Early childhood educator’s perception on their efficacy to manage children’s behavioural problems and the needs of a screening tool: Pilot findings

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Behavior problems among young children in early childhood education centers are found to be at a growing rate from the literature. Behavioral problems if left untreated may lead to more severe outcomes for some children. Behavior problems pose by young children in the early childhood classroom interrupt with classroom instruction. Early Identification which directs to early intervention is an evident based method to treat children at-risk of behavioral issues. Early intervention prepares children at-risk by providing an effective positive behavior support that may reduce the option of special education referral. However problem behaviors in the early childhood classroom are remain under recognized or not widely addressed. Literature reports that, teachers due to their workload may delay the referral and when they are unable to handle the problem behaviors, removal will be the short-term solution. A pilot test was carried out on Genius Negara educators from Perak state. Targeted number of respondents for the pilot test was 30 but the response rates were 47 in total. To test the scale reliability of the instrument, Cronbach’s Alpha value is calculated. Alpha value 0.88 reported, suggests that the instrument proposed is reliable. A T-Test is performed to prove the sample mean represent the population mean.