Preschool teachers’ beliefs and practices of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore preschool teachers’ beliefs and practices on developmentally appropriate practices. The study sites are a mix of public and private preschools that are located in Gondar City, Ethiopia. From these study sites, six participants were purposively selected. Date data were collected through in-depth interviews. Audio-recorded in-depth interviews were transcribed verbatim. Then the Amharic transcript was then translated into the English language and made ready for further thematic analysis. The results indicated a discrepancy between preschool teachers’ beliefs and their actual classroom practices of DAP. The participants reported strong beliefs about the importance of DAP for children’s development and learning. However, they did not follow the DAP guides when teaching children. The preschool teachers attributed this discrepancy to external factors such as shortage of inputs, large class size, lack of parental support and administrative problems. Therefore, the Ministry of Education, policy makers, teacher training colleges and school administrators should design strategies that enable preschool teachers to practice their strong beliefs in implementing DAP in the classroom.