during campus-based teaching are of great importance when thinking about developing professional competences to act [see also: 29], including verbal acts. Practical training periods provide the possibility to act in real kindergarten settings and to reflect on one’s own acts during mentoring sessions provided by in-service teachers. Campus-based teaching and learning play crucial roles in equipping students with relevant theoretical concepts that are used as tools to reflect upon one’s own actions. Nevertheless, there are certain challenges in making this happen. Since students start their practical training very early in their education, they do not have a chance to read all the required literature that would help them develop the conceptual framework for self-examination in relation to children and to reflect. This weakens the learning potential of the first practical training period. Another weak point is that in-service teachers are seldom up-to-date on current literature used in kindergarten teacher education, so they are not always able to support their students in their professional development with an up-to-date conceptual frame. There is also a third weakness. In-service teachers seldom use professional language in their discourse with teams during daily work in the kindergarten [25, 36, 37].The culture of toning down professional language socializes students into a nonprofessional practice since it is theoretical concepts meeting situated challenges that actualizes the professional exercise [42]. Moreover, students experience relative little dialogue and communication between the academic and in-service educators, which does not help them to build bridges between theory and practice in terms of actions, especially verbal actions [43]. Nevertheless, the students are generally satisfied with the study program and see it as the one that prepares them broadly for the profession and future work in kindergartens [46].