Early Childhood Teachers’ Perception of the Professional Self and In Relation to the Early Childhood Communities

Abstract

Early childhood teachers face many challenges as they interact with children, their parents, fellow teachers and the early childhood community. The responsibility to meet the needs of a diverse group of people is critical to the teacher's development as a professional. This paper discusses the quantitative findings of a survey that examined the perceptions of the professional self of early childhood teachers. The population sample comprised of 88 early childhood teachers in a part-time undergraduate early childhood education programme with at least 2 years of teaching experience. Factor analysis was applied to identify and explore six factors of early childhood teachers' sense of professional self. The study found that participants rated themselves significantly lower in the latent variable of Professional Self with EC Communities and that the more experienced early childhood teachers rated themselves significantly higher.