Knowledge of child development: Associations among pre-service teachers’ level of education and work experience

Abstract

Historically, in the USA context child development content knowledge has been one of the main emphases of early childhood teacher education programs, as it is theorized that teachers need strong content knowledge if they are to teach well. Teachers gain knowledge as they move through the degree ladder, from Child Development Associate to Associates to Bachelor’s. The purpose of this study was to examine whether knowledge of child development increased as teachers gained more education. Participants in this study ( n = 98) are part of a larger dataset of an early childhood longitudinal research collaboration between a community college and a university bachelor’s completion program. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire including items on their gender, age, race/ethnicity, highest degree earned, as well as current employment and whether ongoing work was related to the field of early childhood education. Participants also completed the Knowledge of Child Development Inventory, which consists of 56 multiple-choice items of knowledge relating to child development from birth to age 3. The items in the Knowledge of Child Development Inventory are grouped into four significant areas of development: emotional, cognitive, physical, and social. In the Knowledge of Child Development Inventory, each developmental domain group consisted of 14 items with the resulting possible range of scores for each section being 0–14. A repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted that examined the effect of education level on knowledge of child development. There was a statistically significant main effect for education level on child development. Post hoc tests revealed that the participants with bachelor’s degree scored significantly higher than the participants with both a Child Development Associate and Associates. These results indicate that as students move up through the education ladder, they gain more knowledge of child development.