Effect of Early Childhood Pre-Service Teachers’ Character Strengths and Happiness on their Anger Expression

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of early childhood pre-service teachers’ character strengths and happiness on their anger expression. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The participants, comprised of this study, were 337 subjects. They are pre-service teachers, majoring in early childhood education at universities. Data were collected by survey questionnaires: 1)the surveys of character strengths from Authentic Happiness(2006) and short form of Seligman(2004)’s scale; 2) Choi(2011)’s Happiness Scale, revised from Kwon(2008)’s, the translated version of Oxford Happiness Inventory(OHI) (Argyle, 2001); 3) Chon et al. (1997)’s STAXI: Korean version, from Spielberger, Krasner, & Solomon(1988)’s STAXI: State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory. Findings: Firstly, the examination of correlation among the early childhood pre-service teachers’ character strengths, happiness, and anger expression reveals that there is statistically significant positive correlation among those variables. ‘Humanity’ and ‘transcendence’, among the sub-factors in character strengths, appear to be highly correlated with the sub-factors in happiness. In the study, there are statistically significant positive correlation among their character strengths and happiness and ‘anger-control’, one of the sub-factors in ‘anger expression’; and statistically significant negative correlation among character strengths and happiness and ‘anger-in’ and ‘anger-out’, the sub-factors in ‘anger expression’. Secondly, as the result of analyzing the effect of early childhood pre-service teachers’ character strengths and happiness on the sub-factors in anger expression, ‘knowledge & wisdom’, ‘temperance’, and ‘courage’ among the sub-factors in character strengths, and ‘external factor’ in happiness, have explanatory power of ‘angry-out’21%. This study also reveals that early childhood pre-service teachers’ ‘temperance’, among the sub-factors in character strengths, has a negative effect on their ‘anger-out’ and ‘anger-in’, whereas ‘temperance’ has a positive effect on ‘anger-control’. Improvements/Applications: The findings of this study provide insights to early childhood education field in terms of appropriate ways to promote happiness and character strengths of early childhood pre-service teachers, thus to quality of education.