A DUAL EDUCATION FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATING UNIVERSITY COURSEWORK AND PRESCHOOL PRACTICE IN UZBEKISTAN

The persistent separation between university coursework and field practice limits the development of context-responsive professional competence among pre-service preschool teachers. This conceptual study proposes a dual education framework that connects higher education institutions and preschool education organizations through shared curriculum design, workplace mentoring, joint assessment, and evidence-based feedback. The study uses qualitative document analysis and conceptual synthesis. Its documentary corpus comprises Uzbekistan’s Law on Education, Presidential Decree No. PF-73 of 28 April 2025, Ministerial Order No. 301 of 20 August 2025, and curriculum documents for the bachelor’s program in Preschool Education, supplemented by international and post-Soviet scholarship on dual vocational education, professional-pedagogical preparation, and workplace learning. The analysis identifies six interdependent components: regulatory and institutional alignment, integrated curriculum design, a weekly 4+2 learning cycle, one-to-one mentoring, joint competence assessment, and a recursive monitoring and improvement loop. The resulting framework interprets the 4+2 arrangement not as a timetable solution but as a pedagogical microcycle in which theory generates workplace inquiry, practice produces evidence, mentoring supports guided participation, and reflection informs subsequent coursework. The framework contributes a preschool-specific adaptation of dual education that prioritizes child safeguarding, ethical practice, developmental observation, and gradual transfer of professional responsibility. It offers a testable basis for institutional implementation and subsequent empirical validation in teacher education settings.